Comment A dog’s dinner of bad law ...but not the UK’s worst
Dogs, indicating that some active thought was already being given to the issue.
That paper outlined measures actually introduced – including extension of the DDA to cover attacks taking place in private places and, from last April, the microchipping of all dogs.
Also, those actions so far rejected, like the complete repeal of breedspecific legislation and the serious examination of alternatives – discouraging, but at least this time they’ve received some sort of focused attention.
None of this, though, really concerns me personally. Whatever the detailed dog law, I’ll continue trying to avoid them all.
What prompted my interest was last year’s evidence-based finding that the 1991 DDA, despite now being the Law Society’s “standard example” of rushed legislation invariably being bad, may not be the single worst piece of modern-day UK legislation.
OK, the evidence was hardly scientifically rigorous, but it was statistical.
It resulted from a competition organised last year, linked to the Magna Carta commemorations, in which the politics.co.uk website invited nominations for “the worst British law of all time”.
A shortlist of eight was offered and, more than slightly worryingly, the DDA limped home joint last, like an elderly greyhound at Hall Green Stadium, with barely two per cent support.
Its fellow loser was the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, appropriately enough, since both stupid laws stemmed directly from tabloid moral panics, this one at people like my then students assembling in fields and enjoying free “raves”.
The Conservative Government’s chosen ban this time, equivalent to the four singled-out dog breeds, was of “sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats” played above a certain volume to a certain number of people.
Those legal draftspersons certainly knew their raves.
But, of course, you’re gagging to learn the winner, which was the 1971 Misuse Of Drugs Act, with
But, of course, you’re gagging to learn the winner, which was the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act with 29 per cent support
29 per cent support. Its victory margin was narrow but, said the judges, worthy, for the sheer scale and longevity of its negative repercussions.
We all know it : the ABC classified list of controlled substances – including cannabis, but excluding tobacco and alcohol, and arbitrarily related to their potential harm and addictiveness – with penalties linked to possession and supply.
Yes, its structure derives from United Nations and international narcotic drugs conventions, but the point is that actual listings and licensing are in the hands of national ministers, in our case the home secretary.
It was a health secretary, though, whose very personal legislative creation was so narrowly defeated by the Drugs Act : Andrew Lansley’s damaging and horrendously costly attempt at NHS reform in the 2012 Health And Social Care Act – absent from the Conservative manifesto and uncomprehended then and possibly still by ex-Prime Minister Cameron.
And that ultimately is where the Dangerous Dogs Act just can’t compete: however bad, it’s simply not as expensive and extensively harmful as the others. Chris Game is a lecturer at the Institute of Local Government Studies, at the University Of
Birmingham