Chamber and committees

I have thought about that question. That is one of the most difficult things to put a number on, because it would depend on the local authority. Think about the resource implications for the Highlands and Islands compared with Clackmannanshire or another small geographical area with fewer people. What increase in personnel would be required if it was expanded to the unlicensed breeders that we are talking about? What boots on the ground would be required on your patch? What transport costs would there be? It is a difficult thing to quantify. You would probably get a different answer from every local authority that you asked. Some might think that they needed another full-time equivalent person in the animal welfare team, and some might able to absorb the resource implications. I do not have a definitive answer to that question, because every local authority would have a different answer.

The question for the member who has introduced the bill is whether she is looking at 32 registers that feed into one central database. How would that work? How would they speak to one another? You could be travelling from one local authority area to another to buy a dog—most people do, because they go to where the dog that they want to purchase is. You would want all those databases to speak to one another.

Because that is not in the bill, it is not something that I have necessarily an answer to—

I will finish my response. If that had been put into the bill, we could have addressed it.

That is a key question. As I was listening to it, I was thinking about two things. On the one hand—as with quite a lot of this bill—the responsible people will sign up, but the question is: how can we find the people who do not? I do not know—it is impossible.

The other unintended consequence is that if people think that there might be penalties associated with not registering, they might not seek veterinary assistance. What if a household gets caught out and finds itself with a litter? They might want to move the litter on to people whom they know, advertise or whatever, but they might also be worried about the expense of everything else involved. If they cannot afford that, they might worry that, when they take the puppies to the vet for a check-up, the vet might phone the council to say that they are not registered.

It is a complex issue. We have to take into account the fact that we are not talking about people who are breeding for an income; after all, having up to two litters is not a business. We are probably talking about families who are going through a once or twice-in-a-lifetime experience. They might want to let their dog have a litter and to sell the puppies to people in their community whom they might know. Should they then have to do this onerous task? Perhaps I should take away the word “onerous”, as Christine Grahame is not suggesting anything onerous, but what does it really achieve?

The other question that I keep coming back to is this: does being on a register give some kind of false legitimacy to the welfare issues around puppies? That is a worry, too.

I could not have put it better.

I do not really know what to say to that. Are you expecting members of the public to phone up and identify neighbours with a litter of puppies?

Convener, that is a statement rather than a question.

I can go through some of the things that we are already doing. For some time, we have had campaigns, and we have been working with other agencies on campaigns, particularly the one that highlighted the need for prospective buyers to see pups with their mother. The tagline was “Where’s mum?”

The Scottish Government is doing other work in partnership with the United Kingdom Government and border agencies. I will run through some of those things. We have been part of a puppy trade working group led by the SSPCA, which has encouraged the sharing of intelligence between enforcement agencies across the UK about illegal breeding and import and trade of puppies. His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs is also part of that group, and we have been able to reclaim significant amounts of tax and undeclared income from puppy breeders and dealers.

That work has also enabled us to identify some of the people involved. It is a very lucrative business. It involves organised crime and the sort of people who are involved in other lucrative criminal enterprises. Of course, the product here is puppies. As we know—we have heard heartbreaking stories about it—a lot of those puppies do not live very long, and families are absolutely devastated and have no recourse. We do not know where those puppies come from. The buyers would not even know where those puppies were bred.

Therefore, there is all that work as well as the campaigns that we have been jointly involved in with the SSPCA. Members will know that those campaigns come to the Parliament every year. We have particular campaigns around Christmas time to highlight the fact that buying a puppy at Christmas is not the best idea and to shine a light on the “Adopt, don’t shop” message, on which we work with the SSPCA. As we saw during the Covid lockdowns, a lot of people took on puppies but realised that the lifestyles that they went back to after Covid were not in line with caring for a dog. The shelters are chock-full of dogs that need homes.

Those are the aspects that we have concentrated on but, as I said, Christine Grahame’s bill wants to shine a light on other areas of advice and campaigning that could reasonably help people to make informed choices about buying a puppy.

What is in front of us right now is Ms Grahame’s bill, which intends to introduce a new code of practice. It is up to the committee to decide whether to get behind Ms Grahame’s ideas about having a new code of practice based on what is outlined in her draft bill, propose amendments to what is outlined in her draft bill, or take a different view on the revision of the existing code of practice. It is in the committee’s gift to make that recommendation.