Chamber and committees

First, there is a requirement to publicise, which Governments do not always do with members’ bills. Although they have said that they might do that with previous bills, they have not done so. It should also be repeat publicity. You can see that in the financial memorandum, which sets out the cost of a publicity campaign and of reinvigorating it. To me, that underlines the simplicity of the code and why it is understandable. It shows people some things that they have to consider and be aware of.

If the Government agrees to the legislation and we have public awareness campaigns, I hope that those start with images of what happens when the tests are not applied. The puppies have behavioural issues from being crammed into crates with lots of different breeds and unscrupulously sold for a fortune. The people who buy them are not rescuing them. The campaigns need to help us, the various welfare organisations, local authorities and everyone else who is involved with the issue to prevent the wrongful breeding of puppies.

To the best of my knowledge, the Government was content with the costs. Those are the gross costs of raising public awareness. When we offset the costs that are difficult to quantify as net costs, which are not only those to the public purse but the costs to welfare organisations of coping with the fallout from animals that have been abandoned, are in a state of distress or have behavioural issues, we are looking—

There are also licensed litters, but we will set that aside, because we are talking about unlicensed litters.

Any advert for a puppy or young dog would need to include a registration number for the dog from a licensed breeder or from an unlicensed owner. I envisage that that will provide reassurance for someone acquiring a dog, as they would know that the breeder or owner is compliant with all the regimes relating to the selling of puppies.

Again, that would require the public to be aware of the new system, in which every advert has a number for one or two regimes. The bill provides for awareness raising, and I envisage that that would need to be done on a rolling basis, not just as a one-off.

The creation of the registration requirement would mean that all puppies and young dogs sold in Scotland would be traceable, which would assist local authorities, the SSPCA and other welfare organisations in relation to enforcement. Sometimes, if a dog misbehaves and there is no owner in sight, it is hard to know whose dog it is.

At present, if someone is not a licensed breeder, it is assumed that they are breeding fewer than three litters. There is no simple way of establishing whether they are breeding on a wider scale in an unlicensed way. In other words, we do not know whether they are breeding lots and have not applied for a licence.

Traceability of any puppy would aid enforcement to prevent the wide-scale sale of puppies from multiple litters by those in the illegal puppy farm trade. The register would also inform decision makers for those purchasing dogs, and it could highlight when a seller was not compliant with either regime.

Those are the purposes of registration. It is about traceability.

Well, the Government could do it.

I do not want to pre-empt the committee, but here is what I hope that it will do if it takes the view that it might support the bill at stage 1, if I give an undertaking about part 2, subject to the Government’s own view. It would be good if the committee were to push the Government to put through a national microchipping database. As I have said, that has been on the cards for six years, and it would be a good opportunity to push that forward.

It would be another step towards the identification and traceability of dogs, for a whole range of reasons. Control of dogs notices could be part of it—I brought that legislation forward—as well as information about where the dog came from. A lot of stuff could be added, if we had the right system. I am not a technocrat, but a lot can be added to a proper system, including more information about the dogs, so that we have traceability throughout Scotland on a rolling—and national—basis.

It is a great opportunity for the committee to push the Government along that road, if the Government is going to say that registration is too onerous.

I would be very happy for the committee to pursue either cross-referencing or a national microchipping database. That would be superb—indeed, excellent—and it would move us a long way towards assisting with the legislation and the code.

No. The position is that I am keen on part 1. If the committee wants to pursue microchipping in the bill, it is open to it to take evidence from the Government. The Government introduced the idea in its evidence; I sat in the committee when the minister introduced a line about microchipping. If the committee wants to lodge amendments to add such provisions, it can always take evidence at stage 2.

The Microchipping of Dogs (Scotland) Regulations 2016 require substantial details to be recorded. That is already in force, but we do not have the ability to cross-reference. The regulations refer to

“the full name and address of the keeper ... the contact telephone number ... the e-mail address ... the fact that the keeper ... is also a breeder ... the fact that the keeper of the dog is a person who holds a breeding licence”

and

“the name of the local authority which issued the breeder’s licence”.

A whole list of things are there.

How many questions have you got? It would be nice to know that in advance.

Bear with me while I find the right place in my papers.

The focus of section 8 is on the first owner being a Scottish resident at the time of wanting to advertise sale or transfer. At that point, the litter would have to be registered. I come back to the difficulty of a situation in which the puppy is coming from abroad. Before we even get to that point, people should have checked by seeing the puppy with its mother. That is the key.

I have mentioned Romania and southern Ireland; with puppies that have been bred outwith Scotland and imported, it is necessary to have seen the puppy with its mother. I know that there are criminal ways in which people try to get round that, such as by having a false bitch with the puppy, but that is key, in the first instance. If someone who wants to acquire a puppy thinks that there is something amiss, because the puppy is not registered, they have not seen a registration for it or they have not seen it with its mother, alarm bells should be ringing. If they think, “This is not fit—there’s something wrong here,” they should not proceed or should make further inquiries.

No.

That is right.