Chamber and committees

A number of areas in dog welfare and the sale of puppies to the public could do with being in a code of practice—absolutely.

I will commit to improving dog welfare wherever I can.

Are you asking my view on the bill’s not being applicable to working dogs that live outwith the home and are not classed as pets?

I do not have that information in front of me. I do not know whether any of my officials has it. We can certainly write back to you with it.

We will do that.

Yes.

We need to have a discussion about the wording around the bill and the code of practice, to address some of the concerns about advisory and directory. I get the wider point, and I have probably said something fairly similar to what you have just said, which is that, by having something in a bill such as this, it has heft behind it.

You know how these things work, Mr Carson—you have been doing it long enough.

There are a couple of things to say in response to that. In 2021, we made changes to that process, and I have to give Christine Grahame credit for prompting that. Initially, Ms Grahame was looking at doing work on the welfare of dogs. Changes were proposed with regard to the breeding of three litters and upwards a year needing to be licensed and registered, and that was a good move—that has really made a difference to the whole regime.

These are my issues. There will be families and individuals whose pet dog will have one litter or perhaps they have another dog that has a second litter, or whatever. That is not necessarily a breeding business. That is a family whose dog has had a litter, and I do not think that it can be classed in the same way as a business.

My main issue is that local authorities already have responsibility for licensed breeders that can breed three litters and above. To add a register for unlicensed breeders would add too much of a burden, and I am not convinced about what it would achieve for animal welfare.

There are also responsible people in this situation who will apply when they have a litter, whereas irresponsible people will not. How can local authorities enforce that? The personnel power that would be needed for that is unquantifiable. How would the people be identified and quantified? Again, we are talking about what is probably a domestic situation.

Karen Adam made a good point in an earlier meeting. Mistakes happen, not to put too fine a point on it, and, all of a sudden, you might find that your unneutered dog is having puppies in your kitchen at 4 in the morning. You might not have the wherewithal or the time for that and, all of a sudden, you have to be licensed as a dog breeder. That is onerous and probably unmanageable from local authorities’ point of view at a time when they are stretched and finding it difficult to provide the services that they already provide.

To be fair to Ms Grahame, the policy memorandum recognised the enforcement burden on local authorities, but there is also a cost to establishing and maintaining such a register and the personnel who would enforce it. I just do not see how it would be workable.

That is my reason for my support of the general principles of the bill, particularly around education of the buyer and so on, but I am not convinced that the registration of unlicensed breeders is needed, that it would have an effect and that it would be workable.

The part of the bill that says an unlicensed operator could do what?