Puppy Smuggling

Tracey Crouch Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Nigel Huddleston]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point and I will be coming on to that issue in a moment.

Through good will and because they want to enjoy and care for an animal, families are sometimes led into doing something that is not appropriate for the animal. The animals’ circumstances can be horrible and they are not always in a great condition, which is extremely alarming.

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Gentleman for giving way and I congratulate him on securing this debate. I know that he is desperately trying not to mention the “B word” in this debate; I think we can all appreciate that. However, does he agree that one of the advantages of leaving the European Union will be that it will offer an opportunity to introduce far-reaching animal welfare regulations that go beyond the existing framework, including the reintroduction of tests for rabies?

[Nigel Huddleston]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention; indeed, one of the recommendations that I will come to in a moment is to introduce a test for rabies. We cannot do so at the moment, because we are in the EU, but that is an opportunity that we could take once we have left the EU. I also thank her for raising the “B word”.

Puppies should be at least seven months old before travelling to an EU member state from a third country, but the Dogs Trust found that in Serbia puppies as young as 10 weeks were given fake documentation, so that they could gain entry to the UK.

It is worth reflecting on the truly awful conditions that some of these poor animals have to endure. To evade detection, puppies are sometimes squashed into the hollow of backseats or covered in blankets and bundled under a front seat. They are often sedated to prevent them from making any noise or moving around. The Dogs Trust has told me that it has intercepted at the border puppies that have been given such heavy doses of sedative that it has taken them several days to come to. Travelling to the UK by car from countries such as Lithuania, Latvia and Serbia can take up to 30 hours, during which time puppies are given no toilet breaks, no time to exercise and very little, if any, food and water.

One case that exemplifies just how awful the trade is, is that of Lola, a French bulldog who was transported hundreds of miles from Lithuania, with temperatures in the van she was smuggled in reaching more than 40° C. She was heavily pregnant and it is illegal for a travelling pet to be pregnant. Shortly after being taken in by the Dogs Trust, she gave birth to four puppies, but it was such a difficult birth and she had been through such a traumatic experience that two of them were stillborn.

Lola has since had a number of health issues, ranging from infections to respiratory diseases, with some requiring surgery, but the Dogs Trust has managed to arrange treatment and she has been successfully rehomed. However, had Lola not been detected at the border, she and her puppies would have been advertised online and sold to an unsuspecting family who had no knowledge of the state of their health. Imagine someone bringing a new puppy home to their family, to very excited children, only to discover that it was unwell, possibly diseased and requiring treatment that could cost thousands of pounds.

The trauma of the journeys these puppies are forced to endure often leads them to develop behavioural issues and some, unfortunately, do not recover from their health issues and end up being put down. After rescuing 39 puppies from one commercial dealer, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals found that six needed to be put down immediately and two thirds had congenital defects. The RSPCA has also cited an investigation that found that about 20% of puppies bought on the internet died within six months.

What can be done to put an end to this trade? There have been many suggestions and, as has been mentioned, some of the changes can be made once we have left the EU. I wish to acknowledge and show my appreciation for the fact that the Government take animal safety and welfare seriously—for example, all the work that they have done on the banning of ivory sales and third-party sales of puppies. But they could, and should, go further. For instance, I urge them to bring before Parliament as soon as possible the already promised increase to five years of the maximum sentence for animal cruelty. That would apply to puppy smuggling.

I also ask the Government to consider introducing on-the-spot fines for those caught illegally importing dogs, and I encourage them to improve the presence of border officials at our ports, to carry out more visual checks at all hours of the day, every day of the week. The current disparity in the border presence between office hours and weekend and evening slots can all too easily be exploited by smugglers.

Post-Brexit, the Government could reintroduce a requirement for dogs to have a rabies blood test and set a restriction on how soon after the test they could travel. That could increase the age at which dogs could legally enter the country to six months, say. The benefits of that in tackling puppy smuggling are twofold: it is much easier for officials to assess accurately the age of puppies once they have reached six months, and the incentive to smuggle puppies in the first place would be reduced because they are less desirable to the public once they are that bit older.

I know that the Minister is familiar with the issues we have raised; he and I have had many conversations in the past. Colleagues wish to bring up many other points, so I will finish my speech. I know that the Minister will listen carefully, and I look forward to his response.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Rutley]

And we will do it very shortly. This is a huge priority for us. Obviously, it requires primary legislation. I hope that hon. Members can see that I am as committed as they are to bringing this forward as soon as we can, but it requires other parts of the Government to work with us. We will push it through. I know that the hon. Member for Workington (Sue Hayman) will cut me a little bit of slack, because she knows that I am keen to move the matter forward.

The hon. Member for Workington raised resources. We have increased resources at major UK ports by one third since 2017, specifically to detect smuggled puppies. That has helped us to intercept tragic cases such as that of Lola, the heavily pregnant French bulldog, who has already been mentioned today. Last year, we also launched our new dog importation intelligence steering group. It consists of national enforcement agencies such as Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, Border Force, the police and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, who are forming a collaborative partnership with the Animal and Plant Health Agency to disrupt puppy smuggling. I know that my right hon. Friends the Members for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale) and for Ashford (Damian Green) are concerned about that issue.

Our collaborative relationship with Border Force continues, and last year Border Force established a special point of contact at Dover, who is specifically in post to share information and intelligence on suspected puppy smuggling. DEFRA and APHA officials have been working in partnership with the Dogs Trust since 2015 on the Dover puppy pilot, which aims to tackle the illegal importation of puppies by providing additional resource to seize and quarantine smuggled puppies, as well as to ensure that they are placed in secure, caring homes afterwards.

APHA continues to be fully engaged at the border, and last year we saw a downturn in the number of non-compliant puppies seized. It is, however, too early to draw any conclusions from that single result, but we will continue to monitor the situation and to shine a spotlight on the issue.

Based on what we have seen so far, there is limited overall evidence of concealed smuggling, with the exception of one case last year in which Border Force collaborated with APHA to intercept 10 heavily sedated and concealed puppies. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire mentioned that case in his opening remarks. I will be discussing the issue in more detail with the Minister for Immigration when I meet her later this month to further our continued collaboration on puppy smuggling, which is one of the requests that has been made. We need a joined-up approach.

Improving and ensuring the welfare of animals is at the heart of our recent welfare reforms. In December last year, we announced that we were going to ban the third-party selling of puppies and kittens. I was proud to be able to do that. Third-party sales are often linked to so-called puppy farms and to shocking welfare conditions, which many of us have seen on video or TV footage. It is absolutely abhorrent, and a ban will mean that puppies and kittens younger than six months can only be sold by the breeder directly or adopted through rescue and rehoming centres.

When the selling of puppies is restricted to licensed breeders, that will also help to deter people from attempting to bring puppies into the country to be sold here. The ban will help to tackle puppy smuggling as well as to address welfare issues here in England. I know that hon. Members are interested to know when that secondary legislation will be laid, and I can tell them that that will be later this spring—so, very soon.

[Tracey Crouch]

This spring!

[David Rutley]

There are plenty of other things going on—I can see hon. Members complaining, but we are moving forward later this spring. There is much more that we want to do to move this forward—