Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many disqualification orders have been issued in England and Wales under s34 of the Animal Welfare Act 2006 in each of the last five years.

Records of disqualification orders are not held centrally.

Records of the number of offenders convicted of animal welfare offences are held by the Ministry of Justice. However, records of disqualification orders made under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 are not routinely held by that department, but are held on the Police National Computer. To breach a disqualification order is an offence and therefore numbers of breaches are held by the Ministry of Justice.

Although records of disqualification orders are held on the Police National Computer, because of the way they are recorded it is not possible to link the number made under the 2006 Act to the number of convictions under the same Act.