Road Traffic Collisions Involving Cats

Patricia Gibson Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

I welcome you to your place, Ms Harris. I am delighted to participate in this important debate, which arises from the e-petition relating to requirements to stop and report road traffic collisions involving cats. I thank the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) for opening the debate with a comprehensive overview of the situation. I also pay tribute to charities such as Cats Protection, Blue Cross and Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, which do so much to promote the wellbeing of animals and have provided us with some important briefings for the debate. I should declare that today I am using my Cats Protection pen, which I received at the charity’s event just before Christmas.

Everyone appreciates the importance of family pets, and we can all appreciate the distress and trauma when a family pet goes missing. Thankfully, many cats who wander off on their adventures soon return home safely when they are hungry enough. However, there are cat owners whose cats wander off and never see them again; sadly, on occasion, that is due to the cat being knocked down by a car and left on a roadside, or staggering away from the scene of an accident only to die before it can reach home. Owners are left distressed, often with no information, and, sadly, as those who have pets will understand, they feel as though a beloved family member has simply vanished. Those who own pets—as I once did; I owned the much-missed Kitty sand Misty, and hope to own cats again at some point—benefit from them in so many ways. That is why they are loved as members of our families. They provide huge comfort and health benefits, and also go a long way to combating loneliness; I speak as a vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on cats.

This petition is not party political, as has been shown by the consensus in this Chamber. It is about doing the right thing—a simple thing that will do so much for cat owners. It calls for cats to be accorded the same legal recognition as dogs, and for the same obligations to apply to collisions involving cats as to those involving dogs, under the Road Traffic Act 1988, which requires drivers to stop and report accidents involving a cat. It is not in any way a controversial request for our feline friends to be accorded parity in law with dogs when it comes to road collisions. We last debated the issue in 2019, and I honestly cannot understand why we are still debating it.

We all understand that for such a change in the law to really work, we would need joined-up thinking. We need to get to the compulsory microchipping of cats, so that their owners can be informed if they are involved in an accident. Compulsory microchipping of cats has not yet happened, but I remind the Minister—I am sure that I do not need to, but I will—that the Tory manifesto in 2019 committed to

“bring forward cat microchipping, giving cat owners peace of mind”.

That is a Tory policy that I and everybody else in this Chamber can support—and it is not often that the Minister will hear that! However, there has been no movement on that commitment, and that needs to change.

[Margaret Ferrier]

The Government’s stance has been that there is no need to legislate and create a requirement for local authorities to scan cats for microchips, because the majority already do so as best practice. Does she share my concern that that leaves policies at local authority level too open to change, for example where budgetary restrictions mean there are fewer staff available to perform the task?

[Patricia Gibson]

Yes. Many local authorities currently work very hard to screen cats for microchips, where possible; I will talk about that in more detail later. Local councils are under pressure, but it is important that there is leadership and support from a central Government level in both Scotland and across the UK. I will talk a wee bit later about how Cats Protection provides very important support in that regard.

The Scottish Government recommend that all cat owners should microchip their pets, so that they can be reunited with their owners if they are lost or injured, but they have not yet moved towards compulsory microchipping, which is a move I want to see. However, the Scottish Government are willing to examine and reflect on the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs call for evidence and the recent public consultation on the matter. I am confident that we will get to a place where cat microchipping will be a compulsory element of cat ownership, just as it is with dog ownership. Like many others, I am keen to reach that point as soon as possible, because the responsibility of owning a cat and the responsibility towards cat owners ought not to be different from the rights and benefits currently accorded to dogs and their owners.

In the UK Government’s action plan for animal welfare, which was published in May 2021, the commitment to cat microchipping was repeated. The plan said:

“We will introduce compulsory cat microchipping to ensure lost or stolen cats can be reunited with their owners as quickly as possible.”

But we are still in the dark as to what is happening with the implementation of that plan, just as we are—incidentally—with the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill, which ought to legislate on very important aspects of animal welfare; undoubtedly, we will debate that Bill again soon. It matters, because it is all part of the same conversation about the small amendment required to the Road Traffic Act 1988.

The vast majority of cats in Scotland—around 70%—are microchipped, which demonstrates that most cat owners understand the benefits of doing so. About 29% are still not microchipped, which amounts to about 227,000 cats with no permanent form of identification; that is a problem.

We have heard from around the Chamber of the heartbreak of cat owners who either do not know what has happened to their cat, or who have to deal with their cat being struck by a car and finding that out—sometimes by accident. The sad reality is that we do not know how many cats are involved in road traffic accidents, because it is a not a legal requirement for a driver to report a collision with a cat, but Petplan believes that about 630 cats are run over every day. That is a huge amount. Some 35% of drivers admit to having hit a cat, and it is believed that between 7 million and 9 million cats are at risk every day of being involved in a road traffic accident, given the free-roaming nature of our feline friends.

If we are seeing an increasing number of cats being microchipped, and seeking to move to a point where all cats are microchipped as soon as possible, it is important that measures are in place so that those microchips can be scanned. I applaud the work of Cats Protection, which has worked with some local authorities to provide scanners to ensure that cats found on roads can be identified. Local authorities are also working hard to ensure that they are able to do this, as revealed by the Cats Protection freedom of information request, but there is still some way to go.

The call for the creation of best practice guidance for local councils will be supported by all responsible cat owners, because it will ensure that all cats found on our roads are scanned for a microchip and have their details logged, and that owners are informed so that—as the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Lia Nici) said—as heartbreaking as that news can be, they can find out what has become of their beloved pet.

[James Daly]

Why use best practice guidance rather than the legal requirement?

[Patricia Gibson]

I think we are speaking at cross purposes. As I said, there should be a legal requirement for microchipping, but we want to look at the best way that local authorities can manage that information and roll it out so that it can be completed as soon as possible. I believe that microchipping should be a legal requirement.

I echo the eminently sensible concerns expressed by Blue Cross that if all this work is done in the way we wish, in the interests of cats and cat owners—picking up on the point made by the hon. Member for Bury North (James Daly)—there must be well-administered and efficient communication between database companies to ensure that microchip details and information on lost, stolen or injured pets is properly shared and centrally available.

The suggestion of a single point of access would considerably streamline and simplify the current database situation, incomplete though it is, and make it more user-friendly for the designated approved users. It would save time and resources, and provide the best outcomes for cats and their owners should the worst happen.

It is no surprise that over 102,000 people signed this petition to appeal to the UK Government to amend legislation in a simple and straightforward way to make it a legal requirement for drivers to stop and report accidents involving cats as they are already required to do with dogs. Many of us engage in the debate about whether we prefer cats or dogs, but I think we would all agree that cats deserve parity under the law when it comes to road traffic accidents. Across the UK, we love our pets, and animal welfare is important to every one of us. We just need to look at our inboxes to see that; every single Member of this House receives more emails about various aspects of animal welfare than any other issue. I have to say, that took me a little by surprise when I was first elected in 2015.

Animal welfare really matters to our constituents, and it matters to MPs across the House. Our pets keep us healthy and add to our happiness, and they are treasured family members. Cats do this just as much as dogs; some would say even more so, but that would start a whole UK-wide argument that would keep us here all day. It is clear that if we can give protection to dogs through compulsory microchipping and reporting of accidents when collisions happen, we can certainly do it for cats. There is no reason for us not to do so.

I urge the Minister and the UK Government to make the required amendment to the Road Traffic Act 1988 and give our cats and their owners the consideration they deserve. Alongside that we need to ensure that cat microchipping is an integral part of cat ownership so that they are given the protection currently accorded to dogs. Let us get on with it and stop any further delays. A promise was made in the Government’s 2019 manifesto. This is one of those rare measures that will have support from across the House—from every MP in every party—so there is no reason to delay. It will encounter no opposition, so I urge the Minister to speak to his colleagues and get it done.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Holden]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. If primary legislation is needed, then the way to change the law could indeed be via a private Member’s Bill. Whether it would get Government support and time is a matter for others, but that would be a way to do it.

While we must do all we can to improve the safety of our roads, we must be careful not to make any decisions that could make things worse or have unforeseen effects in a rush to resolve concerns about how the law operates. Hon. Members from across the House have made important points about doing the right thing. My hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Lia Nici) gave the personal example of Stevie, and set out how she stepped in and did the right thing.

The hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) also said that doing the right thing is particularly important. As hon. Members have pointed out, although there is no obligation to report all animal collisions on the road, rule 286 of the Highway Code advises drivers to report any collision involving an animal to the police; if possible, they should make inquiries to ascertain the owner of a domestic animal, so as to advise them of the situation.

As Members, including the hon. Member for Gower, have made clear, cats tend to roam unaccompanied and are likely to go out at night. Drivers may not realise that they have had a collision with a cat in some instances, as they are small animals, similar to rabbits or other wild animals that can cross roads late at night. There are also hazards associated with stopping to check whether animals are alive after people have knocked them over, especially with very small animals. A requirement to report road collisions involving a cat would be difficult to enforce, especially when, as hon. Members have made clear, Petplan suggests there might be hundreds of thousands of these incidents brought forward a year.

In 2021, there were 348 reported road collisions in which both an animal and a person were involved directly. That is just an animal and a person. If we were talking about hundreds of thousands of cases, there would be a huge extra impact and administrative burden, especially given the free-roaming nature of cats. It is for that reason that the Government do not plan at present to make it a legal requirement for drivers to stop and report collisions with cats, but I would like to go into what we are attempting to do in this space, because we recognise how painful it is for owners to lose a pet. I remember going home from school as a youngster and learning—this was when I first realised that animals could die—that my family dog had sadly passed away. I think we have all had that experience at some point in our life.

In the last few years, we have pushed microchipping. It is the best way of reuniting owners with pets that have been tragically killed, stolen, or had a variety of other issues. Since the introduction of compulsory microchipping for dogs in 2016, over 90% of the dog population has been microchipped. That has been particularly successful in increasing reunification rates for stray dogs.

As hon. Members from across the House have pointed out, we have a manifesto commitment to introduce compulsory cat microchipping, and we consulted on that last year. The consultation showed that there was well over 99% support for that measure, which is fantastic. I spoke about the issue in Westminster Hall a couple of years ago, and both my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) and the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) mentioned it. We are committed to introducing it, and we will lay the legislation for England before Parliament in the coming weeks. I hope that the devolved Administrations will follow closely, as this is a devolved issue in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

I welcome the words of the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson). She has used her platform in this place to press for similar action in Holyrood and across the rest of the United Kingdom. I recognise that it is terribly sad when a cat is injured or killed on the roads, and it does not matter what side of the border it is on.

As the hon. Member for Gower mentioned, National Highways already requires its contractors to record details of any cats or dogs found on the roadside, and the location in which they were found. Some of that is due to the importance of strategic roads. We do not want stray animals on the national highways, so we want to know of any gaps in fences and so on. There is a different health and safety dynamic to that, but it is something that we implemented. National Highways is under the Department for Transport and so is a direct responsibility of the Government. National Highways must also scan for a microchip, and store the animal, with the aim of reuniting it with its owner where possible.

Similarly, we understand that the overwhelming majority of local authorities have arrangements in place to scan cats and dogs found by the roadside, and to endeavour to reunite the animal with its keeper. Many pets will therefore be reunited, but we recognise that there may be challenges to successful reunification in some cases. For example, sadly reunification may not be possible if the nature of the animal’s injuries affect the functionality of the microchip, or if a microchip’s records are out of date. That is particularly the case with cats.

[Patricia Gibson]

I am delighted to hear the Minister talking about moving towards making microchipping compulsory for cats. Does he share the view put forward by Blue Cross, which is that cats should be registered on a single database, to make attempts at reunification as efficient and successful as possible?

[Mr Holden]

The hon. Member makes a very good point, and I am just about to come on to the best practice issues that she raised. The legislation on compulsory microchipping that will be brought forward is England only, because this matter is devolved to Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. I hope that these issues will be looked at by the devolved Administrations in the coming months.

Local authorities may adopt different approaches to reuniting cats and dogs found by the roadside. As the hon. Member for Gower mentioned, 92% of local authorities have the necessary facilities, but only 75% use them. It is important that we address that inconsistency. To show our commitment to the issue, we will shortly commission a research project to help us better understand any barriers and to explore best practice. We will then work with local authorities and other stakeholders to develop and promote best practice in this area, which is particularly important.

I pay tribute to Cats Protection and other volunteers, including Mandy and her team from CatsMatter, Heléna Abrahams and the team behind Gizmo’s legacy campaign, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North for their tireless efforts to help reunite animals found by the roadside with their owners. We recently consulted on improvements to the pet microchipping regime, which the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran mentioned. We are analysing the results and will publish them soon.

A key area of the consultation was about how to make it easier for approved users, including local authorities, to access database records, and that will be covered in the response to the consultation. We also consulted on the introduction of a single point of portal search, which would allow approved users to quickly search compliant databases for animal records without needing to contact the database operator directly, which can obviously be time-consuming and can act as a deterrent, as I found when speaking about this issue to vets in my constituency of North West Durham. Quicker access to database records also supports other campaigns that seek to make better use of microchip scanning, as we have all discussed.

I pay particular tribute to Sue and Dawn, who are behind the Tuk’s law campaign, which would require vets to scan microchips and check for rescue back-up contact details prior to euthanising a healthy animal. Members from both sides of the House have been glad to get behind that. We worked closely with the campaign and the veterinary profession to find an approach that worked for everyone, and have incorporated the principle of scanning before euthanasia into the guidelines that underpin the code of professional conduct for veterinary surgeons. That is now in place.

The new single point of search will also support the aims of the Fern’s law campaign, led by Debbie Matthews, which calls on vets to scan the microchip of an animal at the first presentation to check whether it is stolen. That issue can also affect cats, which, as we know, have a tendency to roam a little further than other animals.

In summary, the Government believe that microchipping is the most effective and quickest way of returning a cat to its owner. We are progressing further with it, both through the call for evidence and through the new best practices guidelines that are coming down the line. In coming weeks, microchipping legislation for England is being introduced, and we hope to see that happen across the rest of the United Kingdom as well. We remain committed to microchipping; we look forward to the introduction of legislation that will make it compulsory, and to making further improvements later in the year.