eurealist.co.uk

I noticed this report about the new Animal Welfare Bill, which apparently has cross party support and is expected to return to the floor of the Commons in March in the Times.

It is to be agreed that every domesticated animal will have a code of conduct tailored to their species, each of which is expected to run into dozens of pages. This will form part of the Animal Welfare Bill, expected to clear Parliament in the next few months.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will inform the owners of Britain’s ten million cats, eight million dogs and one million rabbits of their new obligations in a series of pamphlets distributed to vets, pet shops, kennels and over the internet.

Although any breach of these codes is not an offence in itself, failure to observe elements of the code will count against defendants in court.
But there is nothing to worry about because: Ben Bradshaw, the Animal Welfare Minister, said: “The vast majority of pet owners have nothing to fear from this legislation.

As a nation of pet owners and animal lovers there is nothing really that will be generally unacceptable about having a set of guidelines which enforce the welfare of these pets, but the problem is; that as usual with this government, these guidelines also slip in aspects of increasing the states powers in relationship to the citizen.

Firstly like many recent bills this is an “enabling” Bill, which allows further rules to be drawn up under secondary legislation.

The Bill also increases the time in which a prosecutor can bring a case from six months to three years.

The law will also endow local council officers with the power to enter property and seize animals.

This then is a significant shift from the present situation, where prosecutors have to prove a domestic animal is being mistreated.

It could well be argued that if an animal is suffering then immediate action must taken to relive that suffering, and that these powers are necessary to achieve that intention, however I belive that this could be achieved by the local authority officer reporting the matter to the police, who would use their already existing powers to investigate the matter. Giving the local authority police powers is a further erosion of our rights.

It used to be said that an Englishman’s home was his castle, but that was in the days when we believed that the state was there to serve the people rather than the arbitrary enforcer of its own powers.

There used to be a division of the powers that the state could bring to bear on the citizen, the police could enter a property in an emergency, but if they wished to do so for investigative purposes, they either needed a search warrant from a magistrate, or had to be invited in by the home owner. If the police went before a magistrate they had to present some evidence to show that had good cause to enter the home, this idea has now been superseded, and the police may enter and search any property at any time. This little bit of legislation which eroded our basic rights and changed our relationship to the state was slipped onto the statue books in another totally unrelated (to police powers) government Bill, (the 2003 licensing Act), This Bill gives an ordinary Police officer the power to enter and search any property where they think a licensable activity is being or is about to be undertaken.

All in all, over the past few years there has been a general assault on our very basic rights against the state, and this government has increased its powers against the citizen in an alarming number of ways which totally reverse our previously held perceptions of freedom. The 2003 Licensing act also attacks another basic thousand year old conception of freedom, that we all must obey the same laws, because, although the Act it makes it illegal to attempt to buy alcohol or to sell alcohol to anyone under the age of 18, it allows what is laughingly called test purchases to be made-this is where the police can send under age persons onto a premises to buy alcohol- thus giving both the police office, and the youngster concerned immunity from the law.

But to charge this government alone with incursions into our freedoms is to miss the greater point that was shown in Animal Welfare Bill, which has “cross party” support, this raises the question, do none of our elected representatives recognise that to give a local authority police powers, to give police themselves arbitrary powers to enter and search at will, to reverse the burden of proof, to remove the rights of jury trial, to remove the right for a jury to find against the evidence, to remove the rights of Habeus corpus etc. Greatly diminishes our basic rights as citizens of this country and increase the states powers against us, or do we now have to accept that we live in what is fast becoming police state Britain.