MULHOLLAND FIGHTS TO DEFEND ABANDONED ANIMALS IN THE COMMONS

12.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Tue 10th Jan 2006

Greg Mulholland, MP for Leeds North West, will today attack the Government's long-awaited Animal Welfare Bill for not including abandoned animals, during its Second Reading in the House of Commons.

MPs are currently debating and agreeing the contents of the new Animal Welfare Bill before it progresses through Parliament and becomes law. The Government Bill will, for the first time, require owners to properly care for their pets and thus prevent thousands of animals from suffering ongoing neglect.

Speaking on the Animal Welfare Bill, Greg said:

"Last summer, I paid my first visit to the Yorkshire Animal Shelter in my constituency. This shelter, like many others, is run purely by volunteers and takes on animals from cats and rabbits to ponies and goats. The majority of the shelter's work involves taking on animals which have been abandoned by their owners.

"Every year the RSPCA is forced to investigate tens of thousands of abandonment complaints, indicating the scale of this problem. This figure is more than likely even higher than this, due difficulties in finding out if an animal has been abandoned, lost or stray. The issue of abandoned animals is therefore a serious problem, with little public provision in this area, aside from dog wardens and dog pounds. It is time as a society that we faced up to this and the problem is that this Bill largely fails to do so.

"This Bill does of course introduce at long last the duty of care involved when owning an animal and this is a very positive step, imposing a duty to ensure welfare could make a real difference to the lives of many animals around England and Wales.

"However, the abandonment of domestic animals is wrong. Full stop. To omit this from the Bill is to fail to face up to one of the most serious and most under reported problems of animal welfare in this country."