Meeting of the Parliament 29 January 2026 [Draft]
::I, too, congratulate Mark Ruskell on taking a member’s bill to this stage. This is the fourth member’s bill that we have had in this Parliament regarding the welfare of dogs, but there has been no action whatsoever by Government.
I will not vote for the general principles of the bill, because there are no greyhound racetracks in operation in Scotland at the moment. At best, the bill might prevent one from opening, but to open a track you need planning permission, which is not a simple process. Indeed, it is difficult to see how that could happen in the current climate. The Scottish Government proposed a licensing scheme for greyhound racing, but pulled back on that, as was mentioned earlier. Putting that aside, I do not need to tell members about the time pressure in this Parliament after the experience of this week. Unfortunately, that is going to be the norm over the next eight weeks.
Essential legislation that we need to pass is coming forward—legislation that will make a huge difference to people’s lives. I am not convinced that we have the luxury to spend time on legislation that will have little or no effect when we risk losing impactful legislation because of it.
The bill does not deal with animal welfare issues, so greyhounds will still be bred, trained and housed in Scotland, albeit that they will continue to be raced in England. We need the Scottish Government to introduce legislation to deal with the welfare of dogs, be they greyhounds or other breeds. We have puppy farms and illegally imported dogs, all held in terrible conditions. No dog should be mistreated, and the Government needs to act. It is simply not good enough to keep having random members’ bills that, although well meaning, do very little to tackle the welfare of dogs.
The bill bans only oval racetracks, which will leave a loophole, and, although straight tracks are seen as much safer, that ban could lead to figure-of-eight tracks being developed, which I assume would be more dangerous.