A new report calls into question what the RSPCA has been up to recently

Yesterday, the RSPCA published the long-awaited review of its prosecutions policy. Interesting choice of timing – it finally released the critical report on the day of Cameron’s conference speech. Talk about burying bad news.

The review recommends that the RSPCA no longer prosecutes hunts because it also campaigns on hunting, and calls into serious question the direction it has been taking.

Personally, I think the charity needs a serious re-think after some shocking miscarriages of justice where it has pursued pet owners for very minor infringements, and been totally unaccountable and closed to any kind of public scrutiny.

We now need a proper debate and I urge anyone interested in animal welfare to read the report by Stephen Wooler, former CPS chief inspector, commissioned in December 2013.

Tim Bonner, director of campaigns at The Countryside Alliance, which has long campaigned for changes, said:

‘Stephen Wooler’s report vindicates our position and accepts nearly every concern that we raised in relation to RSPCA prosecutions.

‘Unfortunately, however, the review was sabotaged from the start by the RSPCA’s refusal to consider whether it should be prosecuting at all. That is the fundamental question which was raised in Parliament and to which the then Attorney General, Dominic Grieve, was referring when he suggested that the RSPCA carry out this independent review.

‘Of course the RSPCA can improve the way it prosecutes but the real question is whether it should prosecute at all. Relying on private prosecutions to deliver animal welfare laws is a 19th century solution to a 21st century problem.

‘We remain convinced that it would be better for both animals and people if the RSPCA left prosecution to the CPS. If however it is determined to continue to act as a campaigning organisation, investigator and prosecutor there must be clarity about its status and role.

‘We would therefore endorse Mr Wooler’s recommendation that RSPCA prosecutors operate within a statutory framework which would include proper accountability and openness.’