 Good morning and welcome to the fifth meeting of the Public Audit and Post Legislative Scrutiny committee in 2019. Can I please ask everyone in the public gallery to switch your electronic devices to silence so that they don't affect the committee's work this morning? Item 1 is decision on taking business in private. Do members agree to take items 3 and 4 in private this morning? I agree. Item 2 is our Post-legislative Scrutiny of the Control of Dogs Scotland Act 2010. This is panel 1 this morning. We have two panels this morning, and I would like to welcome our witnesses and to thank them for coming to the committee meeting this morning. We do really appreciate it. The purpose of this evidence session is to hear directly from people affected by dog attacks or who otherwise have knowledge about the impact of these attacks and also about the action taken by the relevant authorities, whether it's police or council, and what needs to change in our law. Now, as usual, MSPs will ask questions from witnesses, but witnesses can also ask questions of each other. We still want to retain some structure to the discussion, so I'd appreciate it if anyone would like to speak if you could catch my eye, indicate to me or catch Lucy's attention and she will tell me. When you speak, your microphone will be activated automatically, so there's no need to touch the button panel in front of you. I'm going to start by asking everyone to introduce themselves. I'm Jenny Marra. I am convener of this committee and MSP for North East Scotland. Good morning, I'm Liam Kerr. I'm also an MSP for the north-east region, and I'm deputy convener of the committee. I'm Claire Booth, and in 2015 my son, who was six years old at the time, was mawled by two English Bill terriers. I like Neil MSP for every inchots, and I introduced the original dog control bill. I'm Judy Evans. I'm a plastic surgeon who lives in Plymouth, but I'm the honorary secretary of the Royal College of Surgeons up here, and I represent plastic surgery for the college, which is, of course, an international college. I'm Anas Sarwar and I'm MSP for the Glasgow region. Natalie Crawford. I'm a broadcast journalist at Radio Clyde, and I started the Lead the Way campaign. Veronica Lynch. My daughter Kelly was killed by two Rottweiler dogs in 1989. John Lennon. I'm Kelly's father. Colin Beattie. MSP for Midlothian North and Musselborough. Alasdair Corrfield. I'm a consultant in emergency medicine, A&E and Paisley, and I'm here representing the College of Emergency Medicine today. I am Willie Coffey MSP for Kilmarnock and the Irvine Valley. I'm Lisa Graydie. My daughter was attacked by two Rottweilers in 2010. Bill Bowman, member for the north-east region. And the other people sitting here are parliamentary staff who will assist the committee's meeting this morning. Would any of our witnesses who have come to give evidence this morning perhaps like to go first and tell us, perhaps Natalie? Would you like to introduce a bit about your campaign and then I'll ask our other witnesses to give evidence? So the Lead the Way campaign started around 18 months ago, and it followed a series of freedom of information requests to our NHS health boards across Scotland, which came back and showed that thousands of people and hundreds of children every year are still going through emergency departments across Scotland with dog attack injuries. I have the figures for last year, which I believe are new to the committee. They weren't included in my written submission. NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde last year, 1,417 people, 255 of those were children, presented at accident in emergency departments with injuries related to dog attacks. The figures for NHS Lanarkshire are 912 and NHS Ayrshire 439. The figures for both Ayrshire and Lanarkshire health boards last year are at four-year highs. Following the findings of the freedom of information requests, we submitted further FAIs to local authorities, and particularly alarmingly we found that in Glasgow there were no dog control notices issued in an entire three-year period. In fact, they only had one-part-time animal control warden employed, who was not trained in the dog control legislation. I understand that this has now changed and that there is one full-time dog control warden changed, but I am sure that you will agree that, for the largest local authority in Glasgow, that is not nearly enough. I will invite to come back in a bit later, Natalie, but would any of the others like to tell your story? Claire, would you like to go first? 2015, my son Ryan, who was six at the time, along with a couple of school friends and another two mums, went a walk near to where we live. It was a rural, semi-rural country lane with houses on it. We were picking chestnuts off the ground. We were all very quiet because we were intent to collect the chestnuts. From nowhere, a white English bull terrier came running out from trees and knocked Ryan to the ground. We proceeded to cover his whole body, and very quickly after that was followed by another English bull terrier that ran right into him as well. It all happened very quickly. It was Carnage at the scene when I eventually managed to get Ryan. A man who lives in the house is near came out to help us and got the dogs off. He noticed right away that he was here. He was off. He said that a large chunk was missing and that it was hanging off. As that was all going on, I was obviously screaming out hysterical and the owner is in the background unaware of what's going on, shouting out, don't worry, the dogs won't touch you. There was blood everywhere. Children were running about screaming at this point, as they would do. Very quickly then escalated it. We called the police, called an ambulance, and Ryan got blue lighted to that time. It was a Royal Alexandra hospital in Paisley. The police then dealt with the incident. I was obviously with Ryan that whole time at hospital. Very quickly we arrived at Paisley. We were told that we had to go straight to the children's hospital in Glasgow, which would then get blue lighted to there. Ryan then went up through emergency surgery to attach his ear to his head and to close up the wounds, but they couldn't attach the top of his ear because there's not any blood vessels there to be attached it again, so he was left disfigured. He had bites to his hip, his elbow and teatomarks embedded in the top of his forehead, as well as cuts and grazes all over his body because he'd been ragdalled about the ground. After the trauma of that attack, I was left very frustrated in the hospital due to I felt the police didn't help us out. I felt very frustrated because at the time they took the statements from my friends that were there. Bearing in mind, my friends were trying to get their kids and contain the kids, they weren't seeing fully what was going on. The police decided at the scene then to retain one dog that was white and was covered in blood. They decided not to retain the other one because they said there wasn't sufficient evidence to see that that actually bit my son. However, because the two dogs were covering Ryan's full body, you couldn't actually see what one was biting. The only reason they knew that the white one was involved was because it was white and you could see the blood all over it. The other dog was dark brown and black. You couldn't see blood stains on that. The owner of the dog said that they would give the white dog over because it did have behavioural issues and it had issues around prams, pram wheels and bike wheels and car wheels. If it ever came into close contact with those, it would go berserk. There was a friend to the baby that was about nine months old in the pram at the time, so Ryan was standing next to the pram. That is the only indication that I have ever got that that is why Ryan got picked because he always asked me on a regular basis why did the dog attack me and not attack anyone else? Why did it attack me when I wasn't running about, I wasn't shouting, I wasn't screaming, I wasn't doing the things that you should say not to do if a dog is running up to you. I was very frustrated with the police and I let them know my frustrations because we then didn't get my statement taken until later on at night and they didn't want to speak to Ryan at all, which I felt he's the victim, he's the one that was lying on the ground, he should have been the one that told them what happened. We then ended up, myself and my husband wrote to an MSP who lived in the area at the time, who still lives in the area, Annabelle Goldie, and it was hard to put a complaint into Renfrewshire Police. As a result of that, it then escalated a bit more and we got visits from the police stating why they didn't have any control over it. Basically, they told us that they hadn't got any control when dogs attacked, they didn't have the authority to do anything. They wanted badly to retain that other dog, but they didn't have the control to do that. That resulted in me putting more complaints into the police but we haven't got really far with that. Also, as well, the dog wardens came to visit us and at the time they took her statement, but a week later they phoned us back to ask if they left the statement in her house because they couldn't find it. Again, that was a huge frustration. I phoned them back again to see if they'd found it again and they apparently had, but I don't know that for sure. I felt that whole process was a bit farcical, to be honest. With the dog owner, he got charged, he got taken to court and the white dog got destroyed, he got taken away and got destroyed, and the second dog got a control order put on it, which meant that he couldn't be walked in by Shipton where we live, he couldn't be off elite, it had to be muzzled. If anyone came to the door, whether it be a delivery postman, any delivery, any members of the public, it had to be retained, it couldn't be anywhere near the front door, it couldn't be in any of the public places within Bishopton. However, the owner moved away from his house, it moved to a completely different area and nobody knew where he went, so therefore the control order was never followed up. The dog wardens couldn't get a hold of them to do the six-monthly check that they were supposed to do. The dog owner himself did get community service of the maximum community service, and the judge did say in the day that he was very close to jailing the person, which I felt he should have been, because he was a completely irresponsible owner, but because he handed that white dog over, he didn't escape the jail sentence then. My feeling on what I feel the law should be is that too many people in this country have dogs as a child, as a baby, as an extension to their family, and I understand that to a certain extent, but there are too many people who have dogs that they can't control and they shouldn't be pets, they shouldn't be in houses and they shouldn't be with children. I would like to see that in all public places that dogs are kept on leads, it happens in other countries, why can't it happen here? My son is a result, we can't go to public parks right now because he's terrified of dogs being off the lead, anywhere that we go he's terrified of being a dog off the lead and that's resulted in him now getting more counselling and having to kind of, as a family, we're trying to solve that. I also feel then that these people that have these dogs, they shouldn't have them, there should be controls on people to have that, there should be a kind of stricter guidelines as to if a dog does attack what the repercussions could be. Also I'm very strongly against this one free bite rule, which how do you know if a dog's bitten before? People that live in the community for that brown dog is now living, they don't know what's happened, they don't know what that dog's been involved in, so why should that then be let to go? I also feel as well that dogs, that all dog owners should be paying a licence to have a dog and it shouldn't be as well you can go into Facebook, you can go into Gumtree and buy a dog, get it for nothing, don't know anything about it. Overall as well just for the kind of on-going trauma for my family, Brian has been left with a disfigurement, he's got another three operations to undergo, one being removing cartilage from his sternum to then attach on to his ear and then get a skin graft to then rebuild his ear, so that's three separate operations which are happening in Edinburgh, we live in Bishopton so it's a bit of a upheaval for us. Also as well the whole traumatic effect of him, it has affected his entire childhood, he doesn't want to go to places where he should be thriving to go as a little boy, it's affected our young children who weren't near at the time but they're now getting a huge fear of dogs. For myself as well, I had a lot of time off work, I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress, I had to go through cognitive behaviour therapy, all of this is funded in the NHS, why does the NHS have to have that strain because of one person who was irresponsible and shouldn't have owned those dogs? Claire, thank you very much indeed, I know it's not easy to recount those stories, it's important that we hear your evidence today, so thank you very much. Veronica, would you like to go next? I'll start off by saying I agree entirely with everything that's just been said. When Kelly died, the laws were ineffective, nothing happened to anybody, the owner stupidly allowed his daughter and my daughter to take two massive rock banglers, I think they combined weight with something like 19 stone and Kelly weighed four and a half stone or something like that, so she didn't stand a chance. The injuries that Kelly suffered were such that when we went to see her, we were not allowed to touch her and it wasn't until much later we realised that she'd actually been decapitated. I think all dogs should be kept on a lead, there should be some kind of measure about keeping, some laws about keeping the more powerful dogs because it's not everybody who can control the bigger dogs. All dogs should be kept on a lead, these extending leads, I think when in public places the lead should only be a maximum of two metres. Just for the safety, there should be dog runs and parks where you can take your dog and keep the children out of it and keep them safe. I think that's me for now. There's a lot more to be said, but I'm a bit... Just tell me if you want to come back in, Veronica. Okay. Thank you very much. Lisa, would you like to? Okay. Judy Evans. I've got a picture which maybe should or should not be shown of a small child who had a facial dog bite, which was regarded as a minor injury because as plastic surgeons we could take that child into theatre, repair the damage in terms of there being no open wound in a less than one hour operation. The child was able to be recovered technically from the anaesthetic and was allowed to go home the same day. That's not a minor injury. That child had scarring and it is a myth, as far as the public are concerned, that children scar better than old people. It's exactly the opposite. Those of us who were old enough know that we've got facial creases where scars can be hidden, but children who've still got to grow have worse scars because their tissues are actively growing and their scar tissue grows actively as well. They will get worse scars even with the best plastic surgery. It's a huge problem for that child. Every child who comes into the plastic surgeons with a dog bite injury or any other injury is not just one patient, there are at least five. There will be parents, there will be perhaps grandparents. The dog may not have been running wild but may have been at home where perhaps the grandparents were caring for the dog who had never bitten anybody before and then there's all the inter-family dynamics of how terrible that is and it does go on for the rest of that child's life and the rest of the family's life. I would say that it's very rarely a minor injury even if it's not a life-threatening injury and as plastic surgeons we try and do everything we can to support the families and to do what we can to pass these concerns on to other agencies, but when a child only comes in as a day case then we're left with dealing with the next day's day cases and we don't do enough although it's not from a lack of wanting to do more. Obviously we're not the people who are going to be there doing the control of these dogs, we're the people who have to mop up the terrible things that happen because there isn't the control there. Dr Evans, can I just ask you, you represent the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh, as well as being a consultant plastic surgeon, so you're able to speak on behalf of surgeons across Scotland. We understand that there's been an increase in dog attacks. Have your surgeons seen an increase in the number of operations they are doing as a result of dog attacks? I can't give you any absolute numbers but obviously junior plastic surgeons look for hot topics to do projects on to find out these sort of figures and I would say it's the same across the whole of the UK. I've also got papers from Australia which are showing that dog attacks are becoming more frequent so I think we're looking at within the UK hospital admissions roughly doubling in the last 10 years. Do you have any evidence as to why that is? Not in terms of validated figures, in terms of impressions, it's less control in the home when children are concerned, people having to go out to work rather and leaving dogs inappropriately sometimes happens, leaving dogs with people who are not physically fit to control them, those sorts of things. You were talking about a one-bite rule but if it's a no-bite rule that doesn't mean that that dog isn't going to get frustrated and attack somebody one day, so I don't think that you can ever trust a dog just because it hasn't done anything so far. My daughter was attacked by two rockwilers in 2010, she was 10 years old. She was out riding her bike, she stopped it across the road and three rockwilers actually came round the corner, two adult rockwilers and a puppy. She smiled at the puppy because a person in that street had owned this dog and given it back to the people they bought it from because it was shown aggression towards her son. The next thing, the dogs grabbed Rihanna off her bike and started biking her. She managed to get up, I think it was two or three times back to her feet again and they pulled her down again. This all happened in the middle of her road. My mum had seen this from the window, I'm running down, got Rihanna in a dressing gown and said to the dogs, be good. For some reason, whether they were used to female authority or not, they stopped. My mum got Rihanna in a dressing gown and walked her back across to her house, which was about 20 yards. Rihanna was saying, my jaws broke in, my leg, my leg. Those dogs followed them all the way back to the house and were trying to look through the windows. My niece, who was here at the time as well, phoned the police to be told that she would have to phone the dog wardens. I think that it was only after she explained to them how bad Rihanna's injuries looked and they told her to phone an ambulance, which she did. We think that the ambulance service contacted the police because both turned up at the same time, police and ambulance. Rihanna's clothes had to be cut off. She had bites to the top of her arm, front and back, big bites at her leg, her neck had a hole, she had a bite to the side of her face, her ear was hanging off, her jaw was also broken in two places and the dogs had forced a tooth out of her mouth. She required surgery for all of that stitches, which have left quite considerable scarring, and like Dr Evans was saying, the skin continues to grow, so those scars are stretching as she gets older and gets bigger. She will need further operations on the one on her leg and she does want to have the one on her neck, looked at too. You can actually see the dots from the stitches on all of her scars because she's such a skinny little thing at the time and still is. Her skin is just stretching and it's more visible now. She had another operation on her jaw around four years ago because she has two metal plates in now and one of them was causing her a lot of discomfort and one side of her jaw she had to get it filed down to ease that discomfort. They have told her if she has any more discomfort and they have to do anything else, that she will probably suffer nerve damage to the bottom of her face. She might even lose all of her teeth on the bottom. She suffers from anxiety quite a lot. She basically turned it into a recluse after the dog attack and she was always out in the street playing, she was always out on her bike constantly. She didn't leave the house a lot when she did, she was very anxious. It's only in the last six months or so that she's coming out of her shell again and that's because she's started a college course in acting and performance and they're dragging it out of her or I think she would have continued to be very introverted, very quiet and she holds a lot inside, she keeps a lot to herself. She did have one visit to a psychologist about a year after it happened and they said, oh, she's doing very well, we've never seen anyone cope so well with it but they didn't follow up on that and nothing else happened because of it. But she's still suffering now physically and mentally and there won't be more operations in the future. Can I ask if any members would like to come in with a question? Natalie, yeah, I just wanted to draw on two points that Lisa and Claire both raised. The first is around the emotional impact that these attacks have. I have interviewed many families who are in similar situations and that is the very first thing that they tell me is long after the wounds have been patched up and the stitches have been taken out. It's the emotional impact of these attacks that is the longest lasting. The second point that I wanted to make is something that Claire and Lisa again both brought up and that is the confusion around who is responsible for controlling dogs. The police seem to think that it's the local authorities and the local authorities seem to think that it's the police and that is a very common theme throughout all the cases that I've dealt with over the course of lead the way. Dr Alistair Corrfield, you are from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, so you represent all the doctors in the A&E departments up and down the country who receive people with dog attacks and who treat them. Can you tell us your perspective, please? It's difficult for me to add anything more about the physical and psychological effects on patients beyond the three stories that we've heard this morning. That very accurately describes the impact that dog bites have on patients. My reflection is that that happens probably 5,000 times a year in Scotland. There are 5,000 individual stories every year like we've heard this morning. Perhaps not quite of that severity but significant. I suppose that the other reflection on that is that I'm pretty sure, although again it's difficult to get figures on this, that there's also a number of people that never come to an emergency department following a dog bite, particularly of the lower acuity. That makes me wonder about this one bite rule as to how do you judge when a bite is a bite? Is it a bite that requires medical attention or is it just any sort of bite? From our point of view, in emergency medicine it's a workload perhaps compared to some of our other major health problems. It's not a major part of our workload but certainly every time it happens it's a significant event because it's not a pleasant thing to be involved with dealing with, particularly when it's children and treating. From our point of view we would see it as like many of the problems that attend our emergency departments. It's a public health issue. It requires a coordinated approach to deal with it. Do you have any ideas what that approach might be, Dr Coffield? Again, public health is an interest of mine but not an area of my expertise but I think it's like many other problems that attend our emergency departments. It requires joined up thinking between social services, justice, the police and health to deal with it. Dr Coffield, you said that it was particularly distressing when it's children and you also said that there are about 5,000 incidents of dog attack bites coming through your emergency departments every year. Can you give us any idea what proportion of that 5,000 is children? Again, I don't have those figures personally based on the figures that are being presented to the committee about 20 per cent of dog bites are children. Sorry, I didn't catch which percent, sorry. So again, based on the figures that Natalie's presented, which come from my health board in Ayrshire and Arran, about 20 per cent of all the dog bites are affect children. If you were to extrapolate that and again I haven't done this but you would estimate that it would be about 1,000 a year in Scotland. Dr Evans, I would like to make the point that, because children are generally smaller than adults and their faces are nearer to the ground, a percentage of how many injuries are children is making it seem less important because facial injuries are so difficult to hide. So there are going to be a greater percentage of the injuries, will be facial injuries, in people who are not as tall as the people who are six foot tall, who maybe have a hand injury or a leg injury. Not to minimise those but just to put that in context. Alex Neil Can I ask the two doctors if you see any patterns? I mean in the horrific stories we've heard this morning it so happened that in every case it was Rockwilers who were the culprits. We know the original legislation that was passed that dealt with the breed rather than the deed. It could be any breed of dog, it could be small dogs as well as big dogs, etc. But in terms of the people who present to A&E or to plastic surgery, is there any pattern, for example, in terms of the kind of dogs who attack the circumstances in which they attack, the circumstances of the owners? Is there any pattern that you can discern that it would be worthwhile looking at? I would say absolutely not. There are quite a lot of small dogs who are confined, who get frustrated, who then attack. So it's definitely not only the big dogs. That completely. I think that there's lots of different circumstances where dog attacks occur is not just down to the breed. And in the circumstances in which the attacks take place, are they generally out in public places? Are they in the home or are the family dogs that attack other members of the family? Or is it this morning that all the stories have been about people who have been out and attacked by dogs that they didn't know, basically? I don't have figures to back that up. My experience is that it's probably fairly evenly split between domestic families of dancers and in the public place. It could happen any time, anywhere, by anybody, basically. Lisa Grady. Sorry, you were asking whether it's dogs that attack in the home. Lisa, on you. He was asking whether it was dogs that attack whether I went about or in the home. The dogs that attack my daughter had actually escaped from an enclosed garden on the morning. The owner wasn't even aware that they were out. One of those dogs, I think, but I believe that maybe both of them had a control order against them already, so they'd already had their one-five-one free bite. Claire Booth. I'm talking about the breed, not the deed. I actually don't agree with that. I think that it is the breed of dogs. The dogs that were mentioned here are Rottweilers and Mackies and English Bull Terriers. When you see it in press, it all tends to be these very muscular, very powerful dogs that are capable of locking their jaws and their jaws are very powerful. You don't tend to hear about a Labrador or a collie or a Maltese type, small type dogs. These big dogs are big and powerful and shouldn't be in people's small homes because a lot of people have them in little flats. They don't have the facilities to care for them. Those are the breeds that I feel that need to have a ban on them. People shouldn't be able to get these the way they can get them. That's how I personally feel. Natalie Crawford. I just wanted to add on a previous point of Dr Corrfield about the number of people who are going to accident and emergency departments with these types of injuries for Glasgow and the west, which is Radio Clyde's broadcast area, so NHS Greater Glasgow Clyde, Ayrshire and Lanarkshire for 2018. It was nine people a day, at least one of those, every single day of 2018 was a child. Zirona Collins. Our younger son last winter, in the course of his work, went to a house in a state agent and he went into this flat and there was a lot of Rottweilers there and it immediately attacked him. Unfortunately, he had on a really thick jacket, so there was only one tiny puncture wound, but his arm was black and blue, really quite bad. Because of what happened to his sister, he refused point blank. He just could not face going through any more trauma. He's another attack that was not reported simply because of the psychological damage that he'd suffered when he was losing his sister. I believe that there are a lot of attacks that go un-reported. People are just too frightened of repercussions or whatever. Veronica, as Claire was saying, is another Rottweiler big muscular dog that is kept in a small confined space. In a way, I do believe that it's the deed, but the breed does matter because a way Yorkshire terrier requires that it can inflict painful damage. It's unlikely to rip the throat out of any child because, by the time it got new to doing that, it would be stopped. They're manageable. Big dogs are too powerful. When they're jaws lock, you cannot remove them. There's a couple of recurring themes that I'd be interested in hearing the panel's views on, and one that I've come across in my constituency is the confusion between the roles and the responsibilities of the local council and the police. Do you think that there is sufficient knowledge within the local authorities, the public and the police, to understand where to report those incidents? I think that there is some confusion there because there was a wee boy in Dundee last year who was attacked by a Rottweiler and suffered horrendous injuries. The police were called and they said that no criminal problem had occurred. There were no charges, but there was a public outcry. The police went back after telling the parents to contact the local council. The police went back and charged the owner of the dog. The dog was taken away and put into a police pound or something, and then the owner died, so there were no charges, no more precedents. The dog was put back to the house from where it came, and that wee boy lived in the same street. His life is pretty difficult having to see that dog every day. So there is real confusion there over the powers of the police and who should be in charge? Certainly what I found in a lot of cases is that when people go to the police to report those types of incidents they are often referred back to the local authority because of the control of dogs act, but as I said at the beginning of this session in areas like Glasgow for the last three years, there has been no dog control warden who was trained to deal with this legislation, so if there is nobody there to input the legislation, then who do people turn to? I am going to take Alistair Carfield, please. Thank you. I just want to clarify my answer from earlier on just when we were talking about the number of injuries. The point that I was making was that any breed of dog can inflict an injury, and that is the pattern that we see, but I would agree that the more significant injuries that I have seen as a personal experience are from the bigger more muscular dogs. A couple of questions, one arising a bit to the two medical professionals, but a rise in something that Lisa Grady said, if someone presents at A&E with these sorts of injuries or indeed at their GP, is there any guidance in place, is there any obligation on the NHS to get in touch with the police and say, this has happened, you need to do something or is the NHS completely in a silo of treating the injury and then leaving it there? We are not obliged to report to the police unless there has been a threat to life or a public order issue. It would be the same as any assault. I think that is how we would approach it. If there has been serious injury, we would report it to the police, but, for the majority of cases, the police would not be contacted by us. You are not obliged to do you think, and I appreciate that I am asking you a personal view, Dr Coffield, should there be some obligation such that we can get some, I am very much persuaded because I have seen it myself, of attacks happening and not being reported. Surely the NHS ought to have a duty to report to the police. Do you agree? There are some issues around that. We would approach it in the same way that we approach interpersonal violence between people. The public benefit has to outweigh the risk of breaching patient confidentiality. I can understand why you are making that point. There are some legal issues that would have to be—or ethical issues, rather than the right phrase—that would have to be thought about before we could do that routinely. I also think that, as we have heard from the other witnesses, there has to be some clarity that the police have responsibility for dealing with that. My personal experience is that, unless it is something that serious life-threatening or public order is involved, the police would not necessarily see that as their role to respond. Of course, our primary responsibility is patient confidentiality. I have had numerous experiences in which the relatives of a child will not want the police to be involved because it is a family dog. We cannot go against their wishes. I understand. Before I move on to a separate question, does anyone else want to say anything about whether the NHS should have a duty to report? I feel that if it is not a family member, in our cases they were not our dogs, then they should be, but I know that in our cases the police were involved. However, if the attack happened and the person goes into the hospital, it is clear that it is not being a family dog and they did not know the dog, then I feel that the police should be reported with them if it had not already been reported before. A slightly different attack, which I will put to Natalie Crawford, if I may, on some of the points that were being raised about the breed. My understanding is that there is no evidence that certain breeds have a predisposition to certain behaviours, which was the impetus behind the dangerous dogs act in the first place. If so, does that not lend credence to this argument that there are certain breeds that we should particularly single out for restriction to some extent? As you alluded to, that was the role, the responsibility of the dangerous dogs act. My concern is with the control of dogs act, which, as Mr Neil said, the focus of is indeed not breeds. The real issue that I see is that the control of dogs act is not being enforced properly by local authorities. Either they are not aware of what their responsibilities are, or they are not taking them seriously enough. I think that that is where the focus needs to be before we start looking at separate legislation of the dangerous dogs act. I guess that the thing that I am proposing is that, evidentially, if there are certain breeds of dogs that are predisposed to that sort of behaviour, does that not come to a point in which you say that they should not be permitted to be kept as pets, rather than saying, well, okay, have them as pets but then seek to control them later on? I just put that out there as a possibility. I cannot speak to that because that is not within the realm of my expertise, but I can say that the nine or ten different families that I have spoken to over the course of the campaign, including the dogs at the centre of them, have been those big, powerful breeds. I have been struck by all the personal stories as a parent of three young children. You cannot help but imagine if that was your own child. This past weekend, I was with my own three children in a local play part that is protected by a gate and ffencing around it, but there was a very large dog that was clearly not in control or not controlled by the dog owner, probably bigger or stronger than the actual owner was, who came into the play park, clearly frightened the children, not one child over, really traumatised another child, not my own but another child, by running towards it. I have no doubt that that child will have an impact even though there was no bite, there was no injury. I have no doubt that child will be traumatised for years and years to come when it is around the play park. I am struck by what Claire said around people who can go on to gumtree or facebook and acquire a dog and view them as children. The reality is that some people that the state's deems aren't fit enough to be parents and their children are taken away from them. Where is the control around whether someone is fit to be a dog owner? I think that there has been a lot of focus this morning, understandably, on the breed of dog and the dog itself, but less on the competence of an individual that is in charge or in control of that pet. Clearly, there are people who should not be anywhere near children and there are people who should be nowhere near any kind of pet or any kind of dog. Is that something that is reflected from the people around the table? The lady that was in charge of this dog at the weekend, there is no way that she could control that dog. Even if the dog was on a lead to which it was not, it should have been. If the dog was on the lead, she would have no way to control the dog. The dog would have dragged her around the park as well. Is there something around people being competent enough to be dog owners that needs to be looked at as well? Would anyone like to respond to that? The two people who had the dogs attacked my daughter, they had five kids of their own too, but they were breeding those dogs and selling them. They were actually kept in sheds in back gardens. We'd heard several stories from neighbours. After the attack, the dogs were destroyed. The case went to trial. Against the women, it was not prose, and the man, Derek Adams, found guilletain sentence to 12 months. At the trial, under oath, Sarah Kerr had said that she could not control those dogs. She didn't know why her partner kept leaving her in charge of them, that they would pull her off her feet was the quote that she used while she was on the stand. After the trial was finished, it only took about two weeks for her to have another rottweiler that was sat at the window constantly every time we drove past or anybody drove past. We phoned the police who did go and visit her and she ended up surrendering the dog, but only voluntarily. They couldn't take it off of her because she was not proven, she had nothing, she had no control order or anything, no ban, nothing. If she hadn't surrendered that over, there was an owner that was basically admitting that she couldn't control those dogs, they would pull her off her feet if they wanted to and yet she'd went and got another one after everything that had happened. She was obviously not a responsible dog owner for that type of breed. Do you think that there should be licencing in terms of if you are a dog owner and licencing and registering the dog, a licencing and registering if you are a breeder or a dog owner should that and then banning orders and control orders etc much more robustly? I definitely think that for larger breeds, if they are not going to put a total ban on those dogs, they have to do something to make the owners take responsibility. There has to be harsher penalties. Those control orders, I don't think, are effective at all. Those dogs had a control order on them already and they breached it. They were the type of people that would have breached regardless. They wouldn't have paid attention. We don't even know if they were being monitored at all after the first control order was issued. If they were, who was monitored? If they were seen out of control, who did people report it to? Was it the neighbours? Do you report it to the warden? Do you report it to the police? I think that if those types of dogs in particular, if not all, had to have a licence, it would make people be a bit more responsible. I do think that the owners of those types of dogs need to be looked at because in a lot of cases it is used as a status symbol. I totally agree with everything that is said. I do think that there has to be stricter controls. My concern is who is going to fund those controls and where is the staffing going to come from? Right now, everything is getting cut right across local governments and councils, so how is it all going to get funded? What I am thinking is that everything that people are speaking about, nothing can stop their tax. A licence will not stop their tax. A licence can perhaps fund more dog wardens and all the rest of it. The place to stop their tax is the start by making all dogs be on a lead in public places and you can see at a glance that the law is being broken if the dogs are not on a lead. The larger breeds, I would advocate for muzzles for them because they can inflict much more damage because of their size and their power, but I do think that all dogs should be on a lead at all times in public. I think that there is a principle in our law that good law is clear law. Veronica, your evidence there just spoke exactly to that. People know what the situation is if the law is clear if certain breeds need to be muzzled or if it leads or if they are not allowed within children's play areas, which I think that certain local councils do, but there is a real lack of clarity from what we are hearing this morning about the law right across the country, even to the extent that the people in charge of enforcing the law do not know their own powers, the police and the councils. Bill Bowman, I think that you wanted to come in. I would like to ask Claire something if I may. I think that you spoke about the owner of the dog had an order and then they moved away. Did you think that people then lost sight of them? They did because the dog warden could not trace them. They could not follow up the six-month review to make sure that the owner had taken the dog to training classes and was following everything up, but because they did not know where they stayed, they could not follow that person up. Do you think that they moved away from your district? Was that the issue rather than they just moved to the next street or something like that? No, they completely moved out of the whole area. It was in the papers and the people in the street who lived there. That is after the fact that we found this out. By chance, one of their neighbours was my son's football coach and he did not realise that Ryan was attacked by his neighbours' dogs. When he told us that the neighbour had moved away, he also told us that he terrorised the entire street with the dogs. He intentionally put people at fear with those dogs. Once he hit the newspapers that he had been charged, the dogs were involved in an attack, and he then moved away. The issue with dog control notices is that I should buy the local authority, but if somebody moves out with that local authority area, there is no central system, there is no process for it being passed on to the new area's dog control notice. In fact, there is no way for a dog control warden to even know that a person who is subject to one of those orders has moved. You asked the local authority who has a dog control order in that area. Obviously, in Clyde, where our broadcast area is Glasgow, and for the last three years, they have not issued any dog control notices. At the time when we went to court and made a meeting with the Procurator Fiscal, the law in Scotland came into force where all dogs had to be microchipped, and I asked then whether that control order would be put on the microchip so that if anything happened, it could get scanned and could see. He did not know that information, but I think that it turns out that no, that does not happen. You have spoken about the psychological effects on your family or the people involved. Were you ever offered support in that area, or did you have to go and seek it, or how did that come about? When I was in hospital with Ryan, I basically demanded that Ryan get referred to a child psychologist because I knew the long-term effect that this could have had on him. Would I get referred to a child psychologist only because Ryan had trouble sleeping at night? When she then spoke to him again, very similar to what happened with Lisa, there was one visit. She said that there was no issues. He was doing very well at school. He was enjoying his playing in his football team and attending Cubs, which are both in controlled areas. He should just continue with that, so we had to seek that out. The only support that we got, and it was a hospital staff that gave it to us, was dealing with a charity called Changing Faces, which helped people with disfigurements, and they gave us a lot of support on how Ryan looks now, because he suffers. People looking at him, staring at him, very unwanted staring. He has been called names as a result of how he looks. Willie Coffey It's quite harrowing what I'm hearing this morning, and I find it really quite difficult to even understand the pain that the families have went through with this. Clearly, changing legislation will help us to enforce and punish, but as Veronica was saying, it's not going to stop attacks, and it probably wouldn't have stopped these three attacks occurring. I was hoping to explore a wee bit more with her colleagues, Jenny, on the kind of preventions that might begin to influence this to bring this down. Clearly, you have spoken about banning certain breeds in Veronica, and you have spoken about compulsory muzzling and restricting lead lengths and so on and so forth. Is there any more ideas that colleagues could share with us that might help to reduce these kinds of attacks? We shouldn't totally rely on legislation solving this, because it won't be clear. Do you want me to give any suggestions that I've got? I think that the big thing for me was having all dogs in public places on leads and just making that the law. You can't have a dog running about, you can't have a dog outside anywhere, unless it's an elite. That was the big one thing for me. I feel the control orders are a waste of time. They don't work. There isn't anyone to enforce them, and it probably hasn't worked for anyone else. The big thing for me is stricter controls in getting a dog. Not that long ago, my sister looked about getting a cat, a house cat, and she approached the cat protection league, and she came out and vetted her and said, You can't have a cat because you live in a flat. That's it. How can that not happen for dogs? They need to stop all those breedings. A lot of breeders have to recognise breeders with stricter controls in them, and that is the only person that they can go to if they want a dog, but they've been through checks. They know how to deal with dogs. Their behavioural specialist is well with dogs, but they can also deem where that person is fit to have a dog and look at their surroundings to see if they're fit and suitable, if they've got children, if they've got a back garden, if they're living in a small flat, I think that that's where the law has to change. I don't know if that's what they can get enforced and not be difficult to do, but I think that we need to start with the root of the problem, and the root of the problem is people breeding dogs and giving them out to anyone that wants them and not understanding how to control them. Lisa and Veronica have you some other ideas that you could offer to us? Would anyone else like to respond to Willie's question? I think that I would agree with Claire as well about the breeders. Let's say that those couple that owned the dogs that attacked Joanna were breeding those dogs for quite a considerable amount of time. People around the entire area were buying those things for pennies, from what I understand. At one point they were practically giving them away because they couldn't find a vet to dock the tails anymore and people didn't want to pay for them, so because those dogs had tails, they were practically giving them away for free. I agree that something needs to be looked into by breeders and something needs to be done about trying to control that in some way. How you would do that, I couldn't give a suggestion. Veronica, have you any more offerings that you could suggest for us? I agree with everything that other people are saying. We have to start somewhere and we have to start soon to try to prevent these attacks from happening. Some breeders are unscrupulous. They really have to be vetted a bit more, but from today I would like to see something more proactive than reactive because it's a reactive method that we've been working on for so long. Thirty years on from Kelly's death, we're still reading the same headlines. Nothing has changed and we have to get something done. It's okay sitting around talking about it, but we really, really need something, some action. I think that's a good note to wind up on, that call for action. I think that Alec Neill, you were keen to try and summarise. Well, just a quick question. Do you think that we need to toughen up the punishment for the owners or indeed people? It's not always the owners it could be somebody they've put in charge of the dog. It's not always the owner, for example, who has a dog in the public place. It could be somebody the owner has given the dog to for a period, but whoever is responsible for the offence, it seems to me the sentences for the more extreme attacks are very light indeed and need to be substantially strengthened. That probably is a bit of a prevention measure, a prevention impact of tougher sentences in the hope that you don't have to use the tougher sentences because folk have learned the lesson. Do you think that tougher sentences is part of the solution? I agree with that, but again, look at Scottish prisons right now, they're bursting at the seams. Who's going to go into jail? Someone that's murdered someone or an owner of a dog? Again, they need to look at the bigger picture for that, but I do think that there should be tougher sentences. I think that the best way to hit that would be a financial, a very hefty financial fine, because then the person will have to pay it and they would think again, hopefully. I would like to see a much stricter preventative regime, and it's this committee that we've undertaken to do some work on this. The evidence that you have given us this morning and I know that this evidence hasn't been easy to give, can I thank you all very much indeed for coming this morning, for sharing your stories and for doing so with such patience and fortitude, we really appreciate it. We're about to take some more evidence from a second panel, you're welcome to stay and listen to that evidence if you so wish in the public gallery just behind you or you're welcome to leave Parliament now, but can I thank you again very much indeed and I now suspend the committee to allow a change over of witnesses. Thank you. Okay, this is still item 2 and it's a post legislative scrutiny control of dogs act 2010 and we are taking evidence this morning from our second panel. I believe that all of the witnesses were in the public gallery for the first panel of evidence, so I don't need to run through how we're going to work, but instead of the MSPs introducing themselves, maybe I'll ask the witnesses to introduce themselves this morning, starting with Gemma. I'm Gemma Cooper, I'm head of the policy team for the national farmers union. I'm Melissa Donald, I'm the Scottish branch president of the British Veterinary Association. I'm Mike Flynn, chief superintendent of the Scottish SPCA. I'm Dave Joyce, I'm the national health and safety officer of the communication workers union. I'm Alison Robertson, I'm a dog warden in Aberdeenshire and I'm here representing the national dog warden association Scotland. Thank you very much indeed. Would any of you like to go first and give us your evidence this morning, introductory remarks? Mike Flynn. Okay, thank you. I have gone back to 2009 when Alex first brought us in. We've really welcomed it because it is meant to be preventative. We've dealt with the dangerous dogs act, which is a really stupid and ineffectual piece of legislation. You cannot blame the breed of a dog, because if you want to add to that, you should see some of the dogs that are coming in now, these American bull dogs that can area corsoes to make Rottweiler's look timid. Part of the problem with the control of dogs act, as I say, we welcomed it coming in. Every attack, nearly every attack that you've bred off before, since then, you will always get somebody coming out of the woodwork to the press saying, I could have told you that would have happened. People know nine times at 10 that somebody can control their dog. We exist to protect the welfare of animals, but you will not get any SSPC employee or inspector sticking up for an irresponsible dog owner. If we cannot protect the public, we'll never be able to protect the pets that are out there. Had this been implemented properly, some of the problems that you heard today, the lady up here where the dog disappeared to a different area, if the database had been put into a position, that would have been traceable, because it is a fence under this to not notify if you're moving a dress, but without that database, nobody's ever going to know. The penalties in this are very small, but the biggest problem, we've got people like Alison here who's one of the most knowledgeable dog wardens in the country, she's rarely seen her hen's teeth. There is none, you just heard the lady from Radio Clyde saying that they've now got one person covering the whole of Glasgow. You can have as many as you like, if they don't know dogs' behaviour and what dogs' owners should be, how they should be behaving, it's not going to be successful. You cannot just put this on somebody else's job title. Thank you, Mike. Alison, would you like to? When they were bringing in the act, the Scottish Government to their credit consulted quite widely with the National Dog Wardens Association Scotland as a national body, they came along, they discussed what was needed and they listened to us to a fair extent. However, it was sold to the local authority and to the dog wardens as being basically as-bows for dogs, and it was aimed at dealing with dogs who were out of control before they got to the point of ever being anywhere as serious as these attacks that we've been discussing this morning. In general, we tend to deal more with dog-on-dog attacks rather than on people, because the control and dog Scotland act is a civil bit of legislation and the dog control notices are civil notices. If we issue a dog control notice because of an act that the dog has carried out, that is the end of the matter. As long as the owner complies with the notice, then there are no other repercussions for the dog owner. Clearly, in more serious attacks, they obviously have to go to court and it has to be dealt with as a criminal act. That would be the first thing. We referred to the database that wasn't set up. That was a big mess because other than local authorities speaking to each other and unless we know where somebody has gone, we can't do that. The other problem is that if I issue a dog control notice in Aberdeenshire, it is only effective within the boundary of Aberdeenshire. If somebody moves into the city and we cross those boundaries all the time, it is not effective in Aberdeenshire. We have to tell the Aberdeenshire city dog warden who will then put one on if the dog spends half its time in the city. It would be helpful if the notices were effective throughout the whole of Scotland or indeed Britain. That would perhaps reduce the control. Even if the owner moved and did not notify us that he had moved, it would still be in effect. If they breach, I notice that it is a criminal offence and that they can be reported for that. The communication workers union is the largest trade union in the communications industry. We represent 200,000 workers across the UK and 9,000 employed by a royal male and passals here in Scotland. We have 95,000 posts from the women on the streets of the UK, six days a week, 52 weeks of the year and as such we are in the front line when it comes to being confronted by irresponsible owners without control dogs. We unfortunately have the title of being the number one stakeholder in relation to dog control problems because we represent so many people and see so many devastating attacks. 250 people are postmen and women attacked by dogs every year, year on year, here in Scotland. 3,000 postmen and women attacked by dogs every year across the United Kingdom. Some of those attacks are so serious, both physically and mentally, that those people cannot continue in their job as a postman or postwoman. As a result of that, we struggle with this issue on a daily basis. All members will have received my dog attacks on postal workers booklet. You will receive that. A nice pre-reading for you. You will also receive last year three letters from me and two briefing documents before the excellent debate that took place in the Scottish Parliament on the 8th of May to discuss this very important issue. More recently, you will have received the two most recent dog attacks on postal workers and you can see the devastating injuries that two of our members have recently received. Lyn Ferguson in the Lovians and John Diggy in Dumfries, you will see that they have received life changing injuries as a result of recent attacks that have taken place. We still do not know as a result of the injuries that they have received whether they are going to be able to actually, they are life changing injuries, they are going to be disabled for the rest of their life, they are going to be badly scarred particularly down on our face. We are not sure at this stage whether they are going to be able, particularly in John's case, whether they are going to be able to continue to work as postal workers and do their everyday job. We do have a serious problem in relation to dog control legislation and the lack of enforcement in Scotland. The misinterpretation of dog control law is at the root cause of the major crisis and it is a major crisis. Dog control and dog attacks are out of control across the country and it is no good dodging that issue. But certainly misinterpretation of the laws that are root cause of the crisis that we have here in Scotland and we can see the 80% increase in dog attacks in the last decade is as a result of that. The legislation, the Dangerous Dogs Act of 1991 and the control of Scotland Act 2010, they are just, they are not working for us, they are not delivering the results, they are not protecting postal workers and incredibly although it does not require it, those enforcing the legislation in Scotland currently require firstly proof that the person in charge of the dog believed that the dog would actually attack someone and secondly that there is corroborated evidence existing that a previous bite attack or bad temperament existed and we've spoken about this on many occasions and it came up again this morning, this one free bite rule that's applied in Scotland which is actually reflected nowhere in any legislation, in any legal guidance, in any sentence in advice is applied by the Crown Office and Procurate Fiscal Service and the police and as a result of this many victims of very serious dog attacks and very serious injuries do not get justice for the offences that are actually committed by the owners of the dogs against them and this is extremely serious and of course the police themselves and if you look at the submission that was made by Police Scotland it actually details this actually quite graphically and the scrutiny committee indeed the government should be extremely concerned about the situation and in fact what the police are actually saying because the police undertook a survey of their 13 policing divisions across Scotland and several of the divisions reported total confusion amongst their own officers regarding the correct legislation to use when dealing with dangerous dogs what they're saying is that police officers don't understand the law which they're expected to actually enforce and they go on to say that a number of examples of dog control notices for example are being breached but the Crown Office and Procurate Fiscal Service declined to pursue those cases any further so even dog control notices when they're served are not being enforced and they also recalled there that a meeting took place between the police and the Crown Office and Procurate Fiscal Service to discuss the overall service delivery of dog control legislation and public protection provisions as not being provided adequately in this country or robustly as the police would prefer and the Procurate Fiscal said quite clearly that it would not and could not prosecute one-off dog bites I mean think about what they're actually saying the Crown Office and Procurate Fiscal Service is saying they're not going to they're not going to prosecute one-off dog bites and they should be dealt with through dog control notices and we all know that dog control notices are actually introduced as a preventative measure but what we've got is this ping pong situation going on between the police the Crown Office and Procurate Fiscal Service and the local authorities on who should actually deal with the law and I'm going to finish on this and I'll come back number of points police and the Crown Office and Procurate Fiscal Service don't understand the law in their own words they don't understand the law first point second point the Crown Office and Procurate Fiscal Service declines to deal with DCM breaches the Crown Office and Procurate Fiscal Service will not prosecute one-off dog bites the one free bite rule the Crown Office and Procurate Fiscal Service states most cases should be dealt with through a dog control notice when we know they shouldn't and I'll leave it there but I want to come back with other information later on thank you very much Dave for your evidence we know that your workers are at the front line of this every day and so it's good to have your evidence Melissa Donald you're from the British Veterinary Association so we strongly support a deed not breed approached to irresponsible dog ownership and support the act's current provision for local authorities to impose measures on an owner on person in charge of the dog who fails to keep the dog under control through the dog control notices because at the end of the day it is the human in charge of the dog it's not the dog's fault it is the human's fault who is in charge of that dog however we are concerned that due to a lack of resources this provision hasn't been effectively enforced and so we've yet to see the act achieve its intended impact on promoting responsible dog ownership reducing the dog attacks and increasing public safety but fundamentally we need a holistic approach is you know as it was said earlier the prisons are already full the courts are busy let's try and prevent it rather than actually use the stick so we need adequately resourcing local authorities through ring fence funding so they can take consistent method so that the people can be adequately trained to the right level we need to be able to tackle irresponsible ownership before it becomes a problem i through the DCNs so listing the size of aggression and what is acceptable behaviour contracts we also would like improved awareness of the control of dogs act to reinforce to all owners they have a legal responsibility to ensure their dog regardless of breed or type or where they live that it doesn't become dangerously out of control do this through promoting education of responsible dog ownership and how to achieve safe interactions between owners family members public and you already the Scottish government has done brilliant work with the puppy campaign on by puppy safely um which has just been done recently and we need to inform responsible ownership and dog bike prevention programmes with evidence generated from further investigation into dog bike incidents and all this fits in very well with some of the work that Emma Harper MSPs already doing so to me it's all about prevention not blaming the dog and getting the owners to know where what it's at thank you very much indeed um since you mentioned Emma Harper's bill i think the consultation was launched this morning and it's about dog attacks on livestock i believe um this morning so far we've heard predominantly about attacks on on humans and children but we also have Gemma Cooper with us this morning who is from the national farmers union i think your concern is about dog attacks on livestock is that right Gemma yeah it is exactly and yeah we're really we're pleased to see Emma's bill launching today because i think it will go some of the way to addressing some of the issues that we will we will outline um i will echo what Mike said and we definitely welcome the spirit of the act um i think the context that we have is over the last two years we've seen a 67 increase in attacks on livestock so the the cost to industry is really vast i mean it's a Scotland wide issue it is focused more in certain areas than others one of the major issues i think is the lack of understanding by dog owners as to what is acceptable in terms of other legislation we would refer to the Scottish outdoor access code which is the 2003 land reform act and somebody said earlier it's about being clear and in terms of dog access around livestock that directs the public to have their dogs on a lead or under close control so it gives them a choice and it's basically not clear enough so we are certainly lobbying that um if you have your dog in a field particularly around sheep that it must be on a lead there has to be clearer guidance on that um in terms of the dog control notices um i do you think that they are a useful interim step in that they do require only a civil burden of proof um but certainly what we've found is that they're not widely used by local authorities and that the level of understanding amongst dog wardens seems to vary and amongst the police i would say. I mean we got figures by an FY request and the six months from 1st to December 2017 to 31st May 2018 there were 26 for the whole Scotland for livestock worrying, 12 were issued in Argyll and Bute which would suggest that the dog warden there is pretty active, but 21 of 32 local authorities issued no DCNs for livestock worrying and i know some of these will be city areas but it certainly can't be true for all of them. I'd also comment that there does seem to be a bit of a disconnect between the police and the local dog wardens. We've had some cases where we've been made aware of livestock worrying, we approached the local dog warden and they've said well we know the police are involved so we're not touching it and i don't really understand why that's the case i mean my colleague over there may know more than me. I would echo the comments about the database and it's something that we picked up on in our submission. Certainly what we've seen is that the people that allow their dogs to worry livestock are quite often people who don't necessarily have a fixed abode for example and we have one recently where it was actually in Argyll and it was a really horrific livestock worrying case, the guy was actually living in a forest with I think about 10 huskies, quite an extreme case but he was very difficult to trace and subsequently moved and there was no way of tracing him and you know having that continuity there and so i know that was definitely a frustration at the time. I think the point that was made earlier on about and I don't know enough about microchipping technology but the concept of attaching any sort of DCN to a microchip information is potentially something that could be quite useful because then it's going to follow a dog through its life, I'm assuming, I'm not an expert on these things. Also comment just on the sanctions so the maximum sanction for this for a breach of a DCN is £1,000 and I know the lady that was sat in my seat previously said you know they should be much higher but what we are seeing is the people that allow their dogs to worry livestock don't have any money to pay these fines anyway and this act seems to just have the provision for a fine it doesn't have community payback orders or similar so I think that sanctions applied have to reflect that sort of that sort of social issue so that it's not possible for people to wriggle out. I mean these guys don't care if they have the dog removed they'll just go and get another one because it's so easy so I think we have to bear that in mind when we're talking about sanctions. I do think that heftier sanctions send a clear message but we have to make sure that we have other sanctions in place as well. Emma, we heard a lot in the first panel about the discussion about deed and breed. Do you have any evidence of all the attacks? I mean 67% increase. Is that over the last year? That's the last two years, yeah. I mean that's a huge increase. So I suppose two questions one, what's the explanation for that? And two, are there any specific breeds that are doing this or is it just all dogs? No I think in terms of explanation I think part of the reason for such big increase has probably been, well we'll take some credit for it here, us really encouraging people to report because we did a survey recently and about 50% of our members said if we encounter livestock worrying we actually won't bother reporting it. I mean some of them feel that if they do the police won't bother to attend all this kind of stuff although I have to say that that's only some of our members. So I think that's probably part of the reason for the increase is the increased reporting. But I do think, I mean there's lots of moves afoot to encourage the public to take outdoor access. It's links into Scottish Government's health targets, reducing obesity, all that kind of stuff. So there is, I can't remember the figure, but a vast proportion of visits to the outdoor people do have dogs with them. So I think there is an increase in the public taking access to the outdoors with dogs so that's probably part of it as well. In terms of specific breeds, I don't have any evidence to suggest it is specific breeds. What we have definitely found though is that it's a behavioural thing. I mean I know Melissa alluded to dog behaviour. What we have found is once a dog has worried livestock once it is more than likely to go back and do the same thing again because it basically gets a taste for it. But I certainly can't say it's one breed over another because our members will encounter issues with huskies, akitas, those kinds of breeds, but equally terriers come up really often, really small dogs. I was going to say that in respect of serving a dog control notice for the worrying livestock, we would do it if we were requested by the police as long as the owner is being reported to the court for it, because obviously it is something that they've been irresponsible and they should be going to the court for it. I think Aberdeenshire in your figures hadn't issued any last year, but we have in the past and it would always be to that. I'd also be interested to know, Gemma, do you have any figures on how many of your increased incidents are with multiple dogs? No, we don't have that. On the dog on dog attacks, a big number of the dogs that we're dealing with there are from multiple dog households. There seems to be a link there as well. There's been a shift in dogs in society, how they're perceived within the family and they get one to keep the other one company, and then their lack of control is increased because the dogs become an item themselves. I'm not going to say a pack, because that's not what I mean, but they look to each other and they tend to run off together and things. I just wondered, because I know that we have dealt with more in Aberdeenshire and it's mainly been multiple dog households. Can I respond to that? I would say anecdotally that our members are saying that it usually has multiple dogs that are suffering attacks from, but I don't have any actual figures for that. The big dogs do the big damage, which makes the big headlines, but you've got to remember that the small dogs can go in, they can think that they're going after a rabbit, they then have deaf ears, they don't come back to recall, they can then chase around the sheep and chase around the sheep and they won't come in and you actually won't see the damage till much later when these sheep are bought and their lambs. That doesn't make headlines and that is why we really are on the deed not breed. The big dogs make their big headlines, the little dogs do quite a lot of damage too. Diolch yn fawr. I think that it is important that we make our position clear, the Communication Workers Union, on breed specific legislation. We do not support breed specific legislation in the Communication Workers Union, although postal workers make up the majority of dog attack victims across the UK. We believe that the BSL debate is a diversion, it takes us away from the real causes and the real problems that we actually face. We are pro-dog and we are anti-bad dog owner. Postal workers are attacked by every breed and sundry and cross breed. It doesn't matter what the breed is, and it is a fact that we do need to concentrate on the deed and not the breed. The longer that debate goes on, the longer we actually are diverted away from the real problems that we've actually got out there, which is a huge problem of bad, irresponsible dog ownership and lack of control on that specific issue. The problem is firmly on the other end of the lead if a lead is there. You know, you could have a tyronosaurus rex as a pet if you wanted. As long as you kept it in your house, you kept it under control, you kept it secured, it's not going to attack anybody and it's not going to attack the postman or the postwoman. But if you're totally irresponsible, you don't control it, you don't look after its welfare, you don't treat it right, you don't socialise it, then it's not going to be a surprise if it takes every opportunity it gets, it attacks the postman or the postwoman. That's our firm belief and I just wanted to get that out of the way. Thank you very much, Dave. I want to open to members to ask questions. Bill Bowman, I believe. Do you see that members of the public, when there is an incidence who own particular types of breed, are passing them to you for rehoming because they don't want to necessarily own them or can't control them? It's one of the problems we do have and it tends to happen if a bull carrier breed has been involved. We normally see a spiky bull carrier getting abandoned or people deciding they don't want them because they don't want the dival dog tag, so that does happen. A lot of it is, as I've said before, down to a lack of enforcement, but it's money. When it goes away from controlling dogs and skips to dangerous dogs, we're looking after a number of dogs for Police Scotland at the moment, but keeping them in kennels for a year until it gets to the court is very bad for animal welfare, but that's costing the police budget £5,000 a year per dog. It's all down to finances and the police will do anything to say that it's not a dangerous dog issue, it's a controlling dog's order. Further enforcement of this act would actually help because it got away from dangerous dogs only in a public place. A lot of these incidents happen in people's homes where it's the grannies looking after a pit bull for something and the granddaughter gets killed and gets away from that. If you look at the enforcement back to Mr Joyce's point, the amount of his members that have been attacked in Scotland and how many of them have led to a control, a dog control notice. A lot of them are just aren't reported because they don't know where to report, they're trying to report and they get diverted to somewhere else and then nothing happens. Sorry, Mr Bowman. To ask, we've heard about keeping dogs on leads. Muzzling in public, would that take away a lot of the... Under the dangerous dogs act, if you've got a legal pit bull terrier that's on the exempted list, it must be on a lead at all times and muzzled anytime in a public place, always, in a public place, not within the house. But if it was to apply to all dogs? That can be a welfare issue with some dogs. Some dogs just can't take them and it can actually change their temperament because you're taking away their one defence mechanism. It's another tool that you could use but Alison, Melissa, anybody that knows dogs and knows dogs owners, I'll tell you, that person can't control their dog. You're maximum penalty under this is £1,000. There is no provision if you are convicted under this that the sheriff can ban you for life. That's it. You'll never have another dog. If you can't have a dog, you can't have an aggressive dog. I would go even further. We have dealt with people with Police Scotland and ourselves. There are people that use dogs as weapons. I was really surprised at Liam's question that the doctor sitting there, if he treats a stab wound, is legally obliged to report it. What's the difference between a kid getting ripped up with a dog? Report it. There's no breaking that person's confidentiality because they're saying here it is a crime and it's up to the police if they can investigate it. But there will be dogs that have attacked and are left alone and they'll just attack again because the owners will not take their responsibility. Colin Beattie. Just following on on dog control notices, the feedback that I've had from people in my constituency that have experienced these is that a dog control notice is issued but the neighbours are not allowed to know what the terms of that are. How can anyone police that if nobody knows what the terms are? So you never know if the dogs breached that notice. The reason that confidentiality is in place is because we were advised by the Scottish Government when it was brought in. Because the control of the dog Scotland act is a civil act and the civil dog control notices are civil, then data protection prevents us from saying that there is a notice in place because there hasn't been any criminal conviction first. What we do to because we can't sort of say, right, okay, we put a notice in this dog, must be muzzled zone lead, we always say to the people, we have put everything that we can in place, google the act and if you see anything to give you any concern at all, give us a phone and if we'll then, if it, you're saying we saw the dog out with it on muzzle, we'll then go and deal with that and get a statement because whenever they have breached the notice and we're given evidence to that then it becomes criminal and we can tell everybody the notices there because it's been reported to the court as a crime then. It doesn't seem very efficient. No it doesn't and it is one of the reasons that we are banging our heads against the right wall with it because we can't say to the neighbours, and if you see that dog out without lead, you see that dog without a muzzle, phone us immediately, then we can go round and witness it and then they can be reported for it. Is it actual written guidance from the Scottish Government? It's not in the legislation itself? It's not in the legislation itself but it was, when it was coming in, we asked the question and it was put to the legal department here and that was the answer that came back. An issue that was raised, we did three community sessions on this, one in the AirJay, one in Dalkeith and one in Dundee and certainly the one that Bill Bowman and I attended in Dundee. This was a real frustration for people and it was mainly owners there that had had their dogs were attacked by other dogs and once it had all been reported, the dog control, the dog warden, wasn't able to tell. That's a frustration for us as well because it quite often results in complaints about us not doing our job, whatever, and we are not able to defend ourselves and say, well, but we have done everything that we can. Alison Robertson, would you, from what you've said, I presume that you would be looking for that to be removed or for that certainly something that this committee would look into in the course of its scrutiny? Liam Kerr Thank you, convener. Two questions, the second I'll point to Dave Joyce, but first of all, the did not breed piece, I completely understand what you're saying about this, Melissa Donald. The question I have, do you have any sympathy for the view that some dogs are simply not suitable to be pets and without perhaps some kind of special reason for having a particular breed or a special dispensation, the average person should not be having a certain dog that has a predisposition to violent behaviour? All dogs can be violent, full stop, whether it be a Yorketeria or whether it be anakita or a Great Dane. I have been nibbled at by several different shapes and size dogs. The difference is small dogs, you can physically pick up if you can get near enough the scruff. No deed every single time. Mike Flynn, if I could pose the same question to you, because whilst I accept Melissa's point, if I get nibbled at by Jack Russell, I'm more likely to be able to do something about it than if it was a Rottweiler that's attacking me. You've obviously got your more powerful breeds, but I think I said to Melissa earlier on one of the worst injuries that I've seen was a Yorketeria on a six-month-old baby's face. The traumatic effect of that is whenever and the other. As I tried to say at the beginning, if you added Rottweilers to that list, we've got people because pit bulls are banned. You should honestly see some of the breeds that are coming in. Go to your kennels at Bodwell and I can show you breeds that you didn't even know exist in this country. You've got the pit bull terrier type, banned, unless it's un-exempted. When you introduced that the toes are the Philly, Brazil area and the other one, none of them were in the country. They didn't exist in this country, there was one toes in the existence of that life. Pit bulls were targeted because they were involved in dogfine and there was a couple of horrendous attacks down in England. It's a knee-jerk reaction. You could add half the breeds that are in the country on to that list because they're powerful. It doesn't matter if it's powerful, if it's in the right hands with a knowledgeable owner. One of the big problems years ago was Dalmatians. They get one, they look lovely, they don't realise they're carriage dogs. They need to run them about 30 or 40 miles a day just to keep them calm. They get them and try to lock up in the house and they become aggressive. A Rottweiler properly reared, reared, trained and looked after is no more dangerous to the public than a Labrador. If you look at the national figures, there's more bites by Labrador than any other breed, just because they're so plentiful and a lot of that happens within the household, but they're not the serious ones that will happen and hit the front page of the papers. Respond to that, I have personally been bitten by more black Labradors than any other dog, but in today's world where every dog is a crossbreed now, I design a crossbreed, where do you put a limit? What would you say to Veronica Lynch's evidence that the dog that killed her daughter as a Rottweiler, the dogs like that, have the physical capacity to kill a child or severely maim a child whereas a smaller dog of a different breed doesn't? I've known Mrs Lynch for 29 years, I've been in this job 32 years and I was about when that happened, not there but at the time. The gentleman owned the dogs, to me was criminal, you're letting 20 stone combined weight of two Rottweilers out with a five stone child, it was just a recipe for that and it's not as if it was a lifelong friend and they should know the dogs since they came up, they were down there on a holiday, that was just stupidity, you just, anyone we call in sense would not allow that to happen. So another question then, Mike, you're talking about responsible owners, how do we legislate for that? Sadly you've got to wait until after the event but then it comes on to the fact that if you have been found guilty of something like that you should never be in charge, be allowed to touch a dog again in your life because we do get people that have had dangerous dogs and they're dealt with by the court and then they just go out and get another one. Is that good enough for public safety that you've got to wait until after? Should there not be more rigorous licensing scheme that judges people fit and proper person to own such an animal? Which would be great in the ideal world, we scrapped the dog licensing scheme hundreds of years ago through the post office but where do you stop? You go to responsible ownership, I think the lady said, her sister wanted a cat, they were inspected, they were told no, you're no suitable. For any powerful breed of dog that you want from us, you're examined in our centre, you're quizzed, your family's to come up, we visit your home, we do all this kind of stuff, make sure you've got all the proper stuff and one of the biggest complaints we get as a society is you're a charity, you want ready dogs but you refuse to home me something, we will not home something to somebody that's no suitable but I refuse somebody, they can go on the internet and get one delivered tomorrow. Would you support the reintroduction of a dog licensing scheme? There's been a call for a competency test that you know what you're actually doing, I mean we quizz people, do you know the breed that you're taking on, do you know the requirements of that breed? I mean the one that was always hardest to re-home was retired Greyhounds. Can you really answer Mike Flynn? Would you support the reintroduction of a dog licensing scheme? I think given that we can't even fund the work that's being done or the database that could have been set up here, I don't think the Government could afford it. But do you think it's a good idea? Yes. To reintroduce it? To reintroduce a competency test or something that could be removed, if your licence is taken off the day you surrendered your dog. Melissa Donald, Alec Neill, then Alison Robertson. I think that it shouldn't just be as straightforward as going to a post office and paying 37.5p. It should be something like the driving theory driving licence, where you've got hazard awareness tests, things like that. If you're going to a park, you can see where the potential hazards are, showing you understand what's involved, so it's all about education involved with it, having to have compulsory insurance, etc. I'll bring in Alison Robertson on this point and then to Mr Neill. I was going to say what Melissa was saying. It really should be compulsory for people to do more research before they get a dog and prove that they've done it. A lot of people buy breeds on how they look and don't look into what their background is. All those different breeds have been honed to do certain jobs over hundreds if not thousands of years by man, so they have different traits and tendencies. If that trait and tendency suits your lifestyle, that's great. Get it if you're able to train it and deal with it, but they go and get those big dogs and they expect them to sit in a flat 95 or better, give them out to a dog walker who walks them in a park and then they become dog-oriented. There really should be some kind of competency test rather than just—if you would just make it a fee that people pay to get a dog, then the responsible owners will do it and there'll be penalties there for a weak pensioner who has a weak dog to keep them company. The ones that aren't law-abiding just now won't do it and they'll just not chip their dog, so we'll never trace it to them. Alex Neil I've been much endorse what Alison, Melissa and Mike are saying. One of the things the plastic surgeon who was here earlier said to me privately on the way out is that if you look at the statistics in the national health service, the amount of resource that is employed by the national health service in dealing with the impact of dog attacks is 10 times where it is in dealing with the implications of misuse of shotguns. To own a shotgun, you require a licence, you have to keep it in a very safe place, you have to meet other conditions and there is regular police inspection as to whether you are adhering to that system. Can I just come back to Mike's point? However, he agrees in principle with introducing such a system that is not just paying money and then owning a dog with some kind of competency test, which would cover a whole range of things that are very similar to having to own a shotgun. However, if the licence fee—we could maybe, in an ideal world, use the revenue from the licence fee and ring-fence it for enforcement of the law, so you can actually solve maybe the funding issue if you had a proper licence fee based on competency in terms of awarding it, but then ring-fence that money either through the councils or through the police or whatever for enforcement of the law, so you have then got the double benefit of the benefits of a licensing system along with producing the revenue, or at least a good chunk of the revenue, to enforce the law. Would that be the kind of thing that would get support around the table? Mike Flynn That makes perfect sense. It should be self-funded. You need a licence in Sweden to get a dog before you have got the dog. You do not get the dog and then apply, and there is some form of competency attached to that. However, if we cannot fund properly the enforcers to look after—and I mean in the local authorities as opposed to the police—then it will not happen. If it was funded through a licence scheme and if you had to pay £500 for your original licence, we have people paying £3,500 for a pup, not to us but to breeders. It is not as if the money is the big stopgap. Mike Flynn Yes, but it would be licence per dog, not licence per person. Mike Flynn Does anyone else want to respond to Alex Neil's point? Dave Joyce I just want to cover a couple of quick points that have been debated here. Firstly, on the issue of muzzling, dogs can be muzzled via a control order or ancillary order added down by the courts, of course. However, I would rather see ownership and keepership banned and the courts using that option or over than looking at the muzzling as a solution because it is not a solution in my view. On BSL, one of the results of BSL has been that certain people have gone searching for alternatives. By adding to the banned list, they just search for alternative animals. We see a lot of breeds such as 15 stone gold dogs and Asian mastiffs turning up in the United Kingdom now. These are used for legal fighting on the Asian subcontinent. We have seen Australian cattle dogs and Russian bear dogs appearing in the United Kingdom. That is a worry because they can get them. You can add to that list but you will never get to the bottom of it. Then you have got crossbreeds and the determination of whether it is an illegal animal or not. We are going down the wrong road. We are not dealing with the problem. 81 per cent of the attacks on our members on postal workers occur between the garden gate and the front door. We need to deal with that issue. We need to tackle that specific problem. When that door opens and that dog comes out, it does not matter what breed it is, it is going to do some damage if it is determined to do so and the owner has not got it under control. That really is the problem for us. Liam Kerr wants to ask you a specific question on that point. Just only exactly this point, Dave, if I might, and just give you the opportunity to say because what we are interested in is really the solutions. I was out with one of your members, one of the posties in Aberdeen, who had been attacked in exactly the way that you are describing. The dogs at the top of the stair, everyone knew, according to your colleagues, everyone knew that this dog was going to go off and eventually the door was opened and there was the opportunity, your member gets attacked. The challenge and the solution that I am looking for is what you would do about it. Perhaps because of the one free bite rule, I am guessing, but that dog is still there. Your members cannot go into the stair because quite rightly the royal male is protecting him, but you have a universal service obligation. You have to go in and deliver the male to the rest of the doors in the stair. I recall that there is this tension between what needs to happen and what actually is happening and the dog owners in there and the people need their male. What is the solution? What can this committee be doing to make sure that that situation is not presenting itself? There are a number of things that we can do in first and foremost. As I said, we have to clamp down on bad dog ownership because at the moment any criminal can buy any dog at any time and buy as many as they want and just completely ignore their welfare and not keep them under control. On licensing, we used to be completely neutral on that and we watched for many years the debate between Dogs Trust and the RSPCA, one large organisation in favour and one opposed. Over the years, we have now come to be in favour of the reintroduction of the dog licence. We have looked very closely because, as you know, we work with all the Governments in the United Kingdom and with the Northern Ireland Government. We have looked at the licensing regime that they have got there. Of course, it does offer the opportunity. In Scotland, for example, we estimate that it would raise around £8 million to £10 million if we introduced a dog licence around £10 million to £12 million, which could be ring-fenced, as Alex suggested, and use specifically to put some resources back into dog control. At this time, when funding and resources are very shortened, cuts are being made left, right and centre and fewer people are being expected to do more and do miracles in some cases, which is impossible. We believe that that is a good idea to do that and we would support that. In fact, we would support anything that would improve dog control at the moment, because 3,000 of our people get notched up by dogs every year, badly injured and are not able to continue in their job. We continue to face this massive problem that is not getting any better. It is getting worse and worse. We really need the police to do their job properly, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal to start doing their job properly. We need criminals to be held to account for the crimes that they commit. Those are serious, aggravated offences, sectional offences under the Dangerous Dogs Act and those people are walking away scot-free. That has got to end. Thank you very much, Dave Joyce. I am going to close very soon, but I have a final word to Alison Robertson. The scenario that Mr Joyce described there about a dog at the top of the stairs and not causing fear and alarm. The control of the Dogs Scotland Act was quite clear that the dog does not actually have to have had a bite. The officer has to be satisfied that the dog has been out of control and has caused fear and alarm and that fear and alarm was reasonable in the circumstances. If the dog was known to be a problem and it was there and it was out of control, then a dog control notice could be served and no circumstances on the owner. It does not have to have had a bite for the control of dogs to work. My experience with the Post Office is that they are busy as are we and I know that they have their own protocols. They go and speak to the owners of dogs where there is a problem with the postal workers, but we do not hear of any incidents involving posts until there has been a bite and maybe there has to be improved reporting there on a better two-way street there that they say. I am a bit worried about that dog that they have at number six and we could just go and educate the owner before it gets to the point where somebody has been bitten. I have had some experience of accompanying the postmen and women in the journeys. You said that 81 per cent of your members are attacked between the gate and the front door. Despite the legislation, licensing, interventions, training and so on, what is going to stop that? Do you think that, Dave, from a postman and women entering the gate and getting to the door and stopping them being attacked? Is it down to ownership, training the owners to be responsible? Is it locking dogs up before the postman arrives? How do we stop it? We have mounted huge campaigns and we are very closely on this. Every year we have our dog awareness week, which occurs in July. We have distributed millions of postcards, posters through our customer service points. We campaign to raise awareness of responsible dog ownership. That has had some success because we peaked at 6,500 dog attacks on postal workers in 2007 and 2008. Through our own efforts alone, we have reduced that by 50 per cent, so we seem to have plateaued at 3,000 attacks a year. Mr Coffey is asking you specifically what would prevent. You talked about the attack between the door and the gate. What do the communications workers union want that would prevent that? One of the things that we need to do is to reframe the way in which we apply and enforce the law for a start-off. We have to get rid of the one free bite rule. We have to get rid of that. We have to raise public awareness in the debate that took place on 8 May. Christine Graham made the point. It was well made. The public knows more about the smoking ban than they do about the dangerous dogs legislation. What is the awareness of what? Awareness of dog control laws and what is expected of them as responsible owners, what the law says. What we also need to make sure is that there is a huge range of penalties available to the courts when people come before the courts. If you look at the level of penalties that are handed down, it is so inconsistent for a start-off and very rarely do we see substantial penalties handed down. I will give you an example. We had two very similar attacks where two post-women had fingers bitten off when they were pushing letters through the letter box. They were very similar injuries, very similar circumstances and one court handed down a 9,000 pound penalty and another court in another part of the country handed down a penalty of 100 pounds. That is not good enough. We have got to do something about that as well. These people have got to realise if they are a bad owner, they are going to face the consequences when they come to court. Public awareness of what the legislation says, the requirement to be a good dog owner. I agree entirely that if we were able to introduce a licence in regime that ensured competency of some level, most of these people should not be dog owners at all. Anybody can become a dog owner. You can go out and buy as many dogs as you want. There are no limitations on what you do, the breed, the type, anything. Nothing to stop them. The one free bite rule—I just want to end on this—could you imagine applying that to the offences of murder or drunk driving or driving causing death by a dangerous truck? It is ludicrous. It is absolutely ludicrous. Yet that is going on today. I have got endless number of cases here where there have been cases that have not been prosecuted. There have been cases that have been found guilty. There have been cases that have succeeded at appeal on the basis of the courts accepting because if it was the first-ever offence or display of aggression by the animal, then there is no offence at all, and it has been thrown out of court. Those people are shielded by the inadequacy of the law. I share Dave's passion on this. I want to pick up on Mike Flynn's comment about his real-world answer to licences, but if we do not back up with resources, it will fail. What we discussed this morning is how we strengthen the legislation, how we get individual responsibility and what punishments happen. In the absence of having a budget line and backing up with resources, whether that be from central government, local government or the institutions that I have to deliver, we will always continue to fail. There needs to be a serious discussion about the money. Where is the money going to come from? How do we fund this? How do we deliver it? In the absence of that, we can have all the best intentions of the world. We are still going to fail. Where is the money going to come from? Mr Neil made a good suggestion about the licence fee. Mike Flynn also said that there seems to be no shortage of money to buy dogs, so to apportion a bit of that expenditure on to regulation control. I am sorry, Mr Neil. You do not pay VAT when they are buying a dog. Is a dog VAT free? Depends on whether you buy it from a reputable breeder, but HMRC is removing recovering coffee funds from illegal breeders who are not paying tax, VAT or whatever, quite a few high profile cases on that one. We need to close reasonably soon. Do any members have any further questions? Do any witnesses have anything that they would like to add briefly? Can I thank you all very much indeed for coming this morning and for your evidence? I now close the public session of this meeting.