Welfare of Young Dogs Bred for Sale

Danny Kinahan Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Danny Kinahan (South Antrim) (UUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) on securing this debate, in which I am pleased to speak. I did not want to have any puns in my speech but then realised that I wanted to say, “It’s quite nice to be tail-end Charlie”, which is one of the better speaking positions.

I thank all the people who work so hard on animal welfare in the devolved Administrations and here. In particular, I thank Dogs Trust for bringing the issue to my attention. I am deeply ashamed when I hear that 40,000 dogs—various numbers are mentioned—come from Ireland, through Northern Ireland, into Scotland and into the trade here. My main drive today is to call for us all to work together and to set up some mechanisms to make it possible for us to stop the trade.

I asked a written question on the pet travel scheme in January. The answer I received stated that 184,000 dogs came here under the scheme in 2012, and that the figure went up to 267,000 dogs in 2015. However, the number of quality assurance checks decreased from 6,070 in 2012 to 4,863 in 2015. Over those years, we did fewer checks although more animals came in.

The numbers we hear about differ between speakers. We are told that there are 9 million dogs in the UK and that some 900,000 puppies may be needed each year. That is why we have to deal with 70,000 coming in illegally. I ask that all the devolved countries work together.

As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned, legislation was introduced in Northern Ireland in 2013 that works on breeding establishments based on three breeding bitches having three or more litters a year. That is the way we have been dealing with the issue, but that is different from the recommendations we heard earlier. We must adopt something that works. There are nine councils and there is one council inspector in each whose job it is to check, so we do not even cover it. In Northern Ireland, crime is still linked to the troubles of the past. There is not just puppy farming, but fuel laundering and cigarette trading. A whole mass of things are going on and puppy trading is part of the criminal world.

Coming back to my main point, we must start working together, and sharing information and data. That includes working with the Irish, who work phenomenally well with us on other major crimes. We must learn from the issue and look at how we deal with advertising, including on Gumtree and Google, which just makes dog trading look easy. We do not know where those dogs have come from, what diseases they are carrying and how they are looked after. Think of the poor things travelling long distances.

While I am here, I will keep banging on about the need for the Union to work together. It is not just about little Northern Ireland. It is about Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and all the parts of England working well and ensuring that we deal with things together. We need a Committee or a group that meets at least twice a year so that we can work together, share information and deal with the matter.

Everyone adores their animals. Dogs, particularly, are a great love. Every year our little Mid Antrim Animal Sanctuary in my patch does a draw. Hon. Members might expect that small numbers of tickets are sold, but 8,500 are sold every year. The sanctuary does a wonderful job. However, going around knocking on doors, we can see how many dogs are probably illegal. We need to deal with the problem together.