Legal delays let cruelty off the hook
WHEN 13,000 islanders signed a petition calling for better laws to protect animals from cruelty each hoped their support would make a small difference.
WHEN 13,000 islanders signed a petition calling for better laws to protect animals from cruelty each hoped their support would make a small difference.
Not immediately, perhaps, but each would have anticipated that their voice, linked with hundreds and then thousands of others, might make government sit up and take notice.
The petition was well-organised and had specific aims addressed in 20 key points. In essence, Guernsey's laws were outdated and its animals were at the mercy of the cruel and thoughtless.
And it worked. Or at least it seemed to work. The committee responsible for animal welfare - headed by a dynamic new leader - agreed that the law needed amending, took it to the States and the Billet recommendations were passed without a fight.
Frustratingly, that took four years.
Three years after that, a new enabling law on Animal Welfare was drawn up.
Two years later, a technical hitch with the enabling law meant the projet de loi awaiting Privy Council approval was again before the States.
It is now March 2008.
Two years on, with a re-dated enabling law finally in place, we are told that drafting instructions are to be provided to the Law Officers' Chambers by June so that the first of several ordinances can be drawn up and brought back before the Assembly for approval.
But once in those chambers it is anybody's guess how long the ordinances will take. Commerce and Employment (who caught this hospital pass from Agriculture and Milk Marketing) says it depends on the Law Officers' staffing levels and workloads.
The Crown's lawyers, as is traditional, maintain a regal silence.
Optimistically perhaps, given the evidence of history, Commerce guess it will be two to three years before the new law emerges into daylight.
So, 14 years after 13,000 islanders put pen to paper, the island might see animals get the protection they had hoped for.
At what point does someone in government say this is not good enough and demand change?
Perhaps another petition might start the ball rolling.
