Yesterday afternoon Sir Christopher Chope presented a Bill, the
Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 (Amendment) Bill in the House of Commons for first reading. The Bill would if passed prevent the Government from doing as it has just done with the American Bully XL . This, if passed, would alter the mechanism for adding breeds to the prohibited or restricted breed types meaning that before making any order to designate a type of dog for the purposes of section 1 or 2 of the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 (ban or restriction), the Secretary of State must in future carry out a public consultation and publish a comparative review of data showing the incidences of fatalities resulting from bites of dogs of that type in the last three years. This would remove the governments powers currently within the legislation to effectively add breeds at the stroke of a pen by the Secretary of State. Whilst we believe the whole dangerous dog legislation needs to be overhauled to focus on prevention rather than punishment after the fact, we welcome this move as a sensible one and would recommend our followers to ask their MP’s to support it when it goes for second reading on Friday 23rd February 2024. We thank Sir Christopher Chope for bringing what is a sensible solution to prevent yet another knee-jerk reaction resulting from press pressure being repeated again in the future without evidence or asking the opinion of the public who after all put MP’s in parliament to serve them
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