Puppy Smuggling

Douglas Ross Excerpts

Wednesday 1st November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston) on securing the debate.

I will be honest: when my wife first suggested it, I was not a particular fan of having a puppy come into my family; I could think of all the problems of having a brand-new puppy around the house. But my wife is a determined woman, and six years later we are very proud to have Murphy the Dalmatian, an integral part of our family. I mention Krystle and Murphy because I wanted to get them both on to the official record of the House of Commons at some point, and today’s debate has allowed me to do that.

While many of us celebrate and enjoy having a puppy, and in later years a dog, as part of our family, unfortunately many have a very difficult experience because of the problems we have heard about today. Of those puppies intercepted by the Dogs Trust’s puppy pilot, 469 have been cared for in quarantine, and 5.2% died while in quarantine. Those statistics shed a light on the problems that hon. Members have mentioned.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire that the problem has arisen out of something that was supposed to be good. The pet travel scheme was introduced in 2012 to allow people to travel around Europe with their dogs—to take them on holiday, rather than having to worry about leaving them at home—but there have been unintended consequences. Dogs Trust is on its third report on the issue, and there are still serious problems.

There have been positive developments. I welcome the advances made in Lithuania in 2015. Now, to get a passport, any dogs must be signed off by an official state vet, but that has not solved the problem completely and there are still issues with Poland, Lithuania and others. I welcome the fact that there is some movement, but it is not enough. My hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Jack) mentioned punishments. The latest report by Dogs Trust gives an example of a breeder in Poland with potentially 20 breeding bulldog bitches. The bitches have four puppies in their litter each year, resulting in potentially 80 puppies coming to the UK. Each pup can be sold for £1,500. The breeder’s turnover, from one puppy farm in one country, could therefore be £120,000, yet the punishment is a couple of hundred pounds. That does not send out the right message. I also welcome my hon. Friend’s point about the agencies. The Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is doing great work in Scotland, but there is a lot more we can do.

I realise that time is short. I welcome the opportunity to take part in the debate, and I am interested to hear the experiences of others. Many hon. Members here, on both sides of the House, competed in the Westminster dog of the year competition just last week. Unfortunately, Murphy and I could not take part because it is 584 miles from Elgin to London, and I would not put my dog through that, yet people buy farmed puppies that travel across Europe, for potentially 30 hours and over thousands of miles, followed by an onward journey in the UK. That is a message that we must get across. There is a message for Ministers, for the puppy breeders and for some of the people who buy these puppies.