The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)

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First I must congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Anna Firth), and thank her for bringing forward this incredibly important Bill. It really shows the best of us as parliamentarians when we can have a debate like this; it brings us all together.

It is something of a challenge on a Friday to see whether we can get in as many pet names as possible, and I think we have excelled ourselves today with the naming of pets, including, of course, the 14 cats that Granny Meow looked after. We have also had many mentions of that wonderful event, Westminster dog of the year; I have come second in that competition a number of times, and not even with my own dog. I am a bit of a fraud because I borrowed one from one of the amazing charities, but it was to help to highlight that great and useful event. I also want to add my comments on the wonderful Sir David Amess, who did so much on animal welfare in this House. I am so pleased that my hon. Friend is following in his footsteps.

The Bill seeks to recognise the inherent difference between pets as sentient beings and pets as inanimate objects, as they would be seen under the criminal law on theft. I am really proud to say that it was this Government who introduced the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022, which cemented the legal recognition that vertebrate animals are sentient beings. The critical thing about this Bill is, of course, that it recognises that the sorts of stolen pets we are talking about are basically family—that is how I think my hon. Friend so ably put it—and all the emotions surrounding our pets.

At the outset, I pay tribute to all colleagues who took part in the debate, which has been tremendous, showing so much knowledge, expertise and love of our pets. We have had cross-party support, with the hon. Members for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and for West Ham (Ms Brown) joining in. I thank them for their support.

I also thank all our colleagues for their support: my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland), who did such a great job on the pet theft taskforce; my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Jane Stevenson), who raised that issue of widening this legislation to other animals in the future—she knows that is an option in the Bill; my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald), who has great knowledge and expertise, having taken through Finn’s Law, which we have heard about; and my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly). I know his Pets (Microchips) Bill is coming up, but I want to say that the microchipping reform we plan to take forward will contribute to addressing some of his Bill’s aims, so I hope that gives him some assurance.

We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Jo Gideon) and, of course, my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), who did so much on animal welfare when she was Secretary of State in the Department. Since she raised the question of commencing this legislation as soon as possible, I should put on the record that it will indeed be commenced as soon as possible, within three months of the Bill’s receiving Royal Assent. I hope that gives her some reassurance about our absolute intention to get speeding on with the Bill.

I do not have much time, but I was not surprised that the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), raised the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill, and that gives me the opportunity to talk about it. We are aware of how important animal welfare is to the people in this nation, which is why it is such a priority for the Government. That Bill was a huge priority in our manifesto 2019, as he will know, and although the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill as such is not being taken forward, it is far from the case that we are dealing with items from that Bill in drips and drabs.

We have introduced a wave of legislation on animal welfare. To name just a few, we have increased the penalties for those convicted of animal cruelty; we have announced the extension to the Ivory Act 2018, with more species added; we have passed the Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Act 2021; we brought in legislation on the microchipping of cats, which I was here for on a Friday; we made our action plan for animal welfare in 2021; we banned glue traps and tackled hare coursing; we banned the trade in shark fins; we modernised licensing for dog breeding and pets; we passed Finn’s law, which I referred to; and there is much more. I genuinely think we are the party for animal welfare.

The unlawful taking of pets is a callous crime and it is right that perpetrators are brought to justice. The Bill focuses on the impact on the welfare of stolen cats and dogs, not just their financial value. That is so important. I have to name my cats, because everyone else has named their pets. I have to put Raffa and Mr Tipps on the record. We have had so many references to what pets mean to us, but since my husband died and my three children left home, my cats have taken on an even more important role in my life. They are there to welcome me when I get home. We all have stories like that, as we have heard. Those are the things we can share. Our pets are so important to us, and so is the Bill.

I welcome the Bill’s intention to improve the recording and monitoring of pet abduction offences, which is really important. I welcome the work of the pet theft taskforce, because so many of its recommendations are being taken up, including bringing in the option of other animals if that is proven to be the right thing to do.

Another of the taskforce’s recommendations was to strengthen the process of the transfer of keepers recorded on a microchip record. We want all database operators to have robust processes in place to ensure that the existing keeper has a chance to object when someone else tries to change the keepership details on the microchip record. That will ensure that stolen pets cannot simply be transferred to a new keeper.

We have consulted on other changes to the microchipping regime that will make it easier for pets to be reunited with their keepers, and we will publish details of that very soon. We have already announced the requirement for all owners of cats over 20 weeks to get their cats microchipped by 10 June 2024, so people need to get a move on if they have not managed to do that yet.

I could say a lot more because there is so much in the Bill. As a Government and as a Department we are looking at more things relating to the important issue of animal welfare. I hope I have demonstrated that we are right behind the Bill. We wish it well on its swift progress. There is no shortage of people offering to serve on the Bill Committee, which is tremendous. I reiterate that once the Bill becomes an Act it will be commenced within three months of Royal Assent, if not before, in England. I will leave that there, Mr Deputy Speaker—I know you are an ardent campaigner for animal welfare. On that happy note, we can all join together and be happy with our day’s work.

The Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries (Mark Spencer)

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It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir George. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West for bringing forward this important Bill for pet lovers in this country. I also thank the hon. Members in this room for their support this morning.

The Bill will create offences of cat abduction and dog abduction in England and Northern Ireland, recognising that cats and dogs are sentient beings and not merely property. The intention is that it will allow the courts to place greater focus on the impact on the welfare of the animal as well as the interests of its owner when deciding on penalties.

The Bill is intended to deal with the unscrupulous people who abduct a cat or a dog. I am hugely aware that such people are an exception. The Bill does not intend to criminalise genuinely kind behaviour to cats and dogs that people do not own—for instance, where they believe the animal is a stray. The vast majority of citizens love animals and want to do the right thing if they see an unaccompanied cat or dog.

The pet theft taskforce found that in the majority of cases dogs were stolen from homes, mostly from gardens and outbuildings. The Bill makes it an offence for a dog or a cat to be taken from a person with lawful control of the animal. In the case of dogs, the Bill also makes it an offence to detain a dog to keep it from someone entitled to the lawful control of the dog.

These offences, as my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West has outlined, are subject to certain exceptions and defences. The Bill rightly makes no difference in the penalties for dog or cat abduction, but by limiting the offence to “taking” of cats, it does take into account the different lifestyles of those animals. I am particularly pleased that the Bill includes a cat abduction offence, which stakeholders have been calling for. It is right that there is no detaining offence for cats. They are known to occasionally make themselves at home on other people’s sofas, and some cats display deft cat-flap skills, meaning that people might not even be aware that a cat is in their home.

The maximum sentence attached to cat or dog abduction is up to five years in prison or a fine, or both. That aligns to the maximum term for animal welfare offences under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and the Welfare of Animals Act (Northern Ireland) 2011. As the new offences are centred on the impact on the animal, we feel it is right that the maximum penalty aligns with other serious animal welfare offences. Although causing unnecessary suffering remains an offence in its own right under the Animal Welfare Act 2006, the intention is that the new offences will allow the court to take account of the impact on the animals when deciding on penalties. It could, for instance, consider any impact on the animal in circumstances where an animal is taken forcefully.

The Bill includes a power enabling the Secretary of State or the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs in Northern Ireland to extend the Bill’s offences to further species of animals at a future date, but the power is limited. The Secretary of State or DAERA must consider that animals of that species are commonly kept as pets, and there must be evidence of a significant number or rise in cases of unlawful taking or detaining.

The power is an important asset to the Bill. The pet theft taskforce’s recommendation for the development of the pet abduction offence was preceded by a change in demand during covid-19. The circumstances that might trigger the consideration of inclusion of other species of animals commonly kept as pets could be similarly unpredictable. We therefore agree that it is appropriate for the Secretary of State or DAERA to have the power to respond dynamically.

As we have heard, the Bill extends to England and Wales and Northern Ireland, although the provisions apply in England and Northern Ireland only. We welcome Northern Ireland’s joining in with the Bill. As the matter is devolved, it will be up to the relevant devolved Governments to consider whether they would like to bring in a similar framework.

The Bill builds on the excellent work of the pet theft taskforce and acts on a key recommendation of developing a pet abduction offence. It also meets the Government’s commitment in the action plan for animal welfare to tackle the serious crime. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West for promoting it.

Mark Spencer

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I can be swift. The Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) gave a commitment at the Dispatch Box on Second Reading, putting it on the record that the Government will commence the Bill within three months in England. I can therefore support the amendment.

Again, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West for promoting the Bill, which the Government fully support. I would also like to put on record my thanks to my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal, not only for her amendment but all the work she has done in various roles to support and improve animal welfare in this country. She is a true champion of animal welfare. With that, I look forward to seeing the Bill progress through its stages; I am delighted to support it.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Robbie Moore)

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First, may I from the Government Benches send our condolences to Mr Speaker, who is unable to be here today because he is attending his father’s funeral? We send our sympathies to him.

It is a pleasure to speak about this Bill, which is so important to many people. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) for his considered attention to the Bill, not only today but previously and in the meetings that I and my right hon. Friend the Minister of State held with him in consideration of the points he has brought to the House. I also thank him for his support of some of the measures that we are bringing forward in the Bill. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Anna Firth) for her considered responses and her contributions on Report.

Let me start by addressing amendments 1, 6 and 7. As was eloquently outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West, the Bill already makes it clear that prosecutors bear the burden of proof. We want to create suitable offences that will crack down on cases of dog and cat abduction, and I agree with my hon. Friend’s assessment that amendments 2 and 4 would undermine the scope for prosecutions to be brought for the offences of dog and cat abductions. I, too, urge my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch to withdraw amendments 1, 2, 4, 6 and 7 on the basis of the points that I have made and the contributions from my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West.

New clause 1 and amendments 3, 5, 8, 9, 10, 16 and 21 have already been discussed. I commend the dedication of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch to microchipping. I know he has a branch of Cats Protection in his constituency, as does my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild), who rightly contributed to this debate, stating that Cats Protection has been instrumental in supporting the extension of the compulsory microchipping requirements to cats. I am pleased about both the extension and its support for this issue.

From the first moment that an offence of dog abduction was introduced in this place, MPs and stakeholders alike have asked for it to be extended to cats. The Department has received a significant number of letters from the public and parliamentary questions from right hon. and hon. Members in support of this proposal. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West that the Government cannot support removing cats from the scope of the Bill. However, I understand that the desire of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch to remove cats from the scope of the Bill was guided by the laudable intention of incentivising microchipping. I am pleased that we very much agree on the importance of microchipping, which is the best way to reunite people with lost and abducted animals.

The Government made microchipping compulsory for dogs in England in 2016, and we are now extending the benefits of that legislation to cats. From 10 June, all owned cats in England over the age of 20 weeks must be microchipped and registered on a compliant database. Microchipping is a safe, simple and effective procedure. The average cost is £25, plus an average £10 registration over the lifetime of the animal. Microchipping undeniably helps to bring displaced pets home. In the UK, around 90% of dogs have been microchipped. In 2023, more than 70% of cats have already been voluntarily microchipped.

Our post-implementation review of the Microchipping of Dogs (England) Regulations 2015—the predecessor to the 2023 regulations—showed that this legislation has had a positive effect on reunification rates. Stray dogs that have been microchipped and have up-to-date database records are more than twice as likely to be reunited with their keeper than stray dogs without a microchip. Police and local authorities can and do issue notices requiring a dog to be microchipped where it is not already. That has been demonstrated to be an effective mechanism to support compliance.

Since we introduced the English compulsory cat microchipping legislation, we have been working closely with a number of animal welfare stakeholders to develop a co-ordinated communications campaign to explain to cat owners the benefits of microchipping and the new legal requirements. Last summer, we even enlisted the support of our chief mouser Larry the cat, who himself was once an un-microchipped stray, before being taken in and rehomed by Battersea Dogs and Cats Home. Larry’s tweet on International Cat Day, explaining the importance of microchipping for reuniting pets with their owners, received half a million impressions.

I am also grateful to stakeholders who have helped to spread the message at the start of our 100-day countdown campaign to the introduction of these measures. With just over 50 days to go before the 10 June deadline, we are ramping up our communications strategy with stakeholders for that final push. I urge anyone who has not yet microchipped their cat to do so as quickly as possible. Our communications around the new cat microchipping rules, as well as around this Bill, will provide a clear message that microchipping will help bring abducted pets back home sooner.

However, compulsory cat microchipping is just one of a number of planned microchipping reforms. Last month, we published our response to the consultation on English pet microchipping reform. We are committing to a number of improvements to the microchipping regime around three themes: first, making it easier for approved users to access records; secondly, improving the accuracy of records; and thirdly, standardising database operator processes. Those reforms will implement one of the key recommendations of the pet theft taskforce that more robust processes should be in place to stop stolen pets being registered to new keepers by ensuring that the current keeper has up to 28 days to object to a transfer of keepership request made to a database operator before any transfer can go through, and by preventing database operators from creating a duplicate microchip record for a pet. We are also making all database operators record whether a pet is reported as missing. That will assist enforcement bodies and flag concerns to a database operator, should they receive a transfer of keepership request. We are looking to legislate specifically to deal with that issue in due course.

My hon. Friend the Member for Southend West has eloquently outlined how the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch would overly restrict the Bill, and the Government cannot support them. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch rightly made some points on guidance in his new clause 1 and amendment 21 and asked for statutory guidance to be issued by the Secretary of State. I agree that guidance will be essential for frontline workers enforcing new pet abduction offences, ensuring that those are used appropriately. The Government are committed to working with key stakeholders to ensure that appropriate guidance relating to this Bill will be available before the Bill’s offences come into force. The cross-Government pet theft taskforce already establishes relationships with police officers, operational partners and animal welfare organisations working in the area, so we have a network already in place, and I can confirm that conversations are already under way. I will ensure that the points that my hon. Friend has rightly raised are part of the conversations that are already under way. Enforcers will have the support and information they need to effectively implement the legislation once it comes into force without the need to legally require enforcement guidance.

I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is concerned about people benefiting from the legislation when they have shirked their responsibility to have their pets microchipped. I assure the House that we are doing work with police colleagues to make them aware that, in the event that they recover an abducted cat or dog that is not microchipped, they have the power to issue a notice under the English microchipping regulations requiring those pets to be microchipped within 21 days.

For completeness, failing to comply with such a notice is an offence and subject to a fine of £500. In addition, the Microchipping of Cats and Dogs (England) Regulations 2023 provide for the police to be able to take the animal in question to be microchipped without the keeper’s consent, and allow the costs associated with that to be recovered. The enforcement regime for the English microchipping legislation is designed to ensure that an animal will end up being microchipped if it is found not to be. We understand that most people comply with such a notice where issued, so only a small number of such cases are taken through the courts.

In addition to the existing enforcement mechanism, we are considering enabling penalty notices for the offence of not microchipping a cat or dog through the Animal (Penalty Notices) (England) Regulations 2023. In summary, I cannot, therefore, commit that we will work—[Interruption.] I am sorry; I can commit—I want to reiterate that—that we will be working closely with enforcement partners to ensure that my hon. Friend’s concerns are addressed. We are working at speed to prepare for this engagement.

On the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West, I thank her for bringing forward these minor, technical adjustments to the Bill. The Government support them and agree that their clarity help to progress the Bill, specifically in relation to clauses 1 and 2. I urge all hon. Members to support them.

Robbie Moore

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I am pleased to speak again on this important Bill. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Anna Firth) for expertly guiding the Bill through the House. She has been a passionate advocate of measures to improve animal welfare, and I congratulate her on introducing this important piece of legislation. Given how strongly the late Sir David Amess championed animal welfare causes, it is especially poignant that it is my hon. Friend who has championed this Bill. Sir David expressed the hope that this place would come together to enable animal welfare Bills to get on to the statute book quickly, and I think he would have been delighted to see this Bill get this far.

To say that we are a nation of pet and animal lovers is an understatement. More than half of all adults own at least one pet. Cats and dogs are the firm favourites, with at least 29% and 24% of adults owning a dog or cat respectively. Whether it is Joe or Pip, the sheepdogs who help me on my farm, or Harvey the cat, who belongs to Max in my team, I assure the House that my team and I are also animal lovers. My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) is right to say how important the Bill is, alongside referencing how beautiful his constituency is for dog walkers.

My hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) is another strong animal lover, and I shall have to read his comments in Hansard about the various pets he has owed. I am pleased to see that he too welcomes the Bill, as does my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild), who I know has worked closely with Cats Protection to ensure that the Bill works its way through this House. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) for, quite rightly, mentioning our right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), who has championed the Bill. I am pleased to hear that Twiglet was reunited with its owner. The coronavirus pandemic in 2020 led to many households deciding to buy or adopt new pets in their homes, many for the first time. Those pets helped to provide owners with emotional support during those difficult times. As we have heard, it was in that period that there were concerns about increases in pet theft. The Government’s response was to set up the pet theft taskforce. The Bill builds on the work done by the pet theft taskforce in 2021. It acts on one of its key recommendations—to deliver a pet abduction offence —and it helps to improve the recording of unlawful taking of cats and dogs..

In 2021, the Government made a commitment to crack down on pet theft in our action plan on animal welfare. Our support for the Bill demonstrates that commitment. We further strengthened the Bill by accepting the amendment from my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) in Committee, which added a commencement date for England. We have said it before and I will say it again: the unlawful taking of a pet is an abhorrent crime, and it is right that the perpetrators are brought to justice. The Bill recognises that. We have given the Bill a thorough review, not only on Report but through all its stages. I cannot thank right hon. and hon. Members enough for their engagement and support. I am delighted with the support of Members of the House, and I look forward to seeing the Bill on the statute book very soon.