Road Traffic Collision Reporting: Cats

Jim Dickson Excerpts

Monday 26th October 2026 Westminster Hall

[Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Vickers. I thank the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley) for the way in which he introduced the debate. Like other Members, I must declare an interest: I am the proud owner of a cat called Millie. She is over three years old now, but she is still a baby to me. I got her from the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Balerno in my constituency before I was elected. She came to me both chipped and neutered.

When I first got Millie, my friend Denise said that I should not have got a cat because it would just climb up my curtains. Millie did do that when she was a kitten and it was incredibly cute. My wife, Mrs Arthur, was less sure about the situation. She picked Millie’s name because she promised that the cat would become a millstone around our necks. The other piece of advice we got was that one day we would let the cat out and it would not return. That is the focus of this debate: so many cats are let out and do not return because they are hit by a car, crawl off under a hedge or a bush and are never found.

To millions of households across the UK, cats are deeply loved family members and constant companions. Yet, under current law, if a driver hits a cat they can simply drive away—I know that not all do. That is not the case for collisions with dogs, which must be reported; I and many other cat owners throughout the country believe that that is an outdated distinction that no longer reflects the way we live. Each year in the UK an estimated 230,000 cats are hit by cars. I find that number absolutely incredible; I had to triple-check it. It works out at roughly one cat—and one family who have lost that cat—in every constituency in the UK every day.

[Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)]

On the point about families losing cats, a constituent of mine lost her cat shortly before Christmas 2024 after he was run over and killed on Alkerden Lane. The cat was a huge part of her life and she felt very lost without him. Despite an eyewitness urging the car driver to stop they did not. My constituent cannot understand why the driver was under no obligation to do so; I urge Ministers to address that. Does my hon. Friend agree that in such a situation it is simply right and proper for the driver to stop regardless of whether the law obliges them to do so?

[Dr Arthur]

Absolutely. A few years ago, we looked after my daughter’s cat for a short period—three years, it turned out. It was a fantastic cat, and its pastime was chasing foxes, but one day it was in the garden and then darted across the road, almost getting run over, so I get that it is not always—or even seldom—the driver’s fault. I like to think that if it happened to me, I would stop and perhaps explain what had happened.

Lost cat signs have become common on lamp posts right across the UK. They are almost so common that we hardly see them at all now. Only last month, a constituent contacted my office, deeply distressed after a driver tragically killed her two-year-old kitten. She was left searching for answers and completely bewildered as to why the police could not intervene or help clarify what had happened. This is not about criminalising drivers; it is about compassion and accountability. Leaving an injured cat on the roadside deprives it of potentially lifesaving veterinary care and leaves owners in agonising uncertainty.

I am very proud to have a People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals hospital in my constituency. I visited it a few months ago. Two cats I saw had had had operations after they had suffered some kind of trauma, and the assumption was that that was being hit by a car. That is just two cats on one day in that one hospital. I thank the PDSA for its fantastic work to support people on low incomes being able to access excellent veterinary treatment.

Updating the legislation would not place an inordinate burden on drivers or the police. With microchipping now compulsory in England—and needed in Scotland, as we heard earlier—identifying the owner and offering closure is easier and faster than ever before. The petition shows a very real public mandate for a change that people demand. At the same time, I recognise that some voices in the animal welfare sector are concerned that amending the Road Traffic Act to include cats might have the unintended consequences of imposing criminal and civil liability on owners of cats involved in collisions. Of course, it is the job of this place to consider unintended consequences and to ensure that they are absolutely minimised or, we hope, do not happen at all. I urge the Government to explore how to update the Act in a manner that will protect owners while giving the same basic duty of care to cats that we extend to dogs. We heard that Gibraltar and Jersey already have some such provisions. They are places with close connections to the UK and I am sure we can learn lots from how they approached the problem.

Finally, as a Scottish MP, I have to acknowledge that this is a devolved matter; I appreciate that in Scotland it falls under the Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006. I very much hope for progress at a UK level, but we can also speak to colleagues in Scotland, perhaps at the same time talking about mandating chipping in Scotland and—something else I am passionate about—heavily regulating people who choose to breed cats at home for a profit, which involves at least a lot of distress for the cats. That needs to be addressed north and south of the border.