Contribution
That is a pertinent intervention, because one of my colleagues in the House of Lords has taken up that very issue. It is a parallel issue, but a related one. Although it is a separate matter, it should certainly be taken into account in the work that the Home Office is doing. I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising it.
To give credit to Ministers, work is ongoing in respect of domestic abuse statutory guidance and controlling and coercive behaviour statutory guidance. Will the Minister update the House on that work, and particularly on when it will be completed? The Minister on the Treasury Bench probably knows this, but I was on the Front Bench for my party for 19 years consecutively, and was a Minister in countless Departments; I just say to her that it is critical that very strict timetables are set. Ministers must demand of their officials that things will be done within limits and to a pre-agreed schedule. If they do not, then, with the best will in the world—and this is not about a lack of will—these things often drift. Please can we therefore have an update and some real assurances about when this is going to happen?
We may end up with a form of animal protection disclosure scheme that allows the police to disclose an individual’s history of animal cruelty and convictions to relevant organisations. It would be modelled on Clare’s law—the domestic violence disclosure scheme—and would operate under the common law duty of police disclosure. Under Clare’s law, as the Minister will know, after making an initial application, the information must be provided within 28 days. At present, UK animal cruelty convictions are recorded on the police national database, but police face the challenge of fragmented information sharing. A co-ordinated approach must be possible, and I hope the Minister can set out details of how that might work.
We know, too, that only 26 of 43 police forces reported that their mandated training on coercion covers the involvement of pets in domestic abuse. Can the Minister clarify whether that could be made mandatory for all forces? You will understand, Madam Deputy Speaker, the difference between guidance and statutory guidance, and this may be a case where statutory guidance is necessary. Indeed, just this week, I raised this issue on the Floor of the House with the Minister for Victims and Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls, the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones). She committed to meet me to move things forward.
The US state of Tennessee introduced an animal abuse register in 2016. It is a public register listing convictions, with offenders remaining on it for five years in the case of persistent offenders. There are obviously concerns about having a public register, but I wonder what lessons might be learned from the US, given that acts of cruelty against animals have been tracked by the FBI since 2016 in the same way as arson, burglary, assault and even homicide. That has allowed police to monitor and tackle the extent of animal neglect, torture and other abuse. It may be that we can indeed learn lessons on best practice from elsewhere.
Finally, I will mention the example of the convicted rapist Russell Brand, which was raised in the Chamber by the hon. Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers) earlier this week and again today. We now know of Brand’s shocking offences against women, which lasted for so long, but it is an example of his cruelty to animals that is perhaps particularly relevant to this debate. Brand’s account in a book—if you can call it that—of his history of abuse of his pet dog was surely a warning sign of what was to come. When designing policy, we must be cognisant of ensuring that relevant information, including admissions and other intelligence where appropriate—not just convictions—can be considered. Being able to consider such information is critical, because not all inquiries into animal cruelty lead to convictions. That is one of the problems we face, and addressing it needs to be built into the response to my call for Holly’s law.
This matter has significant cross-party support. I have received support from Members in all parts of this House, and a letter I sent to the Leader of the House seeking a debate on this matter attracted nearly 60 signatures from MPs of all political colours. Annette Bramley’s campaign for Holly’s law has caught the imagination precisely because it is just plain common sense. Her online petition has attracted more than 60,000 signatures. Annette’s campaign is supported by the charity Domestic Abuse Alliance, which has said that it:
“supports initiatives like Holly’s Law that address the overlapping harms seen in abusive households”.
I would like to add that it also has the strong support of my local paper, the Lincolnshire Free Press, and I pay tribute to the reporter Jenny Beake, who has been a great champion of Annette and our campaign. The campaign is also supported by the Naturewatch Foundation, a charity dedicated to ending animal cruelty, which argues that animal abuse is often linked to coercive control and escalating violence, but is not always identified as such within police disclosures.
My mission is to bring justice for my constituent and to make Holly’s law a reality. I will do all I can to help prevent what happened to Annette’s daughter from ever happening again, for as Edmund Burke said:
“Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.”