Meeting of the Parliament 09 May 2024
I am pleased to speak on behalf of the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee, reflecting on our stage 1 inquiry and report on Christine Grahame’s member’s bill, the Welfare of Dogs (Scotland) Bill.
I will provide some background on our inquiry. We issued a call for written views, which received 95 responses from individuals and 23 responses from stakeholder organisations. We explored the issues that were raised at a round-table discussion with animal welfare organisations, the Law Society of Scotland, the then Minister for Energy and the Environment and Christine Grahame, and we published our report on 5 March.
Christine Grahame has already spoken passionately about her reasons for introducing the bill and the objectives that it seeks to achieve. She told the committee:
“I want the public to understand ... that they are the custodians and are policing the welfare of Scotland’s puppies and young dogs”
and that targeting
“demand will change the nature of supply.”—[Official Report, Rural Affairs and Islands Committee, 22 November 2023; c 22.]
We heard evidence from animal welfare organisations that the number of dogs bred by irresponsible breeders continues to grow, resulting in some people buying dogs that present behavioural or health issues, which in turn results in an increasing the number of requests to rehome dogs. Those animal welfare organisations support the general principles of the bill.
The Kennel Club told us that the existing legislation targets irresponsible breeders and that it is not enforced adequately. Bad or rogue breeders or those who import illegally bred dogs
“can pretty much get away with it.”—[Official Report, Rural Affairs and Islands Committee, 20 September 2023; c 6.]
The Scottish SPCA outlined how entrepreneurial rogue breeders can get around measures that are designed to tackle irresponsible breeding.