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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many dogs brought into the UK under the Pet Travel Scheme were found to be non-compliant with that scheme's requirements in each year since 2012.

The requirement to ensure that pet dogs travel to Great Britain on approved routes is the responsibility of the relevant transport companies. It is a condition of their approval that the transport companies check 100% of pets declared by their owners for compliance with the EU Pet Travel Scheme.

The table below lists the number of audits completed by APHA staff on pet checkers and the number of fails identified during the audits.

The data on the number of pets travelling from 2012/2014 was taken from the PETS database. We rely upon Pet checkers who operate upon behalf of APHA to complete the database and so cannot guarantee the accuracy of the data. A different system of recording the number of pets entering Great Britain in 2015 was implemented in Jan 2015. However, we still rely on pet checkers to provide this info and so cannot guarantee the accuracy of the data.

Of the pets found not to be in compliance with the entry rules, these pets were either detained until their compliance could be established, re-exported or placed into quarantine.