Puppy Smuggling

Chris Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 1st November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Chris Davies (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston) for bringing this important debate to the Chamber.

One thing we have not fully taken on board during the debate is supply and demand. We are clearly not breeding enough puppies in this country to fulfil the required demand, which is sad. I am a former member of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, and we held an inquiry just last year that I will come on to in a second. I was very much against puppy farming. We have just heard a very eloquent description of puppy farming and the reasons why we should be against it.

I have been a dog lover all my life, and I declare that I, too, am a dog owner. Travelling from Wales is not quite as far as from Scotland, but my wife would not let me bring it; she is the boss, as is the wife of my hon. Friend the Member for Moray (Douglas Ross) in his house, I am sure. As a dog lover, I was appalled to see a puppy farm. What struck me was that the dogs could not be dogs. Living in the countryside, we have always allowed our dogs to run freely—under strict supervision—where there is no stock around. That is for another day, but it was a sad experience. I have changed. I am all for banning third-party sales. One of the biggest problems is not just puppy farming but the importing of puppies. I think we are all saddened because we realise that this is big business. It is a massive business out there, and we need to tackle it as quickly as we can.

During the previous Session, when I sat on that Committee, we published a report on animal welfare, which looked into this matter in great detail. I have a lot to say, but I will not be able to get it out in my remaining three or four minutes. However, I will just pick out a couple of the report’s conclusions. They were primarily on the failures that allowed puppies entry into the UK—enforcement checks at ports and intelligence sharing between agencies. This is a massive issue, but it is easily remedied; that is the sad thing. The Government need to pay a little more attention to this matter. The pet travel scheme—PETS—has been mentioned already. Under PETS, the minimum age for entry into the UK is 15 weeks, with vaccination not before 12 weeks followed by a three-week incubation period. However, as Dogs Trust told us during that inquiry, the data on passports were being falsified to evade contravening PETS.

In a former life, before coming to this place, I spent a few years running a veterinary group. It was always distressing to see children and dog owners leaving after their dogs, including puppies, had been put down, through no fault of their own. They had paid a lot of money and taken on what was a fashionable breed and, sadly, they left the veterinary surgery without that dog, because it had died through an illness it had picked up on the way to this country. That is not acceptable. People may think they have found a very good deal or possibly a bargain for the dog of their lives, but unless the Government put the proper controls in place, we will sadly see a great disservice being done to the people of this country.

The British Veterinary Association—I declare at this point that I am an honorary associate—has scrupulous enforcement procedures here, but it was not the vets in this country that allowed those animals to come in; it was vets from outside, from southern Ireland or on the continent. I ask the Minister to look at that when he responds, not just today but in future. I understand that time is against us, so I will leave it there. Once again, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire for introducing the debate. It is really important that people in this place fully take this on board.