Chamber and committees

Absolutely. One thing that will move forward after the dust has settled on all this is reform regarding dangerous dogs. I am very keen to work with Jim Fairlie, who is the new minister with responsibility for animal welfare. He has been in his role for only a few days, but I will have a meeting with him as soon as I can to see how we can work together.

You are right. Moving forward, it will be very important that we engage with all stakeholders, including the groups that you mention.

That was one of our initial concerns when the announcement was made. Jim Wilson was meeting the UK Government weekly and trying to get clarity about that. The UK Government did not come back saying “We can’t legislate in Scotland”, as such. The response in the letter that I received on 14 December 2023, which we had been requesting for months, was unclear and vague. I would not expect the UK Government to legislate for Scotland, but my not meeting UK Government ministers was not intentional for any constitutional reason; it was just because I was looking at the legislation and at what was happening in Scotland, engaging with stakeholders and Jim Wilson weekly to be kept updated.

I am sorry, but it is not an excuse.

Yes. Yesterday, I had discussions with Police Scotland on that specific issue. In a moment I will bring in Jim Wilson, who was also there. We are moving forward. We have set up the implementation group, which met for the first time yesterday. Police Scotland, local authorities and COSLA are all on board to see how we can implement the regulations. I understand that there are concerns about the police’s capacity for going out to see every single dog, so we will also explore how we could work with local authorities on that.

I have not had any meetings with the UK Government but, since November, I have had many meetings with stakeholders and weekly meetings with Jim Wilson, who has kept me updated on all progress.

It was none of the things that you suggest. As I said, this has been on-going for several months and I have been engaging significantly with all stakeholders regarding it. It came into place, I think, over the Christmas period, when we saw, largely on social media, instances of XL bully dogs being brought up to Scotland and the UK Government could not confirm whether that would be illegal.

Yes. We wanted to bring in the legislation at pace due to XL bully dogs being brought up from England and Wales.

I will address that but will first clarify a matter in relation to a previous comment. When the legislation was brought in on 1 February in England and Wales, one unintended consequences was that they did not know what to do with a dog if its owner died, which Jim Wilson just mentioned. We are looking at a timescale that is a little bit longer, so that we can cover all the unintended consequences in the second SSI. The UK Government is now adding such provisions, in hindsight, because its legislation was rushed through.

We are engaging with stakeholders about the issues, including the one that you raised about puppies, so that they can be considered for the future instrument.

Yes.

The definition is on the UK Government website, which we are following.