UK Edition
The new head of the RSPCA has made a dramatic, public apology for the charity’s past mistakes and vowed to be less political and bring fewer prosecutions in the future.
In his first interview since taking over as chief executive, Jeremy Cooper admitted the RSPCA had become “too adversarial” and dragged too many people through the courts under its previous leadership.
Mr Cooper said that the charity had alienated farmers in its aggressive campaign against the Government’s badger cull and disclosed that it would be “very unlikely” to ever bring another prosecution against a hunt.
Mr Cooper told The Telegraph: “Of course we have made mistakes in the past, and we are very sorry about that. We have to be honest and admit the mistakes and acknowledge them.
“For me it is about recognising those mistakes and then doing everything we can to prevent them happening again.”
The RSPCA has endured a torrent of criticism and negative publicity in recent years, that prompted a parliamentary inquiry and an independent report that recommended sweeping changes to its handling of prosecutions.
The 192-year-old charity, which is one of Britain’s largest with a turnover of £124 million, was accused of becoming too focused on animals rights rather than animal welfare, its traditional role.
The charity has been attacked for bringing a prosecution, costing £330,000, against the Heythrop Hunt, which is David Cameron’s local hunt in Oxfordshire; and for demanding that farmers who participated in the Government’s badger cull be ‘named and shamed’.
Mr Cooper’s outspoken remarks will be viewed as a concerted effort to draw a line under an era of leadership which had overseen a worrying fall in donations.
His predecessor Gavin Grant stepped down from the RSPCA with immediate effect in February 2014 due to “medical concerns about his health” after a turbulent two years.
The charity had been without a permanent chief executive until Mr Cooper took up the post last month.
Mr Cooper said: “We are going to be a lot less political. It doesn’t mean we won’t stand up for animals. But we are not a political organisation.
“My style of advocacy is encouragement and dialogue. The [previous] leadership was too adversarial. If you want to shout and use rhetoric that’s fine but it isn’t helpful to anybody. It is not going to make friends and influence people. People won’t like you for it.”
He said all future decisions on fox-hunting prosecutions would now be passed to the Crown Prosecution Service and all but ruled out bringing a private prosecution as it had done with the Heythrop hunt.
“We will investigate where we have been told that illegal hunting is taking place,” he said, “But we will then pass on our findings to the authorities to determine the right course of action.
“We have to trust that where this is clear breach of the law, and it is in the public interest, then the appropriate authorities will take action. As with any organisation or citizen we reserve the right to take action if the authorities fail to act, but we expect that to be very unlikely.”
He said he wanted the number of overall prosecutions, which led to 1,781 convictions last year, to fall under his tenure.
“The perception is we have been over zealous. That’s a little bit unfair,” he said, adding: “I would like to see the number of prosecutions come down.
“The prosecutions have to be appropriate. We should look to fall back on education and advice wherever possible. It needs to be appropriate, measured and balanced in terms of our response.”
Mr Grant had wanted to ‘name and shame’ farmers participating in the badger cull while an RSPCA council member had likened the treatment of farm animals to the suffering of Jews in the Holocaust.
Mr Cooper, who lived on a dairy farm in his childhood, condemned both. He told The Telegraph: “We care as equally about badgers as we do about dairy cows. Calls for naming and shaming of farmers who shoot badgers is not helpful.
“We don’t have an issue with the need to manage badgers. It is the method. Foxes need to be managed as well. It is about humanely managing the animals. We recognise that dairy cows suffered problems and badgers need to be managed.”
Of comments likening farming to the Holocaust, made by Peta Watson Smith, an animal rights activist on the RSPCA council, he said: “It damages the RSPCA’s reputation. Any negative comment like that which is not helpful. The important thing to know is the trustees have no operational influence on the day to day running of the society.”
Mr Cooper praised the work of the RSPCA’s 1,600 paid staff and many more volunteers and said one of his jobs was to rebuild morale among the workforce.
“It would be nice to acknowledge the good work we do,” he said. “We have passionate, capable people.”
He added: “I feel very privileged and very humble with what I have seen already. It’s about looking forward. It is about doing what we can do on animal welfare, the prevention of cruelty, rescue, rehabilitation and rehoming. That is what we are about.”