Seòmar agus comataidhean

I will go into more detail when I sum up, but the UK has come quite a distance on this. It has been suggested that, if there is a portal for all the individual microchipping companies to allow somebody to access that information, it should be only for the police and animal welfare agencies, not for general public consumption.

I think we are going down a rabbit hole. I am by no means saying that a piece of paper will prevent illegal puppy breeding, but what it will do is ensure that the public will prevent that. That is the whole thrust of the idea. I use the term “policing by the public”. If members of the public read the code before getting a puppy, and if they check that puppy and see it with its mother, they are policing that. The piece of paper will only say that they have read the code and understand it, but it will make them take time. What will make an impact is the fact that the public are doing that, because that is who we must rely on. Trying to stop supply when the legislation is beyond us has not been working.

Apart from the fact that I consider the existing code to be unwieldy and that it is directed at people who already have a dog, my concern is that I do not think that many people read it. I would be interested to know whether the Government has any data on how many people have read that code. In contrast, my code is short and, under the bill, before getting a dog, a person would have to sign a certificate to say that they had read it, as would the person who was transferring the dog.

Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. As one of the culprits, I apologise.

I welcome today’s debate and the progress that it represents. To members who came into Parliament just this session, I say that I have been working with a wide range of organisations on the policy in the Welfare of Dogs (Scotland) Bill for the past seven years—it seems longer. I genuinely welcome the valuable work of the lead committee and the constructive series of recommendations that it has produced as a result of its scrutiny of the bill. It gave me food for thought and did its job well.

I will focus on a number of those recommendations later but, first, I want to talk about why the bill is needed. Many moons ago, there was a song called “(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window?” which went:

“How much is that doggie in the window?
The one with the waggly tail ...
I do hope that doggie's for sale”—

I will not sing it. The sale of puppies in pet shop windows has long been banned—but has it? Windows have changed to Microsoft Windows and the internet, and the understandable impulse to acquire a puppy or young dog has remained—indeed, if anything, the pandemic increased that demand, for reasons that, quite frankly, I fully understand.

My second preliminary point is that the proposed legislation is not to punish or blame but to educate. We would agree that there is a surge in the level of dog ownership across Scotland combined with a lack of an informed approach from the public to buying a dog. With criminals always alert to demand and profitable opportunities, there has been a rise in unscrupulous breeding through, for example, puppy factory farming, where puppies and breeding bitches are kept in appalling conditions—unsocialised and often very sick—then marketed as expensive, desirable commodities.

Purchasers who are unaware of the reality behind the cute online images pay thousands, and the conveyor belt of misery continues. Purchasers might even have bought a puppy to “save” it—they might save that puppy but not the next or the next. Despite worthy endeavours by the Government and animal welfare agencies, illegal breeding and heart-over-head, casual purchases from unscrupulous suppliers continue. I consider that the issue might best be attacked by addressing demand.

Some six years or more ago, I had a similar bill ready for the off when the pandemic put everything on hold for two years. The pandemic only emphasised to me the need for my bill.

Referencing the illegal trade, extracts of evidence from key stakeholders who support my bill demonstrate the scale of the issue. The Scottish Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals estimates that the illegal puppy trade is worth £13 million. Animal Trust has highlighted the huge rise in problems that have arisen from people buying dogs that they cannot properly look after, including the fact that abandonment rates continue to rise, with 96 per cent of rehoming centres reporting an increase in behavioural issues.

Battersea Dogs and Cats Home found that only 5 to 10 per cent of puppies across the United Kingdom are coming from licensed breeders, who should ensure healthy puppies and appropriate new owners. Up to 95 per cent of puppies are bought from unlicensed sellers.

Calls to a helpline run by the Scottish SPCA on giving up pets have quadrupled, with costs, vet care and inappropriate living conditions cited as common reasons. A recent survey found that only 29 per cent of people considered cost when they got their pet. Dogs are the most frequently abandoned animal, and rehoming centres are experiencing incredible financial pressures as a result.

Evidence from the Dogs Trust is among the weight of support for the bill that was received by the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee. Its submission describes the purpose of the bill as

“educating and providing prospective dog owners with the tools to purchase or rehome a dog more responsibly, and to identify and avoid unscrupulous breeding practices.”

Thank you very much.

Part 2 seeks to establish a register of unlicensed litters, and I remain passionately committed to the policy behind that proposal. At present, given the lack of any licensing regime for those who do not register as licensed breeders—there is legislation for that—there is no way of tracing where each puppy sold in Scotland comes from, which enables unscrupulous breeders to continue to sell large numbers of puppies outwith the licence system.

The intention behind part 2 is to improve traceability. Any dog that is being sold or transferred in Scotland needs to be on a searchable database. That would enable the public to take informed decisions when sourcing a puppy, and it would aid enforcement, making puppies sold outwith either regime—including through the illegal puppy trade—far easier to identify.

However, I am realistic about the difficult financial environment in which we are operating, and I know that local authorities are under immense resource pressures. I firmly believe that a thoroughly implemented register, brought in at a time when resources are less sparse, would have been beneficial. However, as the committee knows from stage 1 evidence, I have conceded that it might be better to actively pursue another approach to improving traceability, by which I mean taking forward the long-standing need to make progress with the microchipping regime.

A solution to traceability that does not require further legislation would be the ability to trace all dogs through the microchipping system, which I will say more about later. Progress in this area is long overdue. Given the benefits that the bill would deliver and the scale of the urgency of the problem, I welcome comments from the minister on plans to engage with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on microchipping and on getting work moving on the solution. On the basis that that valuable work will happen, I am content to support the Scottish Government’s proposal to remove part 2 of my bill, with the caveat that I want there to be progress on a microchipping portal.

I very much look forward to hearing the speeches in the debate, which I am sure will be robust, and I will respond to as many points as I can in my closing remarks.

In the first few days after a person is discharged from a psychiatric ward, they are at their most vulnerable to suicide. I understand that there is a requirement that within 72 hours of discharge they be visited by a mental health nurse. It is difficult to deliver that for a Friday discharge, given the Monday deadline, especially in rural areas such as my constituency where there are long distances to be covered. Will the First Minister advise whether, in such circumstances, there is any flexibility to be practicable in complying with such a requirement, such as by providing online contact initially?

I would resist being more breed specific, because that would start to clutter up the rather simple questions with regard to the breed. If someone considers the breed, they will obviously look at what is required, whether it has any particular problems with breathing and so on. We should not start to put too much in—I want to keep things simple and direct.

Can Edward Mountain locate his marriage certificate and children’s birth certificates? He could just pop the dog’s paperwork beside them. [Laughter.]

I am not going to give an off-the-cuff response to that, but it is worth considering. When I was a solicitor, I saw much consolidated legislation and it was very useful.

The certificate is simply evidential. I gently suggest to Edward Mountain that he checks with Mrs Mountain where their marriage certificate and the children’s birth certificates are. I am sure that his wife will know if he does not. [Interruption.] Mr Mountain can intervene, if he likes.

I stand by my comment that I believe in a separate code. I refer to paragraph 45 of the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee’s stage 1 report:

“The majority of the Committee agrees with Christine Grahame that a standalone, concise and accessible code of practice relating to the acquisition of dogs would seem more likely to engage and, therefore, inform prospective dog acquirers than incorporating the proposed code into the existing 36-page 2010 code.”

Game, set and match.

On some of the core criticisms of the content of the code being on the face of the bill, I stand by my view that the elements of the code that I set out will stand the test of time. They are just the questions that good owners or prospective owners ask themselves. The bill allows for more content to be added to the code over and above those points. I appreciate that the committee and the Government consider that approach to be unusual—or, as Sir Humphrey would have said in “Yes Minister”, courageous. The Government has indicated that it will seek to amend the bill in that regard. I will consider the purpose and effect of those amendments closely, in advance of deciding my position at stage 2.

As I intimated in my opening speech, I support the removal of part 2, with the caveat that meaningful work be undertaken on a UK-wide single portal for microchipping information. I am delighted to tell the chamber that I have communicated with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. I wrote on 11 March, and had back a lovely letter, dated 15 April, from Lord Douglas-Miller, who is Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, about a UK-wide dog microchipping database. I am happy to share that letter with members, because this is a collegiate and collective issue. In my view, there is no point in having a portal just for Scotland. It is good to have it on a UK-wide basis.

DEFRA did a huge consultation. To quote the letter:

“We have recently published our response to this consultation, which is available at”—

the link is given—

“in which we committed to introducing a single point of search portal. My officials will be discussing with their counterparts in the devolved Administrations the scope to devolve the portal on a UK basis.”

That is good news for animal welfare—for dog welfare in particular. The letter continues:

“The planned reforms will improve traceability by requiring information on the dog breeder to remain as a permanently accessible part of the microchip record, as well as requiring a dog’s first keeper to supply the microchip number of the puppy’s mother. This information will remain permanently accessible for enforcement purposes.”

The letter goes on. I do not want to spend too much time on it—I know that it is late in the day—but it is a really positive letter, and I hope that the UK Government, the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government and Northern Ireland will collaborate. Just think of the difference that that would make, even in respect of the illegal puppy factory farms, as I call them. It is an insult to call them farms—they are factory farms; they are factories. If we can deal with that and if we have a database that applies to Northern Ireland as well, we might get somewhere.

Finally, as other members have mentioned their dogs, I will conclude with my fond memories of my long-gone dog, Roostie. She was a wonderful, loving Irish setter—a puppy that came from a gamekeeper’s setter. The mother had a litter, and of course the gamekeeper did not need all the puppies. That was in Twynholm—I make reference to Galloway because I lived there at the time—and we took her back to Old Minnigaff. It was the gamekeeper who said, “Come on, I’ll show you the puppy’s mother,” because I was a novice at all that.

Roostie was a wonderful dog and, best of all, she taught me how to be a good owner; people learn a lot from their dogs. I am not going to get emotional—I refuse to be emotional—but, 40 years later, I still have her collar and leash, and I still have a picture of her upstairs, beside my computer. The bonds that we make with those animals, whether it is one dog or a succession of dogs, or whatever, are for ever. I want all puppies and dogs to have the kind of life that members’ dogs have, and that Roostie had right from the beginning, until I had to have her life ended peaceably at the end of the day, as is part of owning a dog.

Assuming that the general principles of the bill are agreed, I look forward to line-by-line consideration by the committee at stage 2. Let us do something, please, to ensure that we have a good relationship with owners and their puppies, and that we stop illegal factory farming as best we can. Thank you. [Applause.]

To ask the Scottish Government what progress is being made on the extension of the Borders railway south to Carlisle. (S6O-03379)