 Os fawr i'n gwasanaeth i ddweud i gyd, ac i fawr i chi i gyd dweud i ddweud i ddweud i ddweud i ddweud i ddweud i gyd dweud i gyd dweud i gyd dweud i gyd dweud i gyd dweud i gyd dweud i gyd dweud, maiόch mwyn i ddweud i ddweud i gyd yn gweithio. Mae'r un adam o rheswm o'i cymdeinast oedd oes i gyfer I-5, codiachio i ddafod am gychwyn i ddweud o fy nghymru? Betul gyd yn i ddweud i gyd i ddweud i G-5? Betul, haf meddwl. If we can then move on to agenda item 2, new petitions. The first petition for consideration this morning is a new petition on action against irresponsible dog breeding that is lodged by Eileen Bryant. Members have a copy of the petition, a note by the clerk and the spice briefing. I welcome Emma Harper MSP to the meeting for this item. First of all the petition will give evidence on the petition and is accompanied by Mark Raffer to the chief inspector with the especially the investigation unit of the SSPCA. I thank you for attending this morning. You have an opportunity to provide a brief opening statement of up to five minutes after which we will take the opportunity to ask some questions from committee members. I can ask you to make your statement. Thank you. I am here because I represent a pressure group that was formed in response to the BBC's panorama programme exposing the puppy farmers. ëIíve been privileged to have dogs of varying sizes and breeds as part of my family, all my life and the horrors that I saw on that programme. Sperd me on to be a voice for those defenceless creatures. ëAs a nation, we welcome dogs into our homes, they become a family member and we trust our children with them. ëThey are domestic animals, they are not commercially bred farm animals for the food chain. Mae'r dda, dyma'r gwaith er fyw o wblwyr sydd yn 99%. A ddych chi'n myfyrdd sydd gael i gael ww uncles, sydd eich fawr o'r unig fwyaf, a ddraeth i gael unig fwyaf ystrych i gweithio a gweithio'i gwaeth. A y pulpig nefer o'r pulpig ffaith yw eich gweld. Ac roedd brosig yn isolatofion ar gweithlig yma. Mae'r own ynwedd ei wneud ymddangod yn bwysig ar y gallu gael ar eich gweld iawn i'n mynd i chi'n dod mewn available yn amlaen iawn i gwerthu'r ychydig a os yna unrhyw meddwl i'r hefyd gan yr byw ac mae'r hefyd yn gondol i'r bwysig, yn afli Driver maw i'ch gawis ar y gyfer rydych chi'n credu cael y bwysig a phoblid am hyn? A dyna o'r byd ofyn yn sylwyr i'r hefyd, drewl yn gwir i'n cyfrwyng gyda hynny o'r hefyd yn maen i'ch gael i'r hefyd i gweithio cyfle a'r hefyd yn ymddangos sgwnau o'ch gyflwyno chi i iaith i gyflwyno i rhesu. Felly mae'n fawr i'r hyn o gyflwyno chi, oherwydd sy'n gwybod beth neu'r gofio'r ceir oedd ddau'r newydd. Yr cyffrediniedd gyda'r gwrthaf yng nghwy ngwylo'n ei ddweud i'w ddwyaf sy'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gwyll спonsoedd yma, rwyf nhw yw'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gwylo'n cywir i'w ddweud i'w gweithio'n gwyll f girlfriendau cyffrediniedd. How do you know what it is that they are actually breeding? How do you decide how many breeding bitches they should have? How do you control how many litters each bitch has? What is to stop the bitch being injected with hormones to bring her straight back into season after the litter she is feeding right now is taken away from her? What could be put in place to stop this cruelty? How is best practice addressed? And what about the rescue centres that some of these pups end up in? How do you licence them? Yesterday on Facebook there was a litter in Cercubre, advertised on a site called Dumfries and Galloway Pets for Sale. Cock-a-pugs, right? That's a cross with a cock-a-spaniel and a pug. £500 each, eight puppies, a nice £4,000, thank you. When I suggested to them that would be handy for the summer holidays, they blocked me. Surprise, surprise. These are two breeds with serious genetic faults, and apart from the absolute cruelty involved in this breeding, think of the possible vet bills for some family, or will these puppies just end up in rescue situations too? How does the Government enlist the help of the experts, the Kennel Club, to stop this cross-breeding? How do we maybe make vets take some responsibility to monitor these situations? I tackled another woman about a cock-a-poo. That's a cock-a-spaniel and a poodle. She told me it was well bred, it was an F1. Now I do a bit of gardening, and the only F1 I've come across is usually a cucumber plant. This of course highlights the huge problem of the back street breeders out to make money from a few litters every year. To get back to healthy breeding, what actions could the Government be taking to ensure there are fit and proper persons being granted a licence? What conditions could be attached to licences to ensure best practice on who is going to police this? Should it be compulsory for breeds that have known genetic faults to undergo a screening before they're allowed to breed? In Dumfries and Galloway, we have formed a great relationship with trading standards, and combined with the SSP, there is some great ground-breaking work being carried out, and I'm sure you'll be answered fully on any questions you might have about that by Mark here from the SSPCA. However, this is not the case all over Scotland, and what regards could be given to ensure all councils behave the same way? There is no use in a law or best practice happening in Dumfries and Galloway if the same rules don't apply in all 32 local authorities. There are other issues around licencing to be considered, and that's microchipping. What information should a microchip contain? Should it be a direct line to the breeder? Should the microchip contain information on lineage and health reports? Who should be allowed to microchip and to what database should the information go on to? At the moment, anyone can take a course on microchipping, and there seems to be no regulation regarding where that information is stored. Again, the joys of social media. There is a woman on the same site I spoke about earlier offering cheap chipping. What is the value of this chipping if it is so unregulated? I now come to the illegal importation of dogs. We are seeing the farmed puppies coming in through the ferry ports, saying they are coming from Northern Ireland, when in actual fact they are coming from the Republic of Ireland. How is the Scottish Government going to deal with this? What actions are they going to take? A pup from the Republic of Ireland has to carry a pet passport, a microchip being oculated against rabies, and in actual fact can't travel legally because of the inoculation situation until it is 15 weeks old. A pup from Northern Ireland, apart from the microchipping, does not have any of these restrictions. How is this going to be stopped? We have been working closely with our opposite numbers in Ulster and Ireland, and I am sure that Mark again will answer questions about the success of Operation Delphin. Puppies are big business, and we know organised crimes see this as a great money-making venture, and those people have no worries about animal welfare, so all efforts to disrupt the importation of these pups is difficult, and in fact lately we hear about various other ways, apart from the ferries, of bringing them in to the country, trying to beat the system. Lastly, I want to address the issue of education. Until we can cut off the demand for puppies, there will always be some people willing to risk anything for the large rewards, how is the Scottish Government going to address the issue of education? Should there be a media campaign? Should there be a long-term campaign through the schools? I know that research work has been carried out at the moment to look at the psychology involved when buying a pup. Perhaps that work will give solutions for the Government to consider re-educating people on how to buy a puppy, looking at making sure you see the pup's mum not meeting the seller in a car park anywhere, the list goes on and on. But what resources are needed to carry out an education programme should it be included in the school curriculum? The way forward for the long term, in my opinion, has to be with education and co-ordinated nationwide approach to registering appropriate readers and enforceable legislation to ensure this happens. Thank you for your time. I'm happy to answer any questions and I'm sure you'll have plenty for Mark Rafferty from the SSPCA. Thank you very much for that. That's a very helpful opening statement on many of the issues. The one that I want to start off with maybe will be for Mark to answer, but I think that it would be helpful to start with Operation Delphin. I wonder if you can explain for the record what Operation Delphin is, when it commenced and where it stands at the moment. Yes, good morning. Operation Delphin was a brainchild of the Scottish PCA primarily in response to welfare complaints in relation to pups that had been purchased by consumers in Scotland and then quickly became unwell and many of them died. We looked at the puppy trade, in particular the import of pups into Scotland and were able to establish that there was two main areas where pups are entering Scotland. One was from Ireland and one was from Europe. Operation Delphin then linked up with the various other animal welfare charities in the UK and in Southern Ireland. That's the RSPCA, the USPCA in Northern Ireland, the DSPCA, who the Dublin SPCA and the ISPCA to collaboratively work and assess the problem which was affecting each country and what was agreed was there is a problem, a similar problem effect in each country but quite differently in each country. What has been established at is that Scotland doesn't have the breeding establishments on a scale that Southern Ireland, and to a lesser degree that Northern Ireland has. Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland have huge establishments, some of them licensed and some of them unlicensed, some of them have as much as a thousand breeding bitches in cattle sheds. These bitches are treated as agricultural animals and we've spoke to vets who've been treating these animals and trying to establish a regime to ensure the welfare of the breeding bitches as well as the pups. What happens in any regime where we have intensive rearing of animals is there's an increase or an increase likelihood of disease parasites and that then gets passed over in the pups to the consumer who then has to deal with pups that become unwell and often die. The common diseases and conditions are parvovirus, giardia, campylobacter and all these are very serious conditions that could quickly affect fragile little pups. So the welfare organisations under the auspice of operation delphin came together approximately five years ago and the primary role or goal was to disrupt and detect unlicensed breeders, unlicensed traders in the hope that we can prove the welfare of the pups and the bitches. So that is the role of operation delphin. Since then we now have police Scotland involved, various police forces in England and Wales, we've got the ports police at Cairn Ryan and we also have a particular relationship with Dumfries and Galloway Council who identified a particular difficulty in relation to enforcement and to overcome that they authorised the SSPCA to enforce the regulations in relation to the import export of pups into Scotland because of the difficulties that they had and basically people that are trading in these dogs are coming across at three o'clock in the morning on ferries to avoid detection. So the council had difficulty resourcing that and we are now working with the council under their umbrella to enforce that area and I would think that going to these meetings in the UK and Southern Ireland to a certain degree Scotland is ahead of the game on this, we've got still a long way to go, we're assessing the problem and we are making inroads and we're having a positive effect on reducing and disrupting the trade but there's still a long way to go. That's very helpful, thank you very much. Brian Whittle. Thank you, convener. Good morning. I'd like to explore the issue around licensing of breeding or briefing material on your petition indicates that puppy farms are not necessarily unlicensed or illegal. Is your understanding that licences are only needed for what are called breeding establishments and that these are establishments that produce five or more litters in a year? Yes, that's a really interesting question. There is two main licences, one is a breeding licence and that restricts how many bitches you have and how many pups you can breed in a year. That doesn't seem to be the particular problem in Scotland or the main problem, the main problem appears to be dealers. Now dealers require a dealers licence or a pet shop licence because in effect they're operating as a pet shop, they don't have the breeding bitches and they don't have the fathers of the pups so they go, they source their dogs, their puppies from breeders and then they deal these pups. Councils then issue licences either breeders licences and the difficulty in relation to breeders licences actually quantifying how many breeding bitches they have because the people are entitled to have so many breeding bitches once the licence is granted, following up that licence check seems to be inconsistent to say the least. So people start off with five breeding bitches or six breeding bitches and then soon they can have 20 breeding bitches and there's very little checks to done to regulate that. So even if they do have a licence and one of the difficulties of the licence is a person that's breaching that licence, once the council have granted that licence they can't revoke that licence. It's only a sheriff that can revoke that licence so it has to go to sheriff court having as part of a criminal case for a sheriff then to decide to revoke that licence. Councils give a licence but they're unable to revoke it. Thank you. If I can, if I can, if I'm okay with you, just stick with the idea of licensing and in the background information to the petition you offer some suggestions including the creation of a unique breeder number for every legitimate dog breeder. Can you give an idea of how this system might work in practice? For example, who would be responsible for operating and monitoring such a system and how would you define a legitimate dog breeder? Yes, I think the licensing system is not individual to puppy breeders. You know that licensing is done throughout Scotland for vast many reasons. A licence liquor trade and I would suggest that it remains with the council but in terms of funding that that licence in there has to be a system in place to create some funding so that the council are able to enforce and inspect and regulate the licence in better than they are at the moment. Some councils charge very little for a licence, some charge a little bit more. I would suggest that there should be more thought towards having a realistic licence charge that would then fund the regulation and inspections that are required. Sorry, just at the back end of that question was how you define a legitimate dog breeder. Legitimate dog breeders would have to apply for their licence and then stand up to the rigours of inspection by the council just the same if you were applying for a licence for another issue. So you would need to be deemed a fit and proper person by the local council and your establishment would have to be inspected as to be suitable in terms of what you are proposing if you're going to have two dogs or you're going to have five dogs. So I think that the councils would need to do more regulation and more inspection to have a realistic idea of how these people were trading because at the moment licences are issued and I think in some occasions there's very little inspection if any done in relation to the activities of that person trading under the licence. That's a licence trade. Obviously there's the unlicence trade as well. I appreciate that's a different matter but there's a vast amount of people out there because of the low penalties that are associated with breaching a licence or trading with a licence are prepared to take the risk of trading without a licence as opposed to going through the rigours of getting a licence. So I'd like to make it clear that the Scottish SPC are not against dog breeding or the sale of the dogs, it's a responsible breeding within ensuring the welfare of the dogs that the Scottish SPC are looking to improve. So this may actually be a debate about how we can increase dog responsible puppy breeding as opposed to restricting puppy breeding. Good morning Eileen, good morning Mark. My question sort of follows on from Brian Whittles on a way but I'm interested in getting a sense of the demand that exists for puppies. The briefing we have refers to an RSPCA report called Soul the Pup which estimated UK demand for puppies to be between 700,000 and 1.9 million a year. Battersea dogs and cats whom estimated that just under 70,000 of these are bred by licence breeders. The rest will have come from a number of other sources including small scale breeders who produce fewer than five litres per year and don't require a licence as you've just been outlining. However it'll also include illegal and unlicensed breeders and imports from elsewhere in Europe. The RSPCA estimates that around half the puppies in the British marketplace could come from unlicensed breeders. Are there any estimates that you could give us as an idea of the numbers in Scotland specifically? It's a really difficult question or thing to quantify. What I can say and which may help you is that there appears to be at the moment there has always been a demand for pups and people will always want to have a puppy within their family and they should be entitled to have a puppy but at the moment there seems to be an unquenchable appetite by the public for some particular breeds of dogs which are either defined as new breeds or designer breeds and it's a question of supply and demand. If you look yourself at the internet in Scotland and look at the advertising platforms in Scotland you can see that the prices that these pups that are crossbreed pups are commanding. £1,000 is probably an average of what these pups are demanding so I would say in terms of how many pups unfortunately I can't give you a number but the other issue is we live in a culture that is increasingly a consumer culture where items including animals and pups are looked at as commodities and these are throw away commodities for some people so they buy a pup on the Saturday a month down the line they no longer want it in the hand and we're getting these designer breeds handed into our rescue shelters because people no longer want them they don't fit in with a lifestyle they've not planned it properly so I would say unfortunately I can't give you a number but it is a very serious and significant amount of animals that are coming in into Scotland. So is that their fashion is a trend at the time and then that'll demand that'll take the demand at that time? Yes and I think that that fashion is perhaps being promoted by celebrity and within the media. If you look at the media yourself on television these little designer handbag dogs are extremely popular and that obviously has a knock-on effect to consumers. Thank you. Sorry, convener, I should have declared an interest as a member of the cross-party group on animal welfare. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, convener. Good morning ladies and gentlemen. You mentioned the public's desire for designer puppies. Is this something that you Mr Afty believe is having a significant impact in driving demand and potentially leading to an increase in unlicensed breeding? Yes, I think it is and the issue one of the issues with these particular designer breeds or new breeds or cross breeds is the original breed standard. What does a cavapug look like? What is the breed standard? The original breed standard so when you get so what you're getting you're irresponsible or downright deceitful breeding of adult dogs that are producing pups that actually don't fit the breed standard because there is no breed standard. So there is a kind of cavalier or irresponsible approach by the breeders to the puppies or the item or the product that they're producing and that has not only is it in the physical aspects of the dog but also there's little regard given to the temperament or behaviour or socialisation of these pups. So we've got dogs that one are not being bred particularly well in the first instance and got congenital defect on inherited health problems but also you've got behavioural problems or socialisation problems that often stay with the dog throughout its entire life. So and I think that's having an effect on the population of dogs in Scotland as a whole as a negative effect on dogs in Scotland as a whole. Can I ask a supplementary question? Is there any area in Scotland, other particular areas of Scotland that has significant instances of this in design of dog breeding? At the consumer end it's all the major cities that are buying these dogs and as I've said thankfully we don't have puppy farms, Scotland does not have puppy farms on the scale that Southern Ireland or Northern Ireland has. We don't have institutions where there's hundreds and hundreds or a thousand breeding bitches. Councils thankfully have taken a different approach and have regulated that. That's one of the positives with the council. Unfortunately the other side because of this inconsistency within the council there's very little regulation done at the consumer at the sales end. So people that are selling unlicensed or breaching their licence there's very little enforcement being done by the councils in that respect. We're encouraging councils to when they're considering licences to speak to the organisations that can give them information that would assist in their decisions about granting licences and that is obviously ourselves because we often are at the forefront of when someone buys a pup it becomes unwell and dies and they tell us it comes from a particular person. We're able to give that information to the councils and they can then make a decision based on this information and many of the councils are beginning to buy into that now. So hopefully that should have a positive approach going forward in terms of what licences they wish to grant. Thank you. Following up on the issue of local authorities you mentioned in your opening statement that to paraphrase there are different levels of commitment to address the issue and that isn't satisfactory and there must be a clearer implementation throughout the country. Now you've identified a range of agencies that have been involved in work on this issue and it appears from the briefing that we've received from Spice that they're responsible for enforcement of the various regulations associated with importing pet dogs and certain other animals. Could you clarify whether local authorities have been included in these agencies? Yes, we have had local authority representation through the trading standards. Dumfries and Galloway trading standards have played quite a large part in our meetings and we're able to discuss with them various situations that have happened. They've been very co-operative. Okay, that's good to hear. I have to say that, convener, I saw at first hand when I was on Falkirk Council's planning committee a number of years ago when we had to deal with an issue of an unlicensed puppy farm and to say the conditions were shocking was certainly an understatement and it's probably fair to say that council officers could have done with greater enforcement powers at that time given that they were dealing with a well-owned gangster on that occasion and if no qualms in using that word publicly. Clearly, it's good to hear that local authorities are on board and addressing the issue of enforcement. Thank you. Thank you, convener. Really, just following on again from Angus's question about enforcement, can you say what particular barriers there might be to ensuring enforcement efforts are effective? One of the barriers is historically the lack of joint working or collaborative working between the various organisations and I would say I don't think there's a single organisation that will be able to solve this issue. It needs to be a joined up approach by a number of organisations to use their expertise and resources and powers to collaboratively in an attempt to disrupt this trade. When I first became involved and particularly when we were discussing the is it appropriate for SSPCA to be authorised to enforce the council's powers in relation to people, important dogs, my first concern is this just a matter of regulation and paperwork. That's what I thought this issue may be. The more I looked into it, the more I found that there is a serious welfare or there's serious welfare issues throughout and much of the industry particularly the unlicensed or unregulated industry because of the drive for profit is built on a foundation of compromising the welfare from the very start to the very end. In terms of the Scottish SSPCA and its statutory responsibility to enforce the animal health and welfare act, I think that it is entirely appropriate that the SSPCA is addressing that on that footing and trying to get as many organisations to buy into this as we can. In terms of the councils because there's so many councils some are better than others and some really haven't addressed the problem at all but I'm sure as people become aware of the issue particularly the large amounts of money involved, the serious amount of suffering and the fact that organised crime has identified this as an avenue for exploitation then people will be forced to set up perhaps people that have been slow to pick up they will be forced to pick up on this and address it just because of the amount of areas that it's now eating into and it's not just the profit of the dogs now people up until recently were selling dogs and making money and organised criminals were selling money they're now using the puppy industry as a means to launder conventional criminality the profits from conventional criminality so they're justifying having large sums of money through illicit dog dealing when a natural fact that comes from other more conventional criminality drugs or whatever and that's why we're working so close with the police their intervention strategy and whatever because it does affect communities not and not just the animals and I suppose with a greater public awareness you know it will eventually that there will be an absolute impetus put into agencies coming together to solve it the more it's talked about the more publicity it gets the consumers got a big part to play in this the public have got they've got to be whilst you have we're striving to get responsible breeders they should be responsible buyers and not look to to save a few quid by buying a puppy in a car park and ask that 11 o'clock on a Saturday night because you wouldn't buy any other consumable item or you wouldn't buy your fridge freezer and and no scenario so why would you think you buy an animal that you're going to have for 15 20 years in those circumstances and then be surprised when someone goes wrong just one other thing I was curious about you mentioned the massive puppy farms in Ireland and you know thousand breeding britches et cetera and given that you know about those I mean what happens to the authorities go in and close them down or you know do they get closed down and then they just reopen again many of them are licensed so many of them and many of them have had and that's obviously an issue for southern Ireland and their authorities and their local councils and but we're working to provide the information from our end to say these pups are coming over we know that that industry is willing some of them are willing to break the law and breach the regulations in terms of microchipping so pups that come from southern Ireland into the illegal trade are not microchipped and that's specifically to avoid traceability back to southern Ireland so they're not like so these these people that are licensed and we're passing that information back to southern Ireland so the authorities in southern Ireland can address that and they are dealing with that at the moment but it is taking them time to like ourselves and like England and like Wales to address the problem and then come up with strategies to so it's a developing issue there as well. Okay thank you. Did you just follow on from Rona Mackay's last point there have you looked at licensing regimes in other parts of Europe and is there any good practice out there that the Scottish Government could consider? I think that it's a yeah another really interesting we haven't as yet looked at other European countries I know that I know the regime in southern Ireland and southern Ireland I think have got a lot of work to do and they're in a similar position to ourselves if not worse in terms of how their councils license regulate follow-up inspection that is perhaps an area that we could take on warden and speak with or look at how other countries in Europe deal with this issue but what is interesting is the prices that these pubs are commanding the £2,500 for a French bulldog doesn't appear to be these prices are not being met in places like Germany, France and Belgium it seems to be very much a UK we're prepared to pay these prices for some reason so you know they don't have that consumer end problem that we have. Some people are prepared to pay these prices I get my border of colleagues free from the hell of this. Good on you but yeah I think that's a sensible way to yeah yes Ms Rafferty in your opening statement you talked about current microchipping practice and posed some questions about which database details should be registered on the microchip and the regulation of those who carry out microchipping how would you answer these those questions if you were designing a new system? Yeah I think it doesn't need definitely needs to be looked at and now in each country in the UK and Southern Ireland it is a statutory legal requirement to microchip dogs what I would say is in each country they're all having their own problems in terms of people picking up and adopting this procedure the problem in Scotland if we can stick to Scotland at the moment is in principle I think it's a really good idea the traceability of animals back to where they came not only just in respect to the any breeding but also the more obvious where pets get lost or need to be returned to their to their owners the difficulty that we have in Scotland is you can microchip an animal by buying the microchip off the internet you can implant the chip by someone who's uh who's got the self-approved and you can't put it on any wonder or any one of a number of databases or actually what they a lot of people are doing that involved in monolithic they microchip them and then don't register them so when they when the dogs move or come through uh Cairn Rhine or through the ports they scan they have a chip and everyone thinks that that's as far as yeah it's got a chip it must be legal so at the moment we've got too many databases we need to consolidate that or restrict ideally to one southern island i've got two so we need to look at the amount of organisations where you can register the chip and then we need to see some more robust enforcement to get the message across that actually this is a legal requirement and there can be penalties if you don't comply with the law in conjunction with education and perhaps facilitating people to get their dogs microchipped by perhaps ssbca or dogs trust making it more available to people that that have got dogs and perhaps wouldn't get them chipped and make it more easy for them to get them chipped can i ask something about that when i took my dog to the vet about a year ago the first question he asked he said morris um you've got to have your dog chipped because there's a regulations coming in what enforcement of the pressure has been putting on the veterinary surgeries and the veterinary surgeons professionally to actually enforce that well i think it should be the responsibility of the owner or the breeder and i think perhaps to try and squeeze it onto the vets may not be the right approach is the response not there is i think that's about like you taking your car for an mot and the person sent to you you need to get your car mot and then going back to the company and saying you should be making sure it's the responsibility of the person who has the animal or breeding the dogs i think that should have the responsibility and vets and all these other try to promote that and make it easier sorry so there's no enforcement so there's you see no way of getting the vets to actually enforce that no i think that you know maybe needs more exploration or whatever but i would think and i wasn't prepared for that question but i could see difficulties in that particularly with veterinary profession and you know you want people to take their dogs to the vet and encourage people to take their dogs to the vet for well and you don't want to have a situation perhaps where people are reluctant to take them for the vet because they would fear that they may be reported or there could be enforcement or or whatever so i would i would say perhaps for consideration but at the moment i think that that's perhaps got difficulties attached to it i did have a more microchip so that's fine i should think so too thank you very much convener many questions have been asked already and that's great because i have a declare an interest because i've been working on illegal traffic and animal welfare issues i am on the animal welfare cross-party group so and i have been working directly with mark rafferty and eileen brine because i happened to look after the port of cairn ryan in the south scotland constituency as well so i'm interested in pursuing like further licensing because the work that we've done is contact national trading standards to look at maybe some kind of across all 32 councils maybe standardising the approach to licensing so that whether you've got five dogs five or fifty dogs or five hundred dogs maybe the standardized cost would cover that currently in Dumfries and Galloway it's 175 pounds to get a breeder's license and that's half the cost of one pup if we're talking about you know designer dogs so what would your thoughts be on you know cosla engaging trading standards engaging so we've got a standard approach across scotland i think that's a really good idea and i think that the cosla and the councils are key to if we are going to solve of of an impact on this issue then the councils have to be engaged at this level there has to be a consistency within the councils and a realistic expectation as to what they can do based upon the cost of of doing what they have to or what it is to do and 175 pounds for a license for an establishment where you can make many hundreds of thousands of pounds to me seems to be a bit out of kilter so i would certainly welcome that okay i've just got another supplementary about vets across scotland as well should they be tracking the number of puppies that are coming in that maybe have parvo virus or some kind of other disease maybe should they be asking where did you get that dog and then tracking the treatment of the dog and whether they survived or whether they were euthanised because in addition to just spending 500 pounds on a brand new puppy that you've never seen with its mother which is actually the best practice should the vets maybe be helping by asking the questions as well i would say that we do get a buy in from vets and many vets to contact us right up to the i've got joe blogs bringing 300 pups into me every month to get vaccinated i suspect they're coming from intensive regimes and this person is operating a puppy dealing business to instances where the pups do have parvo virus i think the difficulty for some vets is that one obviously their their responsibility to look after the animal and the confidentiality of their client based upon sometimes just because the dog has parvo virus doesn't mean to say it's come from intensive regime parvo virus is a is a condition that any dog can get any pup can get that's why we vaccinated dogs against parvo virus it just is a particular issue or is a particular risk in intensive regimes and pups that have been bred intensively because they've been removed often removed from their mothers and not inoculated are susceptible to parvo virus so i think the education meeting with vets and encouraging vets to come forward and and give us their suspicions and whatever would be welcomed and and our vast amount of occasions vets do do that and if we're going to educate vets we should be educating the public as well and if we did a public information campaign because i know the government is looking at research right now about what motivates people to buy a dog and from gumtree or facebook and i know facebook and gumtree have a policy where they don't endorse the sale of animals but how do they enforce that because we know it's happening and you know if there was a public information campaign should it be television radio papers how would you suggest we take that forward and who would be the audience well actually i am i think all of it i think it's all got to come together i i would like to see it in schools i would like to see it as i said somewhere into the curriculum that we're actually educating children because children will educate their parents they they will help their parents choose where a puppy comes from and if you can get it into children not to buy you know from a car park go and see the mum do that i think the most important thing is getting it into the children but we've got to do it always we've got to hit absolutely everywhere with it and i think yes the campaign should be everywhere can i add in an attempt to gather the information that the public want or need or would assist the scottish sbca are working with edinburgh university at the moment to do studies into the puppies and the puppy trade what motivates a person to buy why they buy from particular people why they buy particular things as well as the health of pups from regime from intensive breeding regimes so we've identified so many people that have bought pups from intensive regimes we've also looked at people that have not bought of bought pups that are not from intensive regimes and we're looking at all that or looking to to look at that data to see is there health issues what are the health issues how often what's the likelihood if you buy a pup from an intensive regime how many times are you likely via the vet visit the vet what and also the the behavioural issues does your pup bite is it is it on social is it difficult to train so all this information is going to come and i think we're going to get a result on that this year so this information is going to be available and that's the kind of information i think that the public would need to make an informed choice on what they're buying can i ask one more supplementary briefly it's about just to clarify about hmrc do they have a special task force that are looking at people selling dogs but they're not declaring the the income yes and at the risk of speaking on behalf of hmrc i'll make it clear i'm not speaking on behalf of hmrc hmrc have played a part in operation delphin and they are playing a significant part in operation delphin people that are selling pups and trading pups and making an income from pups are liable for tax the same as anyone else for any other income hmrc are looking at that and looking at the puppy trade and have launched a task force specifically to identify these people my understanding is that they're making significant inroads in respect of people that are not paying income tax in vat and we're talking many hundreds of thousands of pounds for individuals i understand it might be as much as five hundred thousand pounds for single individual people that haven't paid that's income tax hasn't been paid as well as vat so they are they are making a significant impact on the trade and and and people are beginning to learn if you if you do run a business and you are selling pups and making an income you are liable for the tax and the vat if it reaches a particular threshold and i would really welcome and continue to rely on the support of hmrc in that respect but they're working albeit under the umbrella of operation delphin obviously in isolation and under their own guidelines and and but it's extremely helpful the work that they've been doing okay thank you thank you okay thank you very much for today i think one thing that i feel around public awareness if it's supposed to be fashionable and something that you would want to aspire to as a celebrity when you shine a light on some of these practices i think there can be a reaction to that that sense of shock we can remember in the fur trade or whatever that actually the people who are role models to others of what an aspirational consumer good was became also advocates for saying that's not acceptable so i think what you've done today in shining a light on on the trade does in itself contribute to that idea this is not something that people want to be associated with so i can thank you very much indeed for coming along today we have to think about how we want to take the petition forward i think we do want to take it forward i think a whole number of people that we can contact i think we'd also want to speak to the Scottish Government on the point that Morris makes perhaps asking the British Veterinary Association what their views are on that balance between the responsibility to the welfare of the animal and the broader questions and i think there's one of the things that's come out very strongly has been around local authorities so maybe getting a view from them just to see what the government guidelines are to local councils it seems it was raised earlier on that there's not a consistency across all councils around cost of licensing around you know how we deal with with the illegal trade so i'm very interested to hear the government had to say about that okay so yes there's definitely a cost law very companies police scotland trading standards port authorities um dog's trust i mean i must be a lot all interested stakeholders i think all the number of animal welfare organisations you might have a human across party group i mean i'm always been it may be sensible to also include the hrmrc on that yes like this yeah be it interesting one and perhaps specifically to write to Dumfries the Galloway to because they've clearly been trying to address this question and probably a lot further forward than other um local authorities is there anything else could i perhaps i'm really sorry is it can i add a final point that i haven't one of the issues that that we are finding is different we have a prosecution where we have seized 100 dogs at the moment in relation to just one one case we've had these dogs now for approaching 18 months in our care the cost of looking after these dogs is in excess of 100 000 pounds way in advance of that it's also i would argue not in the interest of the pup to take a pup into the care and keep it in institutionalised kennels albeit how good they are for for in those formative years there isn't a system at them or there is difficulty for us to to have any other way to deal with these pups other than hold them until the conclusion of the case there is legislation in various other pieces like for instance if it's cattle or sheep or agriculture animals that these animals can be disposed of sold or whatever moved on to better circumstance than held in limbo unfortunately one of the main issues for consideration at the moment is one if you do see these animals the cost but also is it in the interest of the animals to keep them for nearly two years in kennels waiting on a result of a court case so that's one area so this may be something I mean with with who the clerks can advise us and who we would be speaking to would be the justice secretary or on the court side to ask a review in that but that makes perfect sense if the if the prosecutions are being delayed the impact in the welfare of the of the animal is they have to be rehomed you're rehoming an animal that's come from an intensive regime that's then been held in kennels for two years what is that animal like at the end of that period to go then into a family uh so yeah okay well i think that there's a whole range of organisations and interested groups that we would want to to contact and so perhaps i think we have to defer because we've had that fact i think that we can take an honest approach on this until that's done yeah um so i think we can do that and obviously the mind that we are looking for this information around you know what the what the balance of provision is going to be by the scottish government um and we can come back to committee after the fact finding if it's taking place but we wouldn't we wouldn't envisage that being too far away but possibly beginning with a new parliamentary session i was wondering convener in the meantime if there was to be a decision with regard to the split between the provision of insulin pumps and cgm devices if we could get an early indication of that perhaps before the site visit before a fact finding visit yes it would be helpful for us when we do take further evidence yeah if we could contact scottish government and highlight to them that we are having this continued work we're going to do a bit of you know the fact finding the visits were said but any information around progress and making that decision would help to inform that yeah i'm interested in having a cross-party group for diabetes and i think why are we kind of further from what what angst is saying is this 10 million pounds um how that's going to be split it actually becomes key yeah and what that will actually am i how far that will spread yes well and it's always that balanced decision between maximize impact spreading it so thinly that people don't really get the benefit anyway okay that's very helpful if we can then move on to the final petition agenda it's petition 16c1 by morning mc v on child welfare hearings members have a note by the clerk and the submissions received members will see that we've been provided an example of the pro forma used to record information in child hearings the children and young people's commissioner is supportive of the petition the scottish courts and tribunal service and the scottish government have both noted that the scottish civil justice council is looking at the issue of case management in family cases they've also noted that the petition would have resource and cost implications and i wonder if members have any comments or suggestions for action i mean i think well they have said and there's quite a lot of stuff that's come through here that are costing resource and cost implications but they don't see what they are and i mean if it's a bit of resource implication if it's a massive one i would have thought with modern technology less so but if the fundamental thing is that the petitioner feels that when they go from one hearing to the next the full information on what's happened up to date is not being provided that's quite important but you don't want to make it cumbersome or complex and i think the the from the pre hearing panel their pro forma is quite interesting in the way in which they deal they deal with that and that presumably goes into notes and they have information for the next hearing because one of the issues in the hearing system is not necessarily having the same panel members in front of you for every case so i think the thing about forms like that which are used in children's hearings as well it depends how well they're filled in and who's filling them in whereas if it was being recorded that's a more accurate picture of of events and i think it'd be important to find out if we can get an idea of what the cost would be to move to digital recording because i don't think you can really compare it to the paper template that we have here so i think that would be key we need to ask them for that um was it you may i mean if somebody has been a panel presumably if you get that kind of form in your papers that is something you would read realistically if you had a digital recording of a hearing there would still need to be a summary of it somewhere i mean realistically i'm not i'm not saying that the child welfare hearing and the panel are comfortable and i don't think that i understand they're not both the same thing i'm just thinking in practical terms if somebody involved in that kind of work would you sit through a whole digital hearing or i think it would be useful if there wasn't enough information on the form which often there isn't um and as i say depends who's filling it in and what information they want to give so if you still had questions and it wasn't clear you know from what was being said in the form a digital recording would be used as backup um i just i mean i just think that in this day and age it would be the way to go um but again we need to find out what the cost implications are and get more information on it um because but you know paper forms can get lost or you know mislaid so i think it'd be a more secure way of doing it so if we can um encourage right scotch government um for more information about the cost implications that such a move would be and if there are other things that you think would be a problem do they have a view on using the pro forma template um and other information we get from elsewhere it has been suggested we're out to the family law committee of the Scottish civil justice council perhaps i think it's important yeah yeah because there may be something from that perspective that we are missing yeah exactly okay um in that case we recognize and still that there are issues here that we would want to address to in order to address the concerns that petitioner has highlighted um and that again will be one that we would want to come back to um with the consideration of that final petition we've now finished the agenda in public so can i close this meeting