Sale of Puppies and Kittens

Debate between Robert Flello and Julie Hilling

Thursday 4th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Robert Flello]

I would certainly like to see more work done on the compulsory microchipping that is going to come in; I would like us to have a proper database rather than just something that floats out into the ether, never gets updated and will just continue to grow and not be used properly. I am hoping that the Minister is listening carefully and will take the message back to DEFRA that the chip is a good thing but the database behind it is the important one.

Let me return to the issue of high street pet shops. The only place most of them can source their puppies and kittens from has to be breeders that put minimal effort into breeding and rearing; there is a “pile ’em high” mentality. In addition to domestic operations, there is a rapidly growing trend of selling puppies brought into the UK from overseas breeders. We hear of breeders in the Irish Republic with 1,000 breeding bitches, which dwarfs the figure for even some of the Welsh breeders—I am sad to say that as I am sitting alongside my Welsh colleagues—who have more than 300. Although regulations are in place to address the import of cats and dogs, I know from my own experience this summer how very easily the pets passport system can be evaded.

I also know from meeting Eurotunnel and ferry companies that they are concerned about the situation and are unhappy that they are, in effect, policing something they do not have the training for and that this is not properly resourced. It simply does not work. Ultimately, the retail end of this chain drives it, with up to 100 high street pet shops in England licensed to sell puppies or kittens on their premises. That is responsible for the pain and misery of thousands of animals. Although the number of pet shops selling puppies and kittens in the UK is relatively small, there are no signs of a downward trend. My intention, with this motion, is not to vilify pet shops per se, but in almost every case where they sell puppies and kittens they simply cannot meet the specific needs required in this developmental golden period for puppies, in which puppies learn their future emotional template, in order to exhibit normal behaviour patterns and safely adjust to family life. In addition, there are all the health implications to consider.

Clear patterns have been established between early experiences and the development of aggression in dogs. A US study, for example, found that puppies obtained from pet shops were three times more likely to display aggression directed at their owner, and almost twice as likely to show aggression to other dogs they did not know, compared with dogs obtained from a small responsible breeder. By tackling the sale of puppies and kittens in pet shops we can remove the most impulsive means of purchasing, giving prospective owners the chance to research ownership and everything that goes with it. We can protect these prospective owners from the health and behavioural problems associated with pet shop puppies and kittens. We can also take a big step towards curbing irresponsible breeding practices and over-production of puppies and kittens.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. As he will know, since the very sad death of Jade Lomas Anderson in my constituency I have done a great deal of work on this issue. Does he agree that we have to continue to talk about the 200,000 people who are seriously injured each year, the 6,000 who are hospitalised and the number of people who are dying because we are not looking after dogs from birth and through their training? Dog welfare is indeed at the heart of this, but it is also about protecting our communities.

[Robert Flello]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention and commend her for the work she has done on the issue. As ever, my thoughts are with the families of all those who have been affected by aggressive dogs, but, as surveys show, people buying from a pet shop are much more at risk. Do not take that risk.

Food Prices and Food Poverty

Debate between Robert Flello and Julie Hilling

Monday 23rd January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

Listening to the Secretary of State’s final comments, I thought for a moment that I had stumbled into some sort of parallel universe, because I did not recognise any of her claims about what the Government are doing. She talked about the freeze in council tax. First, some of the families we are talking about are so poor that they do not pay council tax. Secondly, in Stoke-on-Trent, as in other areas, the council has been so hammered by the cuts in support from national Government to local government that it cannot accept the bribe of a 2% freeze and will have to make increases to try to get back some of the money that has been ripped away from it.

I welcome this debate because it provides the other side of the “heat or eat” coin. We recently discussed in this House the situation whereby people have to make the choice between heating their home and having food to eat. Sadly, many people do not have that choice because they cannot afford to heat their homes or to eat properly. Many families cannot afford to put proper food in their stomachs, let alone heat their homes.

The problem is going to get worse. To be fair to the Secretary of State, she touched on this area, to a small extent. Back in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, we had cheap oil and we encouraged farmers, not only in this country but globally, to turn that oil into food by using machinery—whether milking pumps, tractors or heated greenhouses—to produce more food. The UK imports a huge amount of food—even things that we grow well in this country, such as tomatoes. We seem to have a fascination with buying imported tomatoes even during our tomato season. On imported foodstuffs, we bring into this country a large amount of soy to feed our cattle because of the ever-increasing demand for more milk production. As a result, oil prices are rising and will continue to rise further. As the years go by, the built-in link between the price of oil and the price of food means that the food prices that we have been used to will continue to increase as the price of oil goes up.

We need to wean our farmers off oil. Back in the ’70s, companies decided to produce ever-better strains of seeds. That was linked to the oil industry, because in order to grow those better strains, the farmers needed fertilisers linked to oil. As the weeks, months and years stretch out ahead of us, if we cannot reduce the constant link with oil, we will face an inexorable increase in the cost of food. We need to act now, and the Government need to act now, to start to break that cycle.

Food banks such as that at St Clare’s, Meir Park, in my constituency are doing fantastic work and helping the vulnerable in our society, and they have started only in the past year. In the 13 years of the Labour Government, for which the Secretary of State tried to berate us, they were not needed. I would like to see a country in which there were no food banks, of course—everybody would—but while we have the need for them, we must have them.

[Julie Hilling]

Is my hon. Friend aware that the Trussell Trust estimates that 60,000 people got food from food banks last year, and that 100,000 will this year? It estimates that by 2015, half a million people will depend on them.

[Robert Flello]

Absolutely, my hon. Friend is correct: that is the scale of the problem we face. By 2014-15 half a million people will be looking to food banks, so how many people will by 2020, and how many by 2025, if action is not taken soon?

People do not want to go to food banks. They do not think on a Saturday afternoon, “Oh, I know, let’s pop to the food bank.” They do it because they have no other choice. They are people with pride and self-esteem, but they think, “Well, hang on, it’s that or starve.” What a contradiction it is that at the same time we are throwing away 7.2 million tonnes of food every year. It is unbelievable that we are wasting food on such a level. It is appalling, and a national disgrace.

Why is that happening? The hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) rallied to the defence of the supermarket industry. I will make further points about that industry in a moment, but when it has food promotions such as two for one or three for one, it causes problems for families at the poorest end of the scale, who do not have a freezer and cannot store so much food. However, most of the problem comes from people such as—dare I say it?—us in the House. Mea culpa: at the end of Christmas and its excesses, we look at our own fridge or freezer and see that it is still full of food that was not needed. That food ends up going in the bin, at the same time as people—[Interruption.] Well, actually, I do not throw food away, but there are people who do.