Pet Identification

Debate between Ross Thomson and Martyn Day

Monday 17th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[Martyn Day]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point—this is about empathy. What we are calling for is easily attainable within the current resources.

[Ross Thomson (Aberdeen South) (Con)]

There is no question about the success of the compulsory microchipping of dogs. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that basing the need for the microchipping of cats on the risk that the animals pose to the public simply ignores the welfare of the animals in question?

[Martyn Day]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. This is not about the safety of the public. It is about the family’s wellbeing and knowing what has happened to their beloved pet.

The process of scanning can be done in minutes and is not a complex procedure. Councils that have a policy to scan deceased pets often leave the onus on the owner to contact the council within seven days, which is a pointless exercise if an owner is not notified or if the pet is disposed of without the owner being given the chance to collect the body, to bury or cremate it, and to deal with their grief. During the holiday period, people might be away for longer than one week, so seven days is just unrealistic.

Too often, there is a disparity between council policy and actual practice. We know that from various cases evidenced by witnesses and council workers. One such worker, who wished to remain anonymous, told Gizmo’s Legacy:

“Oh, we don’t scan them, we are told not to. We take them to the local tip, where they are thrown in a freezer until full then put into the refuse.”

Des Kane is a volunteer chip scanner with Harvey’s Army. He regularly pops by his local council’s storage facility in Coatbridge in North Lanarkshire, to check whether any pets in the freezer can be identified. He finds the council’s approach to pets found on the road to be very hit and miss:

“I find that the only real documenting of any such unfortunate deceased pet is the label attached to the bag in which they are placed. This label states the following: animal type, colour, where and when picked up from, and any distinguishing markings.

To my knowledge that is as far as it goes with documentation and I’m not aware of any other efforts made by the council to find a potential owner, i.e. posting on their website or social media. They do have an animal welfare officer who they call to scan animals when they’ve been lifted or they call me when he’s not available.

I’ve found the council staff at the facility very accommodating and helpful but I feel the council policy, as it stands, could be a bit more thorough in trying to contact a possible owner, although I know they are more proactive than some other authorities.”

Such volunteers do a tremendous job around the country uniting people with their deceased pets, but it should not be left to them or to the random lottery of what each local council chooses to do.

Cat owner Anita Short, a resident of Sunderland City Council, learned from a neighbour that her cat Toby had been collected by cleansing services. She then contacted the council and was invited to Sunderland council’s depot to see if Toby was in its freezer. Anita recognised her cat from his collar. She asked why her cat had not been scanned and the excuse she was given was that they did not have a scanner on them. Why does the council state that its workers will scan animals they pick up? As I said, they should all have scanners, given the requirement for dogs. The council was not following its own policy. Anita Short would have never known that her cat had been collected and was in a council freezer if it was not for her neighbour. Relying on best practice is meaningless if policies are not strictly followed, which is why Gizmo’s law needs to be implemented.

DogLost.co.uk is the country’s leading lost-and-found pets service—despite the name, it also deals with cats. It has a national network of volunteers. Its service is free but it relies on donations. Hon. Members have probably seen its posters attached to lamp posts or in shop windows with details of missing pets. Since the launch of DogLost UK in 2003, more than 105,000 dogs and cats have been registered as missing or stolen. Thankfully, nearly three-quarters of pets have been found. DogLost informs us that, in 2018, 9,029 pets were reported missing. At the start of this month, 24,201 pets were still missing, which means that many families are still searching. How many of those dogs and cats will have been recovered from council roads and paths but never scanned? We will never know how many of those dogs and cats have ended up in landfill because of lax record keeping.

Of course, not all animals are microchipped, so to be fair to councils it is sometimes not possible to find owners even when they scan. What we do know is that two councils admitted to collecting bodies of cats and putting them in the freezer, but failing to scan or keep any records. On questioning, they admitted remembering the description of two cats: that happened to Michelle Morton’s cat Cookie, which was in the hands of Blackpool Council, and Janette Barton’s cat Benji under Wigan Council. Both those cats were microchipped, but it appears that neither council bothered to scan, because they do not have to—it is only best practice. Councils make their own policies and do not even need to bother to stick to the rules that they have set themselves. Is it too much to ask that they take a few minutes to scan for a chip, keep some records that can be easily accessed and contact owners to let them know the bad news, to give them the chance to collect their pet for burial or cremation?

Janette told us that she still cries over losing her cat. The emotional connection between humans and pets cannot be emphasised enough. This debate is about human suffering, not the lost pet that has caused the human suffering. There are so many heart-breaking examples of families who have lost their pets. Gizmo’s Legacy detailed a broad range of them in the pack it sends to members, which highlights that there is a lack of scanning all over the United Kingdom.

The last example I will give is that of Wendy Turner and her cat Merlin, who was neutered and microchipped. After spending a day looking for him, she posted on Facebook and, following a last sighting of him, discovered he had been taken by the council. After contacting the council, Wendy was told that they would be in touch after they had scanned the cat, but that did not happen. She was then given the runaround, being passed on to different departments and being told that Merlin would be added to the list of deceased animals in a day or so. It was to be several weeks later before a vague description of a cat found in the area where Merlin was picked up appeared on the deceased animal list. Wendy says that

“it is two years since I lost Merlin and even now I feel that there is no closure. The thought of his precious remains being tossed away with rubbish or thrown into a furnace with no regard to him or his family I find very hard to accept. I only wanted to bring my boy home. This was the reason why I invested in a microchip. If it was not for the reply to my Facebook post I would still be searching for Merlin.”

People are spending real money to get their cats microchipped, so that when something does go wrong they can be reunited with them, whether alive or unfortunately deceased.

What can be done? Recommendations of good practice clearly do not work for everyone, which suggests that legislation for the UK’s 408 councils may be required. Local authorities are devolved, so we may need legislation in the devolved nations as well as in this Parliament. It takes minutes to scan a pet, log details and contact an owner—a small price to pay considering the human misery that searching for a pet generates. It is important that contact is made where microchips exist, and that there be a system to view photos of deceased pets where no microchip is found.

Our pets need improved protection. Gizmo’s law would mean that all councils would have to start scanning all animals they collect on all their roads, paths and locations and contacting their owners to give them closure. If the animals are not chipped, they should send images to organisations such as Deceased Cats UK and Ireland or DogLost, which will happily share them to help to trace owners. Councils could even set up a web page or social media site. It is not too much to ask to keep all cats and dogs for at least seven days. If local authorities do not have freezers, they can use a local vets. The petitioners are not asking for anything that is not easily attainable, and given the attendance in the debate, it seems they have broad cross-party support.

We need Gizmo’s law to help to protect the basic rights of pet owners: the right to not have a family member thrown into a landfill, and the right to know whether their pet has been found and identified so they can collect the body and start the grieving process. Pets are part of the family. It is unacceptable for councils to treat pets as throwaway rubbish. Now is the time to do away with the postcode lottery of random policies and often uncaring practices that are described by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs as best practice. Campaigners and pet owners all hope that the Minister will do the right thing: make Gizmo’s law a reality.

Referendum on Scottish Independence

Debate between Ross Thomson and Martyn Day

Monday 13th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Martyn Day]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that very strong point. A substantial White Paper was produced on the 2014 referendum.

Before the last round of interventions, I was talking about EU membership. The point that I want to make is that independence for Scotland does not depend on Brexit, but Brexit clearly shows us what can happen when we do not control our own future. I remember that during the referendum campaign, Cameron, the Prime Minister at the time, told us that a no vote was

“not for the status quo”,

while the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) told us:

“A No vote will mean faster, better change.”

Where are we now?

That brings me on to the vow by the three Westminster leaders, who promised us extensive new powers for the Scottish Parliament. Sadly, those promises have been broken and all but forgotten about.

[Ross Thomson (Aberdeen South) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman talks about promises made during the campaign. Would he like to explain what happened to the second oil boom that John Swinney promised during that campaign?

[Martyn Day]

We hear fear stories about oil at different times. In my political career, which spanned 16 years as a councillor before I was elected to Parliament, oil has been one of the Brigadoons of Scottish politics. It is always running out or a burden to us when there is an election, and there are always new finds and windfalls afterwards.

The point that I wanted to make is that choice must always be informed. I try to be fair and balanced, and I hope that everyone here agrees that I am trying to open the debate in an even-handed manner. If I have one criticism of the 2014 referendum campaign, it is that the yes side, in which I participated—I am as much to blame for this as anyone—often projected a message of “change but no change”, while the no side clearly did the opposite, projecting a message of “no change but change”. Far from settling the issue, that left us with what became an emphatic “not yet” holding position, which combined with the failure of the winning side to respect the terms of their own mandate leaves us where we are today.

We were assured that a no vote would result in a union of equals, the closest possible thing to federalism and a guarantee that we would stay in the EU. By contrast, I and people like me on the pro-independence side respected the decision, and we did not plan even to consider having another referendum on such a short timescale, but circumstances change. [Interruption.] Circumstances change. Perhaps if the Government had delivered on the promises made during the referendum this situation would not have emerged.

Perhaps both petitions have been overtaken by events. Both predate the 2017 snap election, which provided the public with a political opportunity to express their democratic views on this and other issues, the result in Scotland being yet another win for the SNP and the pro-independence movement. As I said earlier, with 35 seats, we have a majority in this House from the Scottish electorate. We were elected on a clear pledge— I will quote it to remove any confusion—that

“any continued Tory attempts to block the people of Scotland having a choice on their future—when the time is right and the options are clear—would be democratically unsustainable.”

I have seen nothing to change my mind about that as we head towards a Brexit cliff edge.

It will not have escaped anyone’s notice that we have had a number of referendums recently, including the 2014 Scottish independence one. Indeed, I have witnessed 12 referendums across the UK in my lifetime, half of which directly affected Scotland and four of which I was eligible to take part in—and I did so fully in each case. As hon. Members will no doubt be aware, all 12 referendums were of a constitutional nature of some sort, and there is a clear pattern that major UK and devolved nation constitutional issues are now determined in that way.

That leads me to the question of process: is a referendum the correct method to decide on Scottish independence? If we believe in democracy, there are logically only two routes by which we can make such a decision: the parliamentary route or by public plebiscite. The debate has moved on considerably in my lifetime from the days when we took the view that having a simple majority of SNP MPs at Westminster was the route to negotiate for independence. Even Thatcher accepted that route, and her successor Major made the point that no nation could be

“held irrevocably in a union against its will”.

How do we express that will?