 |
For many years it was said that 'every dog was allowed one
bite'. This propounded a degree of 'rough justice', and provided
a popular definition of a dangerous dog. The saying stemmed
from a provision of the Dogs Act 1871, by which a magistrate
could, on receipt of a complaint, deem a dog to be dangerous
and order either its destruction or that it be kept under
proper control. More than a century later the Dangerous Dogs
Act of 1989 went a little further, empowering magistrates
to specify the method of control and to disqualify a person
from having custody of a dog.
The 1991 Dangerous Dogs Act (DDA) went further still and
sought to remedy the main shortcoming of these provisions
(still in force and invoked), which is that they are not preventative
and can only be brought into effect after a biting incident.
The 1991 Act specifies types or breeds of dog. It also embraces
a dog of any breed which 'gives grounds for reasonable apprehension
that it will injure any person'.
The weakness of the 1991 Act lies, not in the alleged severity
of its provisions, but in its attempts to be conciliatory.
There is no legally recognised method of defining whether
a particular dog belongs to a named breed or not. Ultimately,
any case relies on the opinion of experts and many notorious
cases have revolved around the correctness of an opinion.
There are also obvious difficulties in proving 'reasonable
apprehension'.
Sectors of the dog industry made much of the borderline and
anomalous cases. This was to be expected, but the Home Office
were surprised when these elements gathered a number of organisations
together and formed the 'Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 Reform Group'.
It had previously been supposed that the Dangerous Dogs Act
would have been acceptable to the dog industry as a whole
(indeed, it might be conjectured that it would never have
reached the statute book had it not been acceptable). The
reasons for this are not too obscure. The legislation affected
only a small minority of dogs, making no impact on sales of
dog-related products, and constraints on dog imports would
not be unwelcome to UK dog breeders. But an overriding factor
was the desire on the part of the dog industry to put on a
benign face and distance itself from dangerous dogs. Few people,
therefore, would have foreseen the formation of the DDA Reform
Group —embracing the prominent dog interest organisations—
nor its success in forcing the setting-up of a House of Lords
Select Committee on a proposed Dangerous Dogs Amendment Bill.
But this is what happened.
The Committee's report, published in February 1996, carried
written evidence from various bodies. (The longest, from the
Canine Crisis Council, extended over 10 pages, and was evidently
read in some detail, for the CCC received a query from the
Committee regarding an apparent ambiguity, which was readily
resolved.) The report went into every conceivable objection
to the 1991 Act. The Amendment Bill did not make it to the
statute book, but later that year there was a change of government.
A Home Office inquiry, covering much the same ground, issued
its first report in December 1996. This time the CCC's submission
of 14 pages was exceeded (by one page) only by that of the
Staffordshire Bull Terrier Breed Council. The result of the
inquiry was the Dangerous Dogs (Amendment) Act 1997.
More legislation followed, including: the Breeding and Sale
of Dogs (Welfare) Act 1999, the Protection of Animals (Amendment)
Act 2000 and the introduction of the Pet Travel Scheme on
28th February 2000. The question of a compulsory dog registration
scheme has, however, been sidestepped by the setting-up of
an officially approved Dog Identification Group (DIG). Meanwhile,
objections to the DDA have re-emerged in the form of the Dog
Legislation Advisory Group. This undoubtedly sounds better
than the former Dangerous Dogs Reform Group, which it replaces,
but it consists of the same familiar dog interest organisations.
The 'new' group is sponsored by the Kennel Club, as is the
Domino Campaign, aimed primarily at intervening in German
laws relating to dangerous dogs. The distinction, if any,
between the two groups is not clear. Both use the slogan 'punish
the deed not the breed'. If their public declarations are
to believed, massive scientific resources are being marshalled
to prove that breed-specific aggression does not exist.
Considering also the extensive debate on registration prior
to the Environmental Protection Act 1990, numerous attempts
to introduce other dog-related bills and the two attempts
to enact the Dogs (Fouling of Land) Act 1996, observers might
conclude that dog issues have had their fair share of Parliamentary
resources over the years. They would be right; but the dog
industry continues to apply unrelenting pressure to change
the law of the land in its favour.
|
