Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee
Oral evidence: Pet Welfare and Abuse, HC 161
Tuesday 28 November 2023
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 28 November 2023.
Members present: Sir Robert Goodwill (Chair); Steven Bonnar; Ian Byrne; Dr Neil Hudson; Mrs Sheryll Murray; Cat Smith.
Questions 333 - 435
Witnesses
I: Rt Hon the Lord Benyon, Minister for Biosecurity, Marine and Rural Affairs, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; and Marc Casale, Deputy Director for Animal Welfare, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
Written evidence from witnesses:
– Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Witnesses: Rt Hon the Lord Benyon and Marc Casale.
Q333 Chair: Welcome to this session of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. It comes hot on the heels of yesterday’s debate in Westminster Hall on the issue of XL Bullies, which had an almost unprecedented number of petitioners calling for that particular debate. I know that the Minister’s stand-in, Mark Spencer, was representing him in the Commons, but this is your area of expertise.
This is the fifth of five sessions held by the Committee for our pet welfare and abuse report. First of all, I ask the Minister, Lord Benyon, who is an old friend of mine and of the Committee as well, to introduce himself.
Lord Benyon: Thank you. I am the DEFRA Minister in the Lords. One of my areas of responsibility, for the time being anyway—there is a slight shake-up going on, as you are probably aware—is animal welfare.
Chair: Thank you. Mr Casale.
Marc Casale: I am the Deputy Director for Animal Welfare in DEFRA.
Q334 Chair: Thank you very much indeed. There was quite a lot of consternation in June when the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill—as I think most people know it—was withdrawn and the Government stated its contents would be taken forward as single-issue Bills or SIs, or maybe even picked up as private Members’ Bills. Which single issue Bills are you taking forward and how do you plan to do so?
Lord Benyon: Thank you, Chair. We are taking forward the ban on live exports as a Government Bill. That was announced in the King’s Speech. We are also doing one measure that was in the kept animals Bill that we feel we can do as secondary legislation, which is banning keeping primates as pets.
The other measures that we are in discussions with a variety of different people to see how and whether we can take those forward—and we are reasonably confident we will be able to get all the manifesto commitments in law and indeed some others—include, we hope, legislation to tackle livestock worrying, raise standards in zoos, bring in a new offence of pet abduction. We think we can exceed our ambition by doing those as well.
Q335 Chair: There is not much going on at the moment with the export of animals for slaughter. I think since the farmers’ ferry ceased operating, there is not a great deal—
Lord Benyon: The number of livestock that have been exported for slaughter since Brexit is zero. However, there is the possibility that it could be started again if economic situations changed and infrastructure that currently does not exist did exist and markets were created. There is a very clear view that we want to ensure that that does not happen. It is not a pressing issue but it is one that we want to get on the statute books.
Q336 Dr Hudson: I will chime in on that, Minister. Over the last two or three years, there were still large numbers of horses exported to Europe, not under the guise of slaughter but illegally transported under the auspices of sport or recreation. Do you agree that the Government bringing forward this Bill would try to stop that loophole? Part of that is improved equine identification, which I know you are working on as well, but this Bill would close that loophole.
Lord Benyon: We want to ensure, first of all on the livestock, that you can still export animals for breeding purposes—that is a very important export for this country—which is bulls and other high-end prime livestock. We want to make sure that that market continues. That is, of course, long established, but you are talking about the export of horses for slaughter, which are not listed as such under the export.
Q337 Dr Hudson: Yes, under the pretence that they are being exported for sport or movement for sport and breeding. We want horses to be able to move freely for breeding and sport but what is happening is that horses are being illegally exported to Europe under cover of another excuse. This tightening up on not being able to be transported for slaughter should hopefully close that loophole.
Lord Benyon: Yes, that is the plan.
Q338 Chair: I thought that there was a minimum value on horses, which was aimed to catch that particular problem. Horses going to slaughter are not the same value as racehorses, eventers and breeding stock and that should have prevented that happening. Is that the case?
Marc Casale: That is a really old piece of legislation that has a value of a horse that cannot be exported.
Lord Benyon: I would be wary about tying that into the legislation because horse values change, and what was considered a valuable horse in 1990 is chicken feed today compared with the costs of some of the elite sport animals. However, there must be a perfectly clear legislative route to try to weed out precisely the sort of abuse that—
Q339 Chair: My worry is, given that you have said that no animals have been exported for slaughter, or certainly no sheep or cattle, since Brexit, that this may not be very high on the Government’s priority list for getting legislation through the House, given that the election may be coming up sooner than we think.
Lord Benyon: Chair, you have great experience of trying to get Bills into King’s Speeches. We had to make a decision about what we thought we could take forward ourselves and get that through the relevant cross-Government discussions, and what we thought could be delivered by other means—clearly, private Members’ Bills, and having some oven-ready measures that we think can deliver our ambitions. We are working hard to achieve that but, as you know, the ballot has just been announced and we are working closely to try to get those through.
Q340 Chair: I wish you luck. I know that when people get high up in the ballot they are inundated with suggestions for legislation, but certainly a hand-out Bill from the Government would have its way eased by the Government. A lot of the work would be done by officials in the Departments. Let’s hope that those get picked up by Members who are fortunate.
Lord Benyon: The strength of a private Member’s Bill is when it has universal support. I think that banning live exports has universal support across the House, but we think that there are different ways of getting these measures through.
Q341 Dr Hudson: One that you did not specifically mention, Minister, was potentially the one involved with puppy smuggling and heavily pregnant dogs and dogs that have had their ears cropped. Stopping those would potentially come in as a private Member’s Bill, wouldn’t it?
Lord Benyon: Yes, absolutely.
Dr Hudson: Great. Thank you.
Q342 Cat Smith: The Dogs Trust has told us in its evidence that it estimates around 90% of dogs that are purchased in the UK are from unlicensed breeders. Is this an acceptable situation and how are we addressing the risks that this poses?
Lord Benyon: It is quite difficult to assess the ratio of licensed to unlicensed dog breeders in England. No official data exists on the number of unlicensed breeders. Our annual data return from local authorities, which are the key regulator here, shows that there were 2,296 dog breeding licences in place in April of this year in 261 local authorities.
However, some sector groups, including the Dogs Trust, have attempted to estimate the ratio. For example, in 2015, prior to the introduction of the current licensing scheme, we estimated that about 10% of dogs sold originated from licensed breeders. Sorry, it was estimated—I am not saying that was DEFRA. A number of different groups have come up with these ratios.
Q343 Cat Smith: In your perception, Minister, between the numbers coming from licensed and unlicensed, do you find this to be an acceptable ratio or split?
Lord Benyon: We want to get as many as possible from licensed breeders and that is what we are striving to do, but that is only half the story. The other story is about having proper standards in place so that we can ensure—and there is existing legislation that prevents some of the bad practices that we have all heard about, but we want to try to improve this. Marc, is there anything you would like to say?
Marc Casale: Anyone who is breeding on a commercial basis has to have a licence. Anyone who breeds three or more litters a year needs a licence. The unlicensed people who are basically breeding would be purely hobby breeders and we expect that they do not have the same incentives as people who are breeding on a commercial basis.
Q344 Cat Smith: Is the Department confident that the law is being adhered to?
Marc Casale: We have had the general protections in the Animal Welfare Act for providing for the welfare needs of animals and also not to tolerate cruelty. They apply to everyone who is involved in the breeding of any animal.
Q345 Cat Smith: Some of the other witnesses we have heard from as part of this inquiry have recommended that a register for all dog breeders should be introduced. That would be all dog breeders, not just the ones who are currently licensed. What assessments has the Department made about the merits of that proposal?
Lord Benyon: We are currently finalising our post-implementation review of the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018, which we hope to publish soon. The 2018 regulations introduced a licensing regime, which Marc has just mentioned, for eight animal activities, including dog breeding. It is clear from the responses to this post-implementation review that there remains, as you accurately say, a considerable concern across the sector about the welfare aspects of dog breeding that they do not currently require a licence. Stud dog services, whelping services and canine fertility businesses are examples of areas where we—
Chair: We are coming along to the canine physicality clinics later.
Q346 Cat Smith: I suppose I am asking, Minister, if the recommendations do not include a register for all dog breeders, is there anything else that could be introduced that would help the traceability of breeders and puppies?
Marc Casale: I think we have said before—for example, in the pet theft taskforce report—that having a register for those who are breeding, who do not meet the licensing threshold conditions, is something that we are considering. As the Minister said, we have the five-year review of the regulations that is due to come out soon. That may also say something about this issue.
Q347 Chair: Some of these so-called unlicensed breeders are just people with family pets who want to have a litter, maybe, so that they have a puppy for when their dog dies. We had a Patterdale bitch. We had a litter and my brother-in-law got one, my cousin got another and we sold a couple to people we knew. You are not suggesting bringing people like me, who might just want to have one litter in the dog’s lifetime, maybe a couple, within a licensing regime? Surely, it is for the people who are a commercial operation or maybe having more than three litters but not really needing to declare it because there is no policing.
Lord Benyon: Or me, Chair. The stress of having eight spaniel puppies last year is what will prevent me from trying to breed from my bitch again—but absolutely not. We could not possibly regulate to that degree and we would not want to. It is a fairly bureaucratic process of registering them with The Kennel Club and things like that. Of course they are now compulsorily microchipped and there are various other measures that a responsible owner has to take, and we want to continue that. The idea that we were going to register every hobby breeder, even if it is once in a decade like me, would be impossible.
Chair: There are also unplanned pregnancies that happen in the canine world, as well as elsewhere, which you would not want to get caught up with.
Q348 Mrs Murray: I have to declare an interest as the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on cats and also the owner of two beautiful cats.
Minister, the Cat Protection Society has argued that licensing cat breeding under the LAIA regulations would safeguard cats and kittens against poor breeding conditions. Do you agree with that assessment?
Lord Benyon: We work very closely with them and other organisations. As I said before, we are reviewing the post-implementation. We have the post-implementation review that is looking at precisely that. We are working with others to see whether the impacts on breeding of cats are being faced properly by legislation and regulation today.
The response that we have had indicates that there are some general reasons to be concerned about the situation for breeding cats. These include the health and welfare problems associated with certain breeds and other issues relating to breeding for particular aesthetic purposes. We want to ensure that there are proper regulations in place.
Q349 Mrs Murray: Thank you. Given your answer, what assessment have you made of the potential merits of introducing more robust breeding regulations for rabbits, which are becoming far more popular?
Lord Benyon: We do not have any plans to implement a requirement for licensing the breeding of rabbits. There is existing legislation under the Animal Welfare Act 2006, which says it is an offence to cause any animal unnecessary suffering or to fail to provide for its welfare. The Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Act of the year before last amended the 2006 Act to deliver the Government’s manifesto commitment to increase sentences available to the courts, and that certainly includes keepers of rabbits.
We are happy to look at taking positive action to look at welfare and advice is available to educate pet owners on providing for welfare needs of rabbits. This includes the British Rabbit Council’s codes of practice, which I think is a very good way of doing it. These are people who really know what they are talking about and they have produced the Good Practice Code for the Welfare of Rabbits, which I recommend to any keeper of rabbits.
Q350 Mrs Murray: You mentioned the post-implementation review of the 2018 regulations. Can we expect publication before the end of this year?
Lord Benyon: It is a very good question.
Marc Casale: Very soon I would say. Quite when, I am not sure we have a date but—
Lord Benyon: If I say “very soon” in the House of Lords there is a groan that goes up around the whole Chamber. I would probably say at your end—
Chair: In the fullness of time.
Lord Benyon: In the fullness of time, yes. I do not want to sound too prescient here. We are working it through, and we will publish it soon. It is a very important piece of work.
Mrs Murray: Are we talking months?
Lord Benyon: If it is not this side of Christmas, it will be the other side of Christmas. It will be early in the new year.
Mrs Murray: Thank you very much, Minister.
Chair: I am tempted to say that breeding rabbits must be one of the easiest jobs there is.
Lord Benyon: They tend to look after themselves in that department.
Chair: They do.
Q351 Dr Hudson: Minister and Marc, through the course of this inquiry we have been looking at various practices and things that have increased in recent times and in parallel there have been a few media investigations into some of these. The first that I want to mention briefly is that ITV News uncovered and brought to the Committee’s attention, prior to one of our sessions, the incidents of puppy yoga classes where underage puppies are brought in to yoga classes under the guise of it being a lovely, cuddly thing to do but actually there are significant welfare concerns for those young, under-age, perhaps unvaccinated puppies to be used in a workplace like that. Do the Government have that on their radar to look at moving forward to see what can be done to improve the animal welfare implications?
Lord Benyon: I am aware of this. I mean I am aware of that piece of work that ITV did, but we do not have any plans to legislate against it. There must be a common-sense element here where providers of yoga classes can realise where they are doing harm and there is endless guidance available in what you should and should not do with an unvaccinated puppy. It is very difficult to legislate for stupidity—and the stupidity of some people who think that they can take a very young puppy into that sort of setting and move it around in the way that they do is just nuts, but I do not know whether we have—
Q352 Dr Hudson: I take your point. It is difficult to legislate, but if the Government say, “We have this on our radar. We are aware of it”, if guidance can come out from DEFRA, the Home Office and so on to police authorities and local government, who are the people potentially involved in policing or being called out to that, so they have guidance that this unacceptable, that will help them stop some of these practices.
Marc Casale: We do monitor animal activities that are not currently licensed. You have things like cat cafés as well, and various things that are not licensed and not covered by the LAIA regulations. We work closely with the canine and feline sector group to work out what is the best way of getting the right messaging out there, to encourage certain things and discourage other things.
Q353 Dr Hudson: Can you assure me and the Committee that puppy yoga is on the radar?
Marc Casale: It is definitely on the radar. Absolutely, yes.
Q354 Dr Hudson: Thank you. Can I get on to the main question? In one of your previous answers, you touched on canine fertility clinics. That is something that we have taken a lot of evidence on, and we have increasing concern about, as do many of the animal welfare charities and the veterinary bodies. The number of canine fertility clinics rose from 37 in 2020 to over 400 today. The British Veterinary Association has reported that about 93% of vets are concerned about the pet safety and animal welfare implications of the increased number of these unregulated clinics. Do the Government share these concerns—and I think we interrupted you, Richard, in your answer—and what steps are the Government taking to look at these unregulated canine fertility clinics?
Lord Benyon: The first thing I will say, which I hope will be music to your ears, although we have discussed this many times, is that I think we need to reform or replace the Veterinary Surgeons Act 1966. Since that time, a whole lot of complementary and highly necessary and very efficacious treatments are delivered by people who are not veterinary surgeons. Those good people, and the veterinary surgeons in whose practices they operate, want proper regulation in this field. I think that that leads into your question because some activities in these canine fertility clinics have been carried out by people who have no qualification to do that.
It is absolutely vital to say that the actions that are being taken need to be done by a qualified veterinary surgeon until we have a proper regulated world where some of the ancillary activities can happen. These canine fertility clinics offer a range of services, which can include stud dog services, supply and shipping of semen, ultrasound scanning, whelping assistance, progesterone testing, and artificial insemination. Some of these services offered by these businesses, including the methods of undertaking canine artificial insemination, constitute acts of veterinary surgery. I think it is really important to say that and it is illegal for laypeople to perform them.
If we do get into reforming this Act, there will be a very detailed debate that will require people with real knowledge in both Houses to ensure that we are getting this right. Fertility services can present risks to welfare to the adult dogs used for breeding and their progeny. These risks may relate to the nature of the procedure, the condition of the dog, the competency of the personnel and a variety of other contributing factors.
Q355 Dr Hudson: Thank you, that is very helpful. You raised the issues of these acts of veterinary surgery being performed by non-veterinarians— things like taking blood samples and artificial insemination. We had one vet before us as who said there is a concern that potentially things like caesarean sections are also being performed. I take your point and I think the veterinary profession will be encouraged that there are plans afoot to reform the Veterinary Surgeons Act 1966.
That is not an easy thing to do in quick time and there is the concern that these canine fertility clinics are out there now with these procedures taking place. What can be done? As you rightly say, under the Veterinary Surgeons Act, I think there is a penalty for £100 if they find something is being done that is not performed by a vet. That is potentially not a huge deterrent for some of the unscrupulous people involved in these practices. Bearing in mind that, yes, the Veterinary Surgeons Act can be reformed, what can be done in the short term to address these issues to protect animal welfare?
Lord Benyon: To underline what you say, I think that the business model is a fairly recent one. When we brought it in—as recently as February 2020—more than a year after the 2018 regulations came into force, the British Veterinary Association suggested that there were fewer than 40 canine fertility businesses in the UK. We know since then that the number has increased significantly, with estimates suggesting more than 300 businesses in operation in 2022. What can we do? There is existing legislation where you could take it through on an Animal Welfare Act basis and secure a proper prosecution, but some of it would be a fairly niche area of activity and may not be covered by the Act. Are there things that we are doing now, Marc?
Marc Casale: A couple of things. One is that as part of the LAIA five-year review we licensed dog breeding. We can reconsider what the definition of dog breeding captures, whether that should be broader, to include some activities that are not vet activities but they ought to be subject to licensing. That is one thing we can do in the near future.
Secondly, at the moment, our expert evidence committee, the animal welfare committee, is looking not just at where we are with fertility clinics and those kinds of activities for dogs, but also looking at cat breeding that we spoke about a minute ago, just to understand where the welfare issues lie, where the biggest risks are and what we want to do about it, including from the LAIA licensing perspective. That is under active consideration right now for cats and dogs and fertility clinics.
Q356 Dr Hudson: Can you assure us that there is joined-up thinking across Government? The BBC “Panorama” investigation, which highlighted some of the canine fertility clinics, suggests that potentially in some of these places there is an organised crime element, so I guess giving the police force the capability and the intelligence that there are animal welfare implications for what can be done. Are you talking across Government about what can be done to try to stop some of this?
Marc Casale: There are close links not just on the breeding side but also for imports and puppy smuggling, organised crime, police and those kinds of gangs as well. There are close links already.
Q357 Dr Hudson: Coming back to the point about private Members’ Bills, if pet smuggling, ear cropping and heavily pregnant dogs are covered in legislation, that will give the police and local authorities more teeth to potentially hit some of the intended consequences from that as well.
Lord Benyon: These are obviously devolved issues. We work on this very closely with the devolved Governments to make sure that we get join-up right across the UK. That means that there will not be a geographic shift of illegal activity to one country that has slightly softer laws than ours. We all want to ensure that we are listening not just to the usual stakeholders who want higher animal welfare standards but also to the police if criminality is happening.
There is some really good work being done on responsible dog ownership. I am sure we will come on to talk about XL Bullies and that part of it, but we think there is a job to be done to educate people more about where they buy their dog from. I think we always imagine a pub carpark. I am not quite sure how many dogs are actually sold in pub carparks, but people are still buying animals—not just dogs, cats as well—without any knowledge of where it came from or what the parents of that dog went through to get that puppy into their arms. It is a really important piece of work that we have to continue to push.
Q358 Dr Hudson: I welcome the fact that the Government had the Petfished campaign. Has there been an assessment of the benefits and the implications of the Petfished campaign in improving people’s awareness of how they source their pets?
Marc Casale: We had an internal evaluation of that, which was really quite positive, and that was an investment that we basically had for a couple of years at least. Also, we worked very closely with the main animal welfare organisations and their campaigns, which have different audiences as well, so in a combined way, and also with the devolved Administrations. We constantly seek to get the message out about how to source your dog, watch out for the person selling it rather than being distracted by the fluffy puppy itself. That tends to work well.
Coming back to your earlier point, we should not forget HM Revenue and Customs, who are very important partners in helping to tackle some of these criminals. Not just the police but HM Revenue and Customs gives us some really good leaders.
Q359 Dr Hudson: It is welcome that there has been an internal assessment but, as you said, Richard, the climate has evolved rapidly in the last few months, so can the Government reboot some of these campaigns? The bottom line is increasing public awareness—we are a nation of animal lovers—to make sure that people know that they are getting their animals from the right place and they know how to look after them. Is there a chance to reboot some of the advertising campaign to help that?
Lord Benyon: Petfished was an example of how to run a campaign in the modern world. There used to be a time when a Minister would make a speech and it would be reported. There was a time when events like this would probably have got much more coverage in getting a message across. I think we have to reflect how people get information and at what point in their life they might consider owning a dog or cat, or indeed any other animal, for the first time, because that very often is the time to get to them.
We think that Dogs Trust, the RSPCA, Blue Cross, Cats Protection and other organisations like them are probably the best way. Who doesn’t remember the words, “A dog is for life, not just for Christmas”? That came from the Dogs Trust. That is the kind of messaging that we in Government have to work with and enable and use our resources where we can, but recognise that we have to get to a wider group of the population, because bad things are still happening and we want to make sure that they are not.
Q360 Chair: Thinking about the law of unintended consequences, some of the procedures that we are talking about in these canine fertility clinics are procedures that farmers would carry out on their own livestock. For example, I have put a prolapsed ewe back and stitched it in, delivering lambs, giving injections, all that stuff that farmers do. In fact, AI guys come round to farms and do those sorts of procedures. People do foot trimming, that sort of thing. Is it the element of paying for something that is the issue? Will there be any suggestion that some of these procedures which farmers are currently doing might be made veterinary only?
Lord Benyon: Under our animal health and welfare pathway, farmers now get access to a free vet visit a year, which is very popular. It is going down really well, because the relationship they have with a vet tends to be a crisis relationship. A person comes on to the farm because an animal is sick. This is where they sit down and look at all aspects of livestock rearing on that farm and walk round with the vet and they make suggestions about how they move animals, where they put their livestock, some good biosecurity measures and precisely those kinds of issues.
On the handling of animals, it is absolutely vital that farmers still do that, continue to do it, and we are not expecting to impose any new costs on farmers and requiring people with particular qualifications to do things as basic as the ones you have listed. Absolutely, AI on my farm is done by people on my farm, so that must continue.
We are talking about more specialist action with small animals and pets. We are aware of some real, genuine concerns about animal welfare and it is extraordinary how this business has just appeared in recent years. We are trying to understand the financial reasons why they have been created, to ensure that we have safe places and that people who love their pet know that they are not part of an activity that does not have the highest welfare standards.
Q361 Chair: One of the points that we talked about when we were at the Dogs Trust was the automatic neutering of pets—the sort of breeding that happens on your farm and on our farm with dogs just does not happen because so many dogs are neutered. Should we be thinking about discouraging some of the neutering going on so that people can breed from their own pet? It is good news for vets because at the slightest thing they will get the vet in. Is that something that we have bypassed in many communities that previously would automatically just have a couple of litters from their dog and probably have them in the house?
Lord Benyon: I have a figure of 10 million or 12 million dogs in this country. A percentage of them will not have very nice lives, but one hopes it is a fairly small percentage. I do not know whether it is a Government’s job to regulate such things. Where we apply neutering requirements it is to deliver a very specific outcome, and that is in areas like dangerous dogs—
Q362 Chair: It is the rehoming charities that automatically neuter. If you want to have a pet to rehome and you think that it would be great to have some puppies at some point, they will not countenance that.
Lord Benyon: We have a concern about some aspects of importation of rescue dogs, when there are so many in our own settings here that are in need of homes and that can be properly identified and paired up—the right keeper with the right dog—and an after-service with the charity that will ensure that that dog has a great life.
People’s heartstrings are plucked by pictures of animals from other parts of the world. They pay hundreds of pounds to get that dog here, which has biosecurity risks for us, while there is a dog still in a domestic charity kennel that could have been rehomed for next to nothing. We want to make sure that we are looking at those charities.
Chair: I was talking specifically about our domestic charities, but thank you. Ian, can we come on to your questions, please?
Q363 Ian Byrne: Building on what the Minister and Marc have said, we have heard of a rise in demand for designer pets bred for extreme traits that compromise their health, and we have had some heartbreaking written evidence. The RSPCA says that the health and welfare of these animals is likely to be so poor that they will experience a lifetime of ill health and suffering. What assessments have you made of the scale of this problem and could the 2018 LAIA regulations be strengthened to improve protections?
Lord Benyon: I think we share those concerns. If breeding parents are not screened and selected adequately, animals can be bred with an inherited disease or confirmation traits known as extreme breeding, and this may also lead to serious ongoing health problems. These include the brachycephalic obstruction, obstructive airway syndrome, a long-term condition that can require regular veterinary treatment and/or corrective surgery, and very often a shorter life span for the dog.
A number of health and welfare issues can be associated with extreme breeding. We support the work of the UK Brachycephalic Working Group, whose aim is to protect dogs kept as companion animals from the health and welfare harms of this condition. We are looking through this post-implementation review at other things we can do. Do you want to add some colour to that, Marc, or have I done it all?
Marc Casale: No, that was everything.
Q364 Ian Byrne: Touching on that, I am delighted with what you have just said about agreeing with the premise of the question, but how many successful prosecutions have there been for the individuals who contravene the schedule of the regulations, which prohibits the breeding of dogs where there are reasonable expectations that genetics or health would lead to welfare problems? We have seen it. It is there. It is happening. Have there been any successful prosecutions of anybody doing it knowingly?
Marc Casale: In practice, if you have a licensed breeder who is engaging in activities that are not along the right lines, they are likely to have their licence suspended or revoked rather than a criminal prosecution being pursued. That is what tends to happen in practice, so we do not have figures about prosecutions themselves.
Q365 Ian Byrne: Do you have any figures on licences that have been suspended, the scale of the problem, if you have not had any actual prosecutions?
Marc Casale: We can come back to you on that one. We will double-check because that will be taken forward by local authorities individually. We would have to check with them individually, but let’s come back to you on that one.
Q366 Ian Byrne: Okay. Just to finish on this, is the Department seeking to increase the elements of prosecution? Is that something where we are looking at to tighten up the regulations?
Lord Benyon: Yes, we are working with organisations like The Kennel Club on very clearly defined attempts to breed out the kind of aesthetic and other related issues that have caused so many problems. I will always want to increase the number of prosecutions where we think there is an increased amount of abuse, but what people always seem to be looking at and saying is, “Do we need more legislation to do this?” I think our review of the 2018 regulations will be an opportunity to assess that, but my instinct is probably no. I think we need to ensure that we are doing enforcement properly.
Q367 Ian Byrne: On some of the enforcement elements that you touched on, Sam Gaines, the head of the companion animals team at the RSPCA, said we could look at Scotland as a good example because it is difficult for local authorities and forces to understand the guidance. In Scotland they list the breeds of dogs for which it is unlikely that a licence will be given for the breeding of individuals. We can look at the Scottish model.
Marc Casale: Yes, I think it is part of the five-year review. We are definitely looking at the detail of our current guidance and regulations. We work very closely with colleagues in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland about what they are doing to make sure that we are learning from one another. Absolutely, that is something that will be covered under the umbrella of the five-year review.
Q368 Ian Byrne: That is good to know, Marc. To finish what we have just talked about, what are we doing to educate the public on the welfare issues and the harms of these so-called designer pets? My esteemed colleague, Dr Hudson, is always quite rightly talking about how certain films now encourage the images of pets that have had this done to them. We might come on to that in a later question, but what more could be done from a public perspective to dispel the narrative of what we are seeing—that these are a good thing? I know my own daughter looks at these designer pets—it is only when you get into where we are and the harm that that is done that you see something different—so how do we dispel that narrative?
Lord Benyon: I emphasise what I was saying earlier about the work that we are doing on responsible dog ownership. It is not just about responsible dog ownership. It is about the processes you need to go through before you are an owner, finding out where a dog has come from, how it is bred and whether it will have life limiting—
Ian Byrne: Yes, the impact of that.
Lord Benyon: The impact that has on you. It is one of the most important things in people’s lives, and they are miserable when they see it suffering. We are supporting animals, and we want them to have a good experience, but also people who become very attached to these animals. We want to do that and that is where Government work best with—
Q369 Ian Byrne: Also, if you are going to choose a dog for the first time, you need an understanding of how that dog has been bred, the impact that will have on its life. A lot of people just do not have that information to hand or understand the difficulties they will have.
Lord Benyon: I will give you an example. On social media, people often post pictures of lanterns, night lanterns—whatever they are called—and you and this Committee, we all know that can be a terrible thing because cattle and wild animals, like deer, eat them and suffer terribly.
There is a huge backlash now on Twitter and other platforms when somebody does that or if people go to a wedding and they see all these things going up, very often people comment. It is becoming socially unacceptable, as socially unacceptable as smoking became before it was banned. I think that is the best way to go to make sure that people understand. “Have you seen my new dog?” “Why have you bought that dog? You made a terrible mistake. You have lined the pocket of somebody doing a bad thing.”
Ian Byrne: I agree completely with that, yes.
Lord Benyon: I think that is the most effective way.
Q370 Ian Byrne: How do we get to that? That is what the question is, isn’t it?
Lord Benyon: We get to that by the Government doing what they need to do in a regulatory and legal capacity but understanding that the real power of communication lies with some pretty well-resourced charities and campaign groups.
Ian Byrne: We cannot just leave it to them.
Lord Benyon: No, we cannot just leave it to them.
Q371 Ian Byrne: It has to be a joint effort, surely.
Lord Benyon: It absolutely has to be a joint effort. We put resources into it. The Government can do things like the Petfished campaign. I am not throwing it back to you, but it is a fantastic thing for a constituency MP to do, to run a campaign on some of these things, and Government should support what you are doing in your constituency. I am sure you are already doing it, but there will be some new MPs coming in here and these are the sort of campaigns where an MP can give good local leadership, as can the local authority.
Q372 Chair: I am going to ask a little bit about mutilations. We have some very tough laws in this country on ear cropping. Tail docking can only be carried out in very limited situations and by a veterinary surgeon. It has been two years since DEFRA consulted on prohibiting the importation of dogs with cropped ears and docked tails. When will that consultation be published and is DEFRA committed to closing this loophole?
Lord Benyon: Yes, we are learning more about this problem. Interestingly—I do not want to diminish it—we do not have evidence for the overall number of cropped dogs entering Great Britain, but we do have statistics for cases where a cropped or docked dog has been detained due to being illegally landed. It was 115 in 2021; in 2022 it was 29; and so far, up to the end of last month, 21 this year.
The PDSA animal welfare report is a national survey, and the sample of cat and dog owners suggested that about 3% of dog owners who got their pet from abroad did so because they wanted a dog with cropped ears. That is quite a large number of animals.
Q373 Chair: The breeds, I guess, where it is fashionable, made popular in popular culture and cartoons. Dr Hudson mentioned in the debate yesterday in Westminster Hall that some children’s cartoons are featuring dogs with cropped ears, making them an attractive thing for people to desire.
Lord Benyon: Yes, and I think we have people, particularly at the short straits, who are working with carriers and Border Force to identify issues where there is a potential problem and stopping them, but that will only ever catch a proportion of them, because it is hard to see into the back of a van or a car. We want to ensure that we are doing as much as we can to stop them.
Q374 Chair: We have not yet banned the importation, that is the problem. If you see an animal that has had its ears cropped in another country, it is not illegal to import it yet, is it? That is what I think we are trying to suggest might be a good idea for the Government to take action on.
Marc Casale: We have had the private Member’s Bill ballot recently and very soon we will see what happens with the Bills that Members wish to take forward. In light of that, I think various things will become apparent, including where we are with the response to that consultation.
Q375 Chair: You are optimistic that one of the lucky raffle ticket winners in the private Members’ Bill draw might pick this one up?
Marc Casale: Discussions are ongoing.
Q376 Chair: Excellent. Specifically on the declawing of cats, which is a particularly cruel process, you mentioned the PDSA survey. It reckoned that about 5% of cat owners acquired cats abroad because they wanted a declawed cat. Do you recognise these figures, and would you support a ban also on the importation of declawed cats?
Lord Benyon: Definitely—yes, we would. I have never met a person who has made that choice. It seems an extraordinary thing to do in this day and age, but it exists. It is a problem, and we definitely want to ensure that we stop it happening.
Marc Casale: On the figures, it is harder to detect a declawed cat, but definitely, as the Minister says, we look at all these mutilations in the same abhorrent light.
Chair: That could be part of the same Bill. It could be included in that same private Member’s Bill.
Marc Casale: It would be optimistic.
Q377 Chair: We are told it is fairly easy to purchase the tools for ear cropping or tail docking to do it here in the UK. Is there anything that Government could do to restrict the ownership of these tools, which can be bought online, we are told?
Lord Benyon: There must be a way of doing that without it being a heavy-handed primary legislative route, but there may well be, and it is something we will certainly look at. I have seen in museums some horrendous things for docking horses’ tails or dogs’ ears—they were heated in a fire and the animal must have gone through unbelievable pain. These things must exist in folklore. We want to ensure that they remain in museums and not become available on the internet for bizarre people who want to carry out such abhorrent actions.
Q378 Chair: The dogs that are imported with cropped ears come from countries where ear cropping is also illegal, which indicates those animals may have originated from places like Serbia. Therefore, banning the importation of dogs with cropped ears might also close a loophole in animal health. There are countries where rabies is prevalent or certainly occurs. Is DEFRA aware of any figures for where dogs are originating? We are going to come on to controls at the port later, but is this an animal-health loophole that needs to be closed, which might be part of the picture?
Lord Benyon: There is European legislation. There is the European Convention for the Protection of Pet Animals, which bans surgical operations for the purpose of modifying the appearance of an animal. As of October, this convention has been ratified by 26 countries across Europe, including Romania, Cyprus, Bulgaria, and Greece, some of the locations from which a number of these dogs have appeared. They have had to ratify that to transpose that into their domestic legislation.
However, there is no data available on the source country of mutilated pets currently coming to GB. As we touched on earlier—and I think you are probably coming on to this—there could be a win-win here if we were reducing the risk of importation of dogs that might have conditions, the diseases that we want to keep out of this country, bearing down on mutilations in imports, and perhaps getting some of the people to whom those animals are coming to look at a better regulated, high-integrity, closer-to-home rehoming operation from one of our many reputable charities.
Q379 Chair: I almost had a fall-out with one of my friend’s daughters, who had rescued a dog from Serbia and I had to point out it was probably just a street dog. It may even have been stolen from a family. Unfortunately, people seem to think they are doing the right thing by rehoming some of these dogs, which does not really help the dog, or certainly the rehoming charities here, which have no shortage of dogs, as we found out at Battersea, and at The Dogs Trust in Kent.
Lord Benyon: People need to think of the wider implications of what they are doing. By spending so much money importing that dog, they are leaving another one without a home—one that possibly has had a terrible experience and could benefit from a good family home. I think that when you take people through that conversation they can quickly see it. As I say, people have their heartstrings pulled by the pitiful sight of dogs in miserable circumstances and we want to make sure—there is a consumer rights issue here—that they are getting the full story and that they understand the wider implications of what they are doing.
Q380 Mrs Murray: I will turn now to pet importation incidents and smuggling, Minister. In 2020, Lord Goldsmith told this Committee that the Department does not know how much smuggling is happening and that the data it has is not reliable. Three years on, do you hold better data and what does it show?
Lord Benyon: If something, whether it is a bottle of drink or a packet of fags—or sadly, in this case, an animal—is successfully smuggled, nobody tends to know about it, and so there will always be a data deficit. We can assess trends and where we are seeing an increase in an activity we can change the risk profile of that and put more resources into doing it. We do have some details. I can give you the number of animals detained. We have the figures for animals, dogs and cats, and animals detained, identified as welfare non-compliant, detained under a rabies order, detained for TARP or health attestation other than rabies, pregnant animals that have been seized, commercial disguised as non-commercial, abandoned during detention, which is an issue, and transited through Europe but originating in a non-EU country.
We have identified over 6,190 non-compliances between January and August of this year. This non-compliance is on certificates accompanying commercially imported dogs, cats and ferrets from EU countries; 364 dogs were detained in quarantine following unsatisfactory checks at Dover, under both the commercial and non-commercial pet travel regime, and about 95% of these animals were dogs. This included 19 pregnant dogs, including two basset hound bitches that had 19 puppies between them. We will leave this data with you.
Q381 Mrs Murray: Thank you very much. To continue, in 2021, the Committee welcomed the Government’s proposals to reduce the number of animals an individual can bring into the UK from five to three per individual, with a limit of five per motor vehicle. Why have these measures not been brought in yet?
Lord Benyon: This was a kept animals Bill measure and one that we hope to be bringing in before the end of this Parliament.
Q382 Mrs Murray: Which piece of legislation will it be brought in under?
Marc Casale: We will find out after the—
Mrs Murray: Is it something that the Government can bring in or a private Member’s Bill?
Lord Benyon: To be frank, this will be coming through the private Members’ Bill direction. We are in discussions. We cannot be more specific because we cannot rely on it.
Q383 Chair: If you are not fortunate in attracting a colleague who comes out in the private Member’s Bill ballot, will there be potential for bringing forward a DL or could this be covered by a simple measure in Committee?
Lord Benyon: That is certainly what we are doing with primates as pets. I will look at any way of avoiding primary legislation. We all have the scars on our backs of the Christmas-tree effect of that and how sometimes, in seeking to make the perfect, it finally becomes the enemy of the good. I will look at any secondary legislation route or indeed try to hook it on to another piece of primary legislation, which has been quite successful in the past. Our minds are always open to that. We want to get all our measures—in fact, more than our measures that were in the manifesto—on to the statute book.
Q384 Chair: By the way, for anyone watching and wondering what a Christmas tree Bill is, that is a Bill where lots of people hang things on—
Lord Benyon: Yes, I always explain that you have a piece of legislation with a clear purpose and then in its journey to and from both Houses it gets decorated like a Christmas tree and ends up a monster, falling over.
Q385 Mrs Murray: Thank you, Minister. While the official figures state that around 40,000 cats came into the UK last year, Cats Protection, in its 2022 Our Cats and Their Stats survey, estimates that the figure is closer to 80,000. How do your account for this disparity and what are you doing to improve your data and address the problem?
Marc Casale: We have been working closely with Cats Protection regarding its figures, because there is difference between its estimates and our estimates. It is quite hard to pin down what the most accurate figure is, but it is something that our economists, analysts and statisticians are engaging with it about.
Lord Benyon: We ought to say that the vast majority of those are cats that are well looked after, which are coming back here because, for whatever reason, the family are moving back to the UK, having been posted abroad or whatever, but not in every case. We want to make sure that we are able to identify where we think abuses are happening and that we are dealing with it.
Q386 Mrs Murray: Thank you. What is your estimate of how many puppies are being smuggled into Great Britain each year? Do you have any estimates?
Lord Benyon: As I say, it is an impossible figure to get. However, we can start seeing from the data that we have where we think there is a problem and we can pivot resources into doing it.
Q387 Mrs Murray: Can you give us any idea of the trend? I am not asking for distinct numbers, because I do understand. However, is it increasing or is it reducing?
Marc Casale: On commercial movements—not smuggling figures but actual commercial movements—the trends were increasing quite a lot. With dogs, overall we had about 40,000 in 2019, going to 60,000 in 2020 and then almost 75,000 in 2021. Since then, we have introduced a regime that licenses import and they have fallen back down to about 40,000. Most of the imported commercial dogs come from places like Romania and we have a licensing regime in place, since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, which initially prevented imports from Romania and now it licenses them. That has enhanced compliance with our requirements and at the same time reduced the number of imports from that particular country and others. It is very hard to get figures on the illicit activity by its very nature.
Lord Benyon: I will give you an example. You may have had letters from constituents when we did that. I certainly got a lot as Minister saying, “It is terrible that you have done this. We are in the process of importing this dog from Romania, please let it come.” I investigated and we were getting 5,000 or 6,000 a month coming from mainly Romania. That is a hell of a number. The regime that we brought in dealt with a particular problem and we have now eased it a bit, so we are seeing a return to slightly more sensible figures.
Q388 Mrs Murray: Thank you very much. We have heard concerning reports of cats and dogs being imported when they were 90% through gestation. Do the Government still plan to introduce legislation to ban the import of heavily pregnant dogs? If so, what is the timeframe?
Lord Benyon: The same measure as part of what was in the kept animals Bill, which would ban the importation of an animal in its final trimester of pregnancy.
Q389 Mrs Murray: Finally, have you made an assessment of the potential merits of prohibiting the import of heavily pregnant cats?
Lord Benyon: Yes, that would be in exactly the same measure.
Q390 Ian Byrne: We are talking about pet importation. Transport providers and carriers are responsible for pet importation checks. Is this acceptable and can we be confident they are striking the right balance between speed, checks, profit and identifying non-compliance?
Lord Benyon: Carriers are a very important partner in this. It is entirely justified that they should be working in close association with the Animal and Plant Health Agency and Border Force. Our relationship with Border Force is now closer than ever, with what we are introducing through the targeted operating model for borders and particularly what we are doing on the short straits. We want to make sure that we are identifying risks and using all players to help us in this, and carriers are important.
Q391 Ian Byrne: Undoubtedly, but are you confident in the fact that there is no Government body involved in that? The onus is on the transport providers and carriers. I say this because Tim Reardon, who we took evidence from, said, “There are some things that could be done better. The emphasis of a government body, whatever that looks like, has the benefit of animal welfare and animal health being right at the top priority for how they are operating, as well as ensuring that consistency...and capacity.” Is there a potential call for a different model or are you happy with it as it is now? Are you confident?
Lord Benyon: Some carriers will be better than others. We want to make sure that we are not just thinking of the heavy workload of carriers across areas like the short straits, but are also making sure that other ports around the country have a similar standard of intervention. Is there anything more on working with carriers that I am missing?
Marc Casale: We think that the model as such is the right approach. We do work with carriers to make sure that it is applied as well as possible. However, in general, in how far should the state get involved versus leveraging in some resourcing and input from carriers in the private sector, we have a good balance.
Q392 Ian Byrne: How often is that reviewed?
Marc Casale: It is ongoing. We make sure that there are no major problems and that if there are they come to us. We have seen also in the farming sector that we have farm assurance schemes where it is not always the state that sets regulations and has to monitor and regulate everything. We want to get that joint buy-in and joint responsibility. That also helps with some of the messaging. If a message comes from the Government people might not listen to it or wilfully do the opposite, whereas if some messaging around how to comply and how to do it in the right way comes from the carrier or from other parties, sometimes it works better.
Q393 Ian Byrne: Effectively, that model is always under scrutiny.
Marc Casale: It is ongoing, yes. We constantly monitor how well all the pet import measures and controls we have are working.
Q394 Ian Byrne: We have heard serious concerns about the robustness of a pet importation system, which follows on from what we are talking about, that is based on 100% documentary checks with absolutely no requirement to visualise the animal. Do you share these concerns when we are talking about the review and what are you doing to address them?
Lord Benyon: We do have 100% documentary checks, but we can do physical checks as well, and we do. We will work on a risk-based, intelligence-led system where we can.
Q395 Ian Byrne: Are they piecemeal?
Lord Benyon: I am sure you are not suggesting that we should do 100% physical checks, because it would be impossible. What is enough and what is good? I do not claim that our system is perfect, but it is well resourced and professional. The 100% documentary check does sift out a lot of the wrong kind of transporters. I will be interested to know what your report says on this, because you have been talking to a variety of different people. We are open to any suggestion. I am interested to talk to the person who gave evidence. We think that carriers are very important and we want to make sure that at every level of their employ, rather like at every level of our people, they are tuned into identifying where they think there may be a problem.
Q396 Ian Byrne: That is a good answer. The people who we have spoken to were professionally aware and are dedicated and it would be good to speak to them after you have seen the report.
Lord Benyon: At airports it is 100% physical checks. They are met by an APHA individual. However, it is the ports—
Q397 Ian Byrne: It is the ports, yes, but there is a concern about what is potentially getting through. There is always room for improvements on that aspect, isn’t there?
On penalties, the maximum penalty for illegal animal importation is 12 months. Do you consider this an adequate deterrent, particularly in the scale of what we see regarding criminality and criminal gangs?
Lord Benyon: I do not know what actual penalties have been dished out for illegal importation.
Marc Casale: It comes back to the earlier point that for some of the people involved on a more criminal basis, to be caught by Revenue and Customs measures and to have significant financial penalties is more of a deterrent. It is around which enforcement measures have the best impact.
Q398 Ian Byrne: Is that linked up? Are we seeing that between different Departments, different agencies?
Marc Casale: Yes, we do work with the police and with Revenue and Customs on puppy smuggling.
Q399 Dr Hudson: I want to turn to biosecurity. We touched on this a little earlier in the session. We did an inquiry a couple of years ago on movement of animals across borders, where we looked at some of these issues. Some of these issues hopefully will be addressed in the upcoming legislative Session with some of the Bills coming forward.
However, first I want to talk about Brucella canis. There has been an increase in cases from 14 in 2020 to 75 in 2022. This is a disease of dogs, but it is also a zoonotic disease that can go to people and there have been incidences of it being transferred to people in this country as well. In answer to Mrs Murray’s question about heavily pregnant animals coming in, one of the real risks is heavily pregnant dogs coming in and whelping in this country. Potentially when people are exposed to birthing fluids they can be affected. We have seen the increased number of cases and a potential spread to people. Are we doing enough to help our animal health in this country and our public health with our biosecurity? What can we do to mitigate this?
Lord Benyon: We recommend prospective owners make sure that any dog imported from an area where Brucella canis is present is tested before arrival. Our future policy is guided by risk assessment. You are absolutely right that as of July this year two laboratory-confirmed cases of Brucella canis human infection have been identified in the UK. Risk assessment was undertaken and published in August this year and the probability generally across the UK is considered low to very low.
I was very upset, having been given assurances by the person trying to import dogs during the Afghan Kabul evacuation that they were all healthy, that we found that some of them had Brucella canis. There was even a case of leishmaniasis. We take this very seriously and APHA vets at borders and visiting these dogs are extremely aware of this disease. We are concerned about the disease risk of imported dogs generally and we are taking measures to improve compliance and reduce risk. Highlighting it to breeders and vets to encourage testing is very important.
We are seeing an increased number of suspect canine cases of Brucella canis. These have been reported by private vets and APHA laboratories. As awareness across the UK vets has increased, imported dogs have been tested while clinically well, in part due to protocols put in place by some vet practices and companies for health and safety reasons. We are keen to make sure that this does not get here. We have been rabies free for 100 years and we want to make sure that we continue with that. There are other pathogens that worry us, but Brucella canis is a very important one.
Q400 Dr Hudson: You are recommending pre-importation health checks. Could we go stronger than that and insist on having pre-importation health checks on dogs coming, certainly pregnant dogs at least? Is there something that we can do, rather than just recommending it, to go stronger?
Marc Casale: We would need to consider exactly what kinds of checks and measures would be taken by whom and where, whether they are mandatory or recommended and for which cases. In light of the recent risk review that we are considering at the moment, definitely. We want to have a targeted but also a balanced and proportionate approach.
Q401 Dr Hudson: I understand that. Equally so for another species, there has been a concern about cats in Cyprus with a type of coronavirus causing feline infectious peritonitis. What are the Government doing? Is that on your radar in trying to stop that coming in?
Marc Casale: That is a recent phenomenon that has come our way and we are actively looking at that. There has been quite a lot of intense consideration in the past week or so.
Q402 Dr Hudson: So the Government are moving in a live monitoring situation, potentially restricting the movement or import of animals from areas where there are diseases that we currently have, but also diseases that are exotic in this country. Are the Government prepared to put in import restrictions to protect the UK population of people and animals?
Lord Benyon: We have ramped up the whole biosecurity noise, as well as real things that we are doing, in recent years. We have exercised for outbreaks of diseases that would cost this country billions if they got here. It is an opportunity to say how impressed I am with the Animal and Plant Health Agency. It has tackled major issues, not least a huge gap in the number of vets, which it seems to have filled to a large proportion—but not enough—and the ability to understand diseases like this. It maps the genomics of it and can turn things around very quickly. That leads to an active response time when a problem occurs. I am usually talking about something like bluetongue, but in pets it would be catastrophic if some of these diseases got here. The ability to contain them is very important to us.
Q403 Dr Hudson: Thank you. We have a question on APHA coming up. I echo your thanks to APHA for keeping us safe from these diseases coming in, whether they are infectious disease outbreaks of things like avian influenza or, heaven forbid, things like foot and mouth or African swine fever, but also on an individual basis of pets moving in.
Now that we have left the European Union, we are able to strengthen our borders for biosecurity. The European Union stopped the mandatory treatment for things like ticks and tapeworm coming in. We have the capability now, as an independent sovereign state, to do that. There was a case in the last couple of years of a dog in Harlow in Essex that contracted babesiosis, a tick-borne disease. That dog had never been out of the country, so it had contracted the disease from a tick that had probably been brought in on another dog, dropped and then the dog picks it up. We can use that Brexit dividend, as the British Veterinary Association, the Dogs Trust and many groups are calling for, to reinstitute mandatory tick treatment and tapeworm measures to protect the population of animals in this country. That is very simple for the Government to do. Is it something that we can do and will do?
Lord Benyon: We are measuring tick burdens across the country and there is an increase, and will continue to be an increase, with changes to climate and large aeras being covered by species like bracken where ticks thrive and people walk their dogs. They spread them around and the problem continues. Very often these have human health implications, not just Lyme disease but other incredibly unpleasant diseases that come from them.
Keeping our borders secure is important, but is only part of the issue. It is important that we exercise across agencies when these outbreaks occur and we learn from cases, such as the one that you identified, to try to trace it back to how it got here. It is almost impossible to do, but you can sometimes do it.
Q404 Dr Hudson: If you reinstituted the tick treatment and/or the tapeworm treatment, it would protect that. That could be done, reversing what the European Union did a few years ago. The UK could strengthen measures.
Lord Benyon: We have specifically covered, in pet travel legislation, a tapeworm called Echinococcus multilocularis—I will call it EM—which has a serious impact on public health. Strict animal health requirements for rabies apply to non-commercial and commercial movements of dogs and cats, and making sure that the tapeworm EM is listed in that way is vital.
Q405 Dr Hudson: These were discussed during the kept animals Bill, at the Committee stage. With these Bills coming forward, simple recommendations and clauses being added could sort this. You mentioned rabies. One of the things that people are calling for is extending the waiting time post-rabies vaccination to 12 weeks. That will help us in mitigating the risk of rabies coming in, as will increasing the age of animals that can be imported. These things can be addressed. Can you give us the assurances that they will be?
Lord Benyon: We have to stay flexible on this and work with latest scientific advice and best risk assessments. APHA is one of the partners, one of the agencies, that is doing this. The monthly biosecurity meeting that I chair specifically goes into detail on an emerging risk basis. Also there are horizon scans that look to see what is happening in other parts of the world that might come here. As you rightly say, it is not just our nearest neighbours in Europe. We can see patterns of disease movement, like African swine fever and Xylella in trees and various other things. However, we live in a globalised economy and people are bringing stuff here, and animals and plants here, and we have to be ahead of the game.
Q406 Dr Hudson: Before I hand back—I know that you will get on to APHA—you mentioned bringing stuff back. With the target border operating model there is a fear that there could be a dispensation for people to bring up to 2 kg of meat products or animal products with them. Is that on your radar to say that that loophole could put us at risk from things like African swine fever?
Lord Benyon: We have dropped it to an amount that relates to personal use only, recognising that a disease like African swine fever can come in on a pork chop. We want to make sure that people are aware of this. We will have much more visual campaigns. However, the target operating model operates under a prenotification system. What is vital as well is the activity in the port. It is not just Dover but elsewhere as well.
We may be getting off the case, but there is an extraordinary cultural import at the moment of home-slaughtered sheep and pigs from certain parts of Europe that are driven across here in a van and attempted to be smuggled through. We are absolutely on to this. This is high, high risk to our disease security here, to our cybersecurity. We are doing everything that we can to clamp down on it.
Q407 Dr Hudson: We discussed this at the Committee a couple of weeks ago. Even for personal use, once you have finished with it and someone chucks it out of the car window or it is fed to a pig or gets into wild boar or whatever, it has gone. That is the issue. Even small amounts for personal use could put our country at risk.
Lord Benyon: Every country. Even countries that have a biosecurity system that I would love to have here, like Australia or New Zealand, allow a certain amount of prepackaged—as long as you declare it. It is impossible to stop someone bringing a ham sandwich in with them. However, greater awareness and reducing the amount to what is as near to safe as you possibly can is very important.
Chair: Thank you very much indeed. I had to remove a tick last year, but that was a combination of deer and bracken. We have far too many deer in certain parts of the country.
Q408 Cat Smith: I have a few questions on APHA. The APHA chief executive recently told us, “We are on the precipice now of the need for investment into that Weybridge site”. Do you agree with that assessment and are the Government committed to providing the funding for the essential improvements?
Lord Benyon: Absolutely. When any new Minister arrives at DEFRA, the first group of civil servants to come to see them is to talk about SCAH, which is science capability in animal health. The reason is that it is such an eye-watering amount of money that every Minister says, “Do we really need to do this?” particularly if they are in the run-up to a comprehensive spending review. What I would say to any future Minister, any of you and anyone else, is to go down to Weybridge and look at it. You have, I know, and I am grateful that you did, because you can keep the importance of this going in Parliament.
What you see there is amazing people doing amazing things, but we want them to have equally amazing facilities to do it in. We want them to have the high-containment units that they need and to have a work environment that respects them for their skills and for what they do for this country. I think that it has been moved to the right on budget spreadsheets for too many decades and we are determined to grasp it. We have allocated £198 million to deliver tranche 1 through to the end of 2024-25. That budget is being spent on finalising the delivery, contracting and mobilising the delivery of resources and getting ahead with enabling works to prepare the site for the main construction stage.
The next stage of SCAH will be defined, based on a further programme business case next year. At that point, a decision will be made over the balance of funding that will settle the scope and overall funding for the next spending review to progress towards the main construction stage starting in 2027. The current estimate is that the new science hub will be complete, licensed and commissioned by 2033-34. I urge us all to try to keep future Governments’ feet to the fire on this. It is really important.
Q409 Cat Smith: Thank you. You spoke in your answer about the amazing people working there. My question is about whether or not that is an adequate number of people. On an average day in 2023, 12 Animal and Plant Health Agency staff are based at the Port of Dover. If we assume that that is three shifts of four people, that leaves weekends, bank holidays and nights covered with on-call duty team. Are you comfortable with that level of staffing and do you think that smugglers perhaps are aware of the weaknesses in staffing levels and when a good time to sneak through would be?
Lord Benyon: I would always like more. We are working so well with Border Force and carriers and various other agencies that we are able to operate particularly on a risk-based model. We can surge those numbers if we detect, for example, that people think that the weekend is when they can try to get something through, and we have done. We have certainly exercised on that elsewhere as well. The new operating BCP at Sevington will increase the ability to do speedy but thorough checks. There is a proper equine unit, for example, and a variety of different other facilities there that can help. It is very important that we support them with getting turnaround of scientific data where we can. That is why the Weybridge site is important.
Q410 Cat Smith: You have touched on different agencies working together. One of the agencies that has not been mentioned so far is local councils. We have heard already that the financial situation faced by many local councils negatively impacts their ability to be able to undertake prosecutions, investigations and enforcements. Do you agree with that assessment?
Lord Benyon: Yes, and I have done some work on this with the target operating model, which required asymmetric negotiation internally in government, with devolved Governments, with local authorities that are the main arbiter of delivery mechanism here and, importantly, with stakeholders, people who are trading and bringing food into this country that we all need, and other services.
Local authorities are very important. For example, a local authority can share port staff if two ports are close enough together. However, what was made very apparent to me by the Welsh Government was that having the same port staff operating across two ports with a three-hour drive is difficult. Therefore, they have to be resourced to do that. We have to make sure that ports, even small ones, are still viable, even if they have one or two trips a week, unlike a port like Dover, which has a huge number 24/7. I am impressed by the skills of local authority officials, who know what they are looking for, know their way around the legislation and are doing a good job, but we will continue to work with them to make sure that they have the resources that they need.
Q411 Cat Smith: What about, say, local authority dog wardens? Do they have the capacity that they need to be able to use enforcement measures?
Lord Benyon: I remember being shouted at when I was an MP by somebody who said that there was a stray dog, and it was all because of Tory cuts that there were no dog wardens. I said that we have not had a dog warden in west Berkshire since about 1970. There was an arrangement with the Dogs Trust based in west Berkshire. It provided what most people refer to as a dog warden service, where they worked with the police and picked up a stray or dangerous dog and it was dealt with through a partner like the Dogs Trust. In many other areas, it is the RSPCA. Some local authorities do have dog wardens and I know they do in London boroughs, for example, and they do a great job. However, many areas like mine have not had a dog warden for decades.
Q412 Cat Smith: Are you comfortable with that, Minister?
Lord Benyon: It does not worry me whether they are employed by a charity and contracted to a local authority or whether they are a direct employee. I just want to make sure that they are doing what is needed to keep animals and people safe.
Q413 Cat Smith: Is there an adequate number in local authorities across England?
Lord Benyon: I am not sure. I do not have any data on how many local authority-employed dog wardens there are and how many, like my local authority, contract that service.
Marc Casale: We have not been specifically approached about this. Also, when we think about the Dover staffing and resourcing requirement, we like to think about the whole system—upstream what requirement should be placed on people before they leave their country to come here. We mentioned the licensing scheme for dogs coming from Romania. What checks can we require upstream, including by vets in those countries? Then what do we have at the border? At Dover we also have the Dogs Trust, which plays an important role in helping to deal with illegal imports. After that we have the post-import checks, which can be at the point of destination. We need to think about the whole system, where it is best to place the resources and how we have a risk-based approach that means that we get best value from those resources.
Cat Smith: I am conscious that I may stray into the territory from dog wardens to XL Bullies, and I will hand back to the Chair.
Q414 Mrs Murray: To pick up on your council area employing the Dogs Trust and my council area in Cornwall employing dog wardens, are there any checks to make sure that the services operate in a consistent way?
Lord Benyon: That is a very good question. There are certain parameters in which local authorities are mandated to deliver this kind of service. I believe in local democracy. If they are not doing that, they should be held to account. Do we have any regulatory role over the delivery of such services?
Marc Casale: We have the responsible dog ownership taskforce group that was established about 18 months ago, which includes local authorities, the police and animal welfare groups. That includes considering how local authorities can use their resources to most effect, and the powers that they have, including their preventive powers and their community order powers. That is mainly for responsible dog ownership, but also dog wardens and stray dogs. That is one aspect of being a responsible owner, if you let your dog stray. As we have seen with livestock worrying, 80%-odd of the attacks come when people let their dogs escape from their property. The owner is nowhere to be found if the dog has chased the livestock or scared them. We have that wider regime that has been doing some good work.
Q415 Mrs Murray: The other reason I ask is that it was one of the criticisms with primates, where local authorities perhaps did not have people who were qualified to assess primates kept at home. That was behind the question that I asked.
Lord Benyon: We will be publishing our statutory instrument on this very soon and I will be interested to know what you think about it. We are trying to say that this is the basic minimum-sized space that you should require for a primate and these are the features that should be within it. If you cannot provide that within your house, it is illegal for you to do it. That is why there are no dolphinariums in this country, because we created rules that made it impossible for them to exist. The idea of someone keeping primates in a small house or flat is, of course, impossible to envisage after we have done this statutory instrument.
Mrs Murray: Thank you, Minister. I will be interested in that, having Wild Futures in my constituency where most of the primates that are seized end up.
Chair: On the issue of dog wardens, if anyone missed it, in one of our earlier evidence sessions we had an inspirational lady from Worcestershire working across a number of local authorities in the west midlands. Her enthusiasm shone through and the limitations placed on her, particularly the cost of housing dogs if they are confiscated. It was an excellent piece of evidence, and I would certainly recommend anyone watching to scroll back and have a look at that.
Q416 Dr Hudson: We are coming on to the imminent American XL Bully ban, Minister and Marc. Our Committee has looked at this very closely with our emergency session and there was the debate in Westminster Hall yesterday. I was on a panel at the London Vet Show a couple of weeks ago speaking about this. You will be aware that there is a lot of high emotion on both sides of this debate. With the ban coming in there has been some disquiet in the veterinary sector and the animal health sector about some of the implications of how the ban will work. I have been very much trying to encourage those sectors and Government to stay around the table in this iterative process to make things work moving forward. There are questions about veterinary capacity and the implications for neutering and euthanasia. In your discussions, are you confident that you are still staying around the table to address some of the issues that are being flagged, almost daily, from those sectors?
Lord Benyon: Yes, and I am grateful, particularly to the veterinary profession but others—local authorities and the police—that have been part of our working group. The most important thing was to identify the breed, which has been quite a technical process. It is now posted on the gov.uk website and it does give people an indication as to whether or not they have a dog that falls within the legislation. Marc might be able to give more detail about it, because he has been at these meetings with different stakeholder groups and how we want them to continue.
Marc Casale: We are hugely grateful to all of the groups for engaging with us. We know that there are strong feelings on both sides of the argument. Some groups that have stated that their position is that they firmly oppose what we are doing, but will keep working with us to help us to make sure that we minimise any unintended consequences, which is hugely appreciated. We meet at least weekly with all key groups, and we separately meet on an ad hoc basis to look at specific issues such as neutering and the like.
We had a group that came up with the specification of an XL Bully dog. That included working very closely with the police as well, who will be applying it in practice. We have a description and some photos, which should help people to identify whether they have a dog that meets the requirements.
Dr Hudson: We will come on to identifying them in the Chair’s subsequent question.
Marc Casale: On the neutering side of it, there are questions around vet capacity and when is the right time to neuter an XL Bully. The legislation has different timings so that neutering is not expected when the dog is too young, which is quite important. Definitely it is something that we have done as inclusively as we possibly could, including with the devolved Administrations.
Q417 Dr Hudson: Can I push you on the identification—the Chair is going to follow up on it—so that other dogs are not inadvertently caught up in this? In identifying the type of dog, the capacity to do that at a local authority level and with dog legislation officers, because asking vets to do it is perhaps not the way forward, owners will have to come forward and identify their dogs. Are you confident that you have that support with dog legislation officers being trained to be able to facilitate enabling the public to identify their dogs?
Marc Casale: Absolutely. We are working very closely with the police on their capacity requirements and on training their dog legislation officers on how to identify an XL Bully. We are working with them and with the Home Office on their resourcing and providing them with extra resourcing to enable this to happen. The definition was drawn up very closely with the police to ensure that it was workable in practice.
Lord Benyon: There will be dogs with some of the characteristics of an XL Bully breed, but we hope that we have defined it to a degree where the margin of error will be small. It is a serious attempt at identifying a new breed.
Q418 Dr Hudson: Can I press you on the neutering point? If people come forward and their dog is classified as an XL Bully, that will be an exempted dog and they will be able to keep the dog so long as it is neutered, insured, kept on a lead in public and muzzled and so on. If the animal is less than a year old on 31 January 2024, it must be neutered by the end of December 2024. If it is older than one year old on 31 January 2024, it must be neutered by 30 June 2024.
Last week, the British Veterinary Association wrote to the Chief Veterinary Officer, Christine Middlemiss, with what I believe is a very sensible solution, that if these dogs are kept on a lead and muzzled, that is trying to mitigate harms to people and other animals. We ultimately do not want these dogs to be breeding. After December this year, it will be illegal to breed from these dogs. These large-breed dogs, if you neuter them too young, potentially under 18 months, it may increase their risk at a later date in their life of developing diseases such as developmental orthopaedic diseases or other medical conditions, cancers and so on. Therefore, a reasonable suggestion coming forward is if you could extend the deadline for dogs that are under seven months of age on 31 January 2024 to the end of June 2025. All that is doing is adding an extra six months, but if these dogs are on a lead and muzzled they are deemed safe.
Would the Government look at that? If you move to meet a very sensible and scientifically and clinically indicated suggestion, you will help the hearts and minds of the veterinary profession. I know from personal experience, having spoken to many vets, that they are struggling with this. There are a number of vets who, like me, support the ban, but there are a significant number who are against it. I firmly believe that if you work with them and adopt sensible recommendations that are not going to change the safety of the implementation of the ban, you will have more success with that. Can you take that on board?
Lord Benyon: It is certainly something that I will discuss with Christine Middlemiss. Were you aware of this?
Marc Casale: It was a relatively recent letter.
Dr Hudson: It was a letter last week to Christine Middlemiss.
Marc Casale: Yes, so it is under consideration.
Lord Benyon: We need to take this forward. If a small change can be made that carries more people in the profession with us, I am very happy to look at it. There may be other factors that have created the particular dates that we have, but I want to make sure that this is as smart a piece of legislation as we can deliver.
Q419 Dr Hudson: Thank you. It is reassuring that you will consider that. The other concern, and something that I keep saying to people, is that if these dogs are deemed safe people can keep them. They will be licensed and they will be able to keep them under certain conditions. That is why I said in the debate yesterday that we need to be very careful not to be using the language of cull or kill and things like that. However, something that will happen from this is that the dogs that are not deemed safe and are not able to be kept, ultimately a number of them will be euthanised moving forward. That has created a lot of disquiet in the veterinary profession but also in the animal welfare charity sector as well about capacity and what that means for the mental health of the staff involved with that. Again, can I encourage you to keep those organisations around the table and move a little with them? The ban is coming and we need to make it work, but we need to make sure that people on the frontline impacted by this are supported through this as well.
Lord Benyon: I will certainly keep them in mind and I will keep discussing with them, as I will the heart-rending stories of people who have been severely injured and families of people who have been killed. This is an issue that has caused absolute outrage among large numbers of the population. No form of legislation will be perfect. Most of these animals are still going to be around, but the number of them that exist in the community means that the Government have to act. I think that it is a real shame that it is not happening right across the UK. However, I want to make sure that we are working with people, understanding that it is not the dog’s fault that it has this congenital condition that can sometimes, in some cases, change its character in a nanosecond and it can do horrendous things. We have to be humane and we have to work with the keepers of these animals to understand that we are just trying to keep our communities safe. There is a perfectly good middle path, where they will keep the dog alive, subject to certain conditions.
Q420 Dr Hudson: Thank you, Minister. As you quite rightly say, we need to bear in mind public safety and the safety of other animals. Some people say that we should be judging the animals on the deed not the breed, but as far as I and many people are concerned, once that deed is committed it is too late. A child or adult is maimed, if not worse, so we have to try to find, as you say, that middle ground to keep people and animals safe. What I am urging is to keep the stakeholders around the table so that we can make this ban work compassionately, sensitively and practically.
Marc Casale: Some key groups have already been helping with messaging to get to different audiences and with guidance on how to use a muzzle in the right way and how to train your dog to use a muzzle. That has been very supportive.
Q421 Chair: Certainly when we considered this measure as a Committee, you had the unanimous cross-party support of this Committee in what you are bringing forward. Some of the stories that we have heard about people being attacked, and dog-on-dog attacks, much of which is not reported, mean that these measures needed to be brought forward.
One question was raised in the debate yesterday that I do not think that Minister Spencer addressed comprehensively. It was the bit about defining the breed. You have said that you have laid out parameters stating that the dog meets a substantial number of various physical characteristics to be in scope. There may be some case law where people challenge some of these assessments. When you say a substantial adherence to the definition, are we talking about 50%, 90%? How are we going to measure whether this is an XL Bully if people challenge it?
Marc Casale: That term is currently used, for example, for the application of the Government specification for a Pitbull Terrier. There is not a particular figure attached to what “substantial” means. It provides the police with some flexibility. Definitely with an XL Bully, one absolute requirement is the minimum height, which is specified in the definition. If that minimum height is not met, the dog is not an XL Bully, irrespective of whether everything else in the definition is met. You have things called pocket bullies, which are the same but just a bit smaller. They look the same, but they are smaller. They are not covered by it. For the rest of it, it has never been specified whether “substantial” means 50% or 90%. In practice it is a significant majority. Trained dog legislation officers know what they are looking for. They have told us that they think that it will be a lot simpler to identify an XL Bully than a Pitbull Terrier, for example.
Q422 Chair: When I was looking on the internet at dogs for sale, or offered free to a good home in many cases, they were described as XL Bullies, the photographs looked as we would expect an XL Bully to look and in many cases they showed photographs of the parents of the dogs and in some cases the grandparents as well. While there may be people challenging some of these definitions, most people out there know what an XL Bully is. When the Committee was at Battersea, they had some XL Bully pups and they had no compunction in describing these almost newborn pups as XL Bullies. In most people’s minds, I suspect that they will know what one is, but you will, I guess, receive some challenges.
There may also be people who are scared that their dog might fall within the definition and they do not want to become a criminal by not registering it, or other people who are confident that their dog does not and then subsequently the police intervene and say that it is. Are we clear that we will be able to reassure people who have dogs that do not meet the definition that they will not fall foul of the law, particularly looking at the old-time bulldogs, which was raised with me by a colleague earlier?
Marc Casale: If you have a type of dog that is known by another name because it is a different breed, that is not an XL Bully. We have had people writing to us that they have a Rottweiler that meets many of the specifications, is it an XL Bully. The answer is no, it is a Rottweiler, as you have told us. If it is known to be a different kind of breed, it is not an XL Bully. It is as simple as that.
Q423 Chair: Do you think that there are people who might think that they do not want to fall foul of the law so they will register it anyway to be on the safe side? is that possibly going to happen?
Marc Casale: Normally you would type one of these dogs when they are old enough, which might be when they are 18 months old. If somebody had a younger dog or a puppy and they were not entirely sure, such as those puppies that you saw at Battersea, they could choose to get a certificate of exemption and, in effect, to decide that they are an XL Bully. In due course if they had doubts that it was an XL Bully because it grew up and did not necessarily accord too closely with the photos and the definition, we are exploring what the mechanism would be for them to deregister.
Q424 Chair: That is something that we had not been aware of before. That might reassure some people who might want to be on the safe side, but do not want to have to muzzle a dog and restrict its freedom in a way that if it was a Bully they might have to.
Marc Casale: Yes. We have encouraged people to adopt a cautious approach, to apply for a certificate of exemption at the outset, by adopting that approach. In due course, we will have to consider what the arrangements are if someone’s dog clearly is not an XL Bully once it grows up. I may have seen the same puppies that you saw, and it was not evident to me that they were going to be XL Bullies.
Q425 Chair: That is quite reassuring for people who have raised concerns. Who would make the assessment that the dog was not an XL Bully?
Marc Casale: The owner.
Q426 Chair: The owner themselves could decide to deregister?
Marc Casale: No, we have to further clarify how that aspect of the process would work, but initially it is for the owner to decide whether their dog is an XL Bully or not.
Q427 Chair: Your advice would be to err on the safe side and register and when the dog is fully grown possibly deregister. I am asking would it be just the owner’s decision or would a vet be able to help?
Dr Hudson: The British Veterinary Association has said that it does not want vets to be the people adjudicating. It would be dog legislation officers. Do you have the capacity to help owners?
Marc Casale: That is what we are working on at the moment with the police and their capacity, and the capability and the training. We are looking 18 months ahead, so that aspect of the process is still being ironed out.
Chair: That is very helpful for the people who have contacted us.
Q428 Dr Hudson: It might be more urgent, because it will perhaps be ironed out as those animals get older, but in the next few weeks people will have to be clear whether they have a Bully or not. One of the things that the veterinary sector has been pushing for is will the owners have the support to identify whether they have one of these dogs, with the dog legislation officers?
Lord Benyon: Dog liaison officers are proceeding with training right across police authority areas. These are starting to answer some of these questions. Ultimately, the responsibility rests with the owner. If the owner does not comply, they will be contravening the law.
Q429 Chair: Minister, you have made it clear that this is not a mass cull of XL Bullies and that there is a procedure that people can use. However, there is a £200 compensation claim available for people who euthanise their XL Bullies. Given that the cost of registering would be the cost of the neutering, the public liability insurance and the £92.40 fee for a certificate of exemption, is there a risk that you are creating an incentive for euthanasia of these dogs with this compensation package?
Lord Benyon: I really hope not. I know that this is a difficult time for owners of these dogs, and they will be looking to see the breed guidelines and whether their dogs comply and what it will cost. I do not think so. That is not our evidence. Our evidence is that most owners will want to keep their dog alive at all costs, will want to stay within the law and will comply. That has been the experience of the other four breeds that are on the dangerous dogs register. It is an attempt to be as near to perfect as we can be, but we are not going to sit in front of you and try to pretend that this will be the end of this problem. There will be people who will sit outside the law or there will be other breeds that will emerge and we could be looking at amending this in the future. We want to make that for this breed and the particular issues that have been caused because of it that we are doing all that we can to prevent any more attacks.
Q430 Chair: Do you think that Scotland is playing a very dangerous political game in this area, given that if there is an attack next year from a dog that is out in public without a muzzle, that could be as a direct result of a political decision made at Holyrood?
Lord Benyon: I do not know what reason it had for not following what Wales is doing, what we are doing here and in Northern Ireland. It must be held to account for decisions that are devolved and it is for it to take. However, it would be a great help for all of the people involved—the expertise of the police, which will be shared across different police authorities, the experience of local authorities, the experience of the veterinary profession—if there was a UK-wide determination to tackle this problem. I am not going to presume that there is some political motive for just wanting to be different. We work very well with the devolved authorities on many of these issues, and secondary legislation is something that we are constantly trying to get agreement on, and usually do across things like UKIM and other areas. It is a matter of huge regret that Scotland has decided not to go down this route.
Q431 Chair: If an English XL Bully owner who has registered their dog quite correctly decides to take it for a walk in Scotland, will they still be required to muzzle their dog and keep it on a lead in public areas?
Lord Benyon: That is a very good question. I do not think that they will.
Marc Casale: Not in Scotland.
Lord Benyon: No, they would not. They could take a dog from England and walk it in Scotland and it would not be under this legislation. Therefore, the answer is that they would not have to muzzle it.
Q432 Chair: What about the other way round, where a dog that does not need to be registered in Scotland is brought to England? Would that dog be allowed to run free in England or would that dog not be allowed to be brought into the English jurisdiction?
Lord Benyon: If they brought it to England for whatever reason, it would have to comply. It would have to be registered, neutered and subject to all the other measures to fulfil the exemption. That is what currently exists.
Q433 Chair: If they want to come on holiday to north Yorkshire, for example, and bring their XL Bully with them, they will not be able to do that? They will have to leave the dog in kennels in Scotland, in effect.
Lord Benyon: Yes.
Q434 Ian Byrne: Minister, you touched on the Christmas-tree effect of amending legislation so much that it fails. I have had many constituents raise the subject of the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991. Indeed, many organisations we spoke to and took evidence from outlined how defective a piece of legislation it is. The Association of Dogs and Cats Homes said that it was a byword for poor legislation and done in haste, and evidence points to this. Dog bites alone went up 70% in Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in my constituency, and 10,000 people needed hospital treatment nationally. Can you reassure us that by bolting on XL Bully legislation to this flawed framework it will not be counterproductive to improving public safety and that we will not get the Christmas-tree effect that you spoke about before?
Lord Benyon: This is a genuine attempt to tackle a problem that has emerged since the Dangerous Dogs Act. There were no XL Bullies until a relatively few years ago. Is this going to be the end of it? I suspect not, because there are people breeding dogs in all parts of the world. One of the dogs on the dangerous dogs register is the Dogo Argentino. That was obviously bred in another part of the world and identified as being a problem here. We want to make sure that we are fleet of foot, if we start seeing other attacks from other species of dogs, that we can do this. I cannot sit in front of you and say that this will resolve the problem. It is a fact that the four breeds that are on there, am I right, there has not been—
Marc Casale: No dog on the list—Pitbull Terriers, Dogo Argentino, Fila Brasileiro and the Japanese Tosa—has been involved in any fatality or any attack.
Lord Benyon: That is a tempting-providence thing to say.
Q435 Ian Byrne: You think that this is the best way to cover the legislation. Is there any way it could have been made more effective? We know that it is a flawed piece of legislation.
Marc Casale: You can go through all Acts and have a long list of improvements that we could make, including this one. There is a question mark around what you would put in its place that was any better and how long it would take to do that and whether fundamentally it would still be a regime that seeks to place restrictions on the riskiest dogs that generate the highest risks for public safety.
Lord Benyon: I entirely understand where your constituents are coming from, but I would throw it back to them and ask: what do we do? All of us have a responsibility to keep people safe. If this legislation is wrong, what is the alternative? What exists out there to prevent some of these awful experiences from happening? We are happy to look around the world. We are not exclusive. We have more dogs per head of population, second only to Ukraine, or is Ukraine second to us? We have a very high number of dogs per people here, some of them living in extremely close proximity to large families and dense populations. We are learning every day, every year, from experts about this but we do not have the final answer. We think that this is the best way and it is the responsible action to take.
Ian Byrne: Good answer, thanks.
Chair: Thank you very much, Minister, for your evidence today, and Mr Casale, for coming along and helping where necessary, which was not very often. Thank you very much indeed.