 Maen nhw i gyd yn gwybod ar y 7 eich gilydd y Gwrthod ниadol ac y Gwyl Werell Gwysigolwy yn 2019. Iell hynny i gael cyffredinol i gyd yn gyfellytestu'r defnyddol o'r ystyried gaelol, ac i gael i gael ei gyffredinol, gallwn i'n cychydigol i gael yr ei wneud hynny. Gwyl Werell Gwyl Werell Gwyl Werell Gwyl Werell Gwyl Whangodaualter i'r cyfrwyr. Gwyl Werell Gwyl Orrwyng hwn wedi'i gweld y cyfrwyr i'ch cyfrwyr. 2. Postlegislative scrutiny of the control of dogs Scotland Act 2010. I would like to welcome our witnesses to the committee's meeting this morning. Jim Ferguson, Amenity's services officer, Argyll and Bute Council, Bill Gilchrist, team leader, Environment Health, East Ayrshire Council, Linda Gray, assistant manager of Public Health South, neighbourhoods and sustainability, Glasgow City Council, Alistair Lee, senior environment health officer, North Lanarkshire Council, Kay Watson, dog control officer of Fife Council. We have a lot of issues to cover this morning, so we are going to move straight to questioning. I am going to ask Colin Beattie to open questioning for the committee. In previous evidence sessions, the issue of licensing of dogs was discussed, and it was suggested that any such licensing scheme would be self-funding and might assist in better funding the dog warden system. The proceeds would have to be ring-fenced. There was also a thought that dog owners should have to pass some sort of competency test before obtaining that licence. What do you think about the introduction of a licensing system? I would suggest that, through you, chair, that a licensing system would, in my opinion, be quite effective if it was coupled with the compulsory microchipping of dogs, where the applicant for a licence prior to the issue of that licence would require to demonstrate that a dog had been microchipped and provided to the local authority a copy of the number and the details of the database in which that information was stored. In my opinion, on behalf of East Ayrshire, I would suggest that that would be a valuable exercise. We feel the same that the microchipping regulations could be a prelude to a form of licensing that would allow us to trace ownership and accountability with regards to dog ownership. Is that the opinion of the rest of the panel? We quite strongly agree that licensing is a good way to be able to police prove ownership of dogs and be able to trace dogs when they are moved on. How would you manage that within the council? The implication of a dog licensing system is that there would be a process whereby someone would have to be determined as being a fit and proper person to hold that licence. How would you manage that through the council? In a practical sense, we would present quite a few difficulties, because the number of dog licence applications that the local authority would receive would put a very heavy burden on the resources of the council to administer, first of all, and secondly, to ensure that the training that the person had received to become a fit and proper person was adequate and by a recognised body who, in the opinion of the local authority, was competent to deliver that training. How many dogs do you estimate are within your area? I know that it can only be a guess in it, but... I think that, in terms of East Ayrshire, we did a rough account based on information that we had received through community surveys and that kind of thing. In East Ayrshire, there is a semi-rural area. We have two fairly large urban areas, Kilmarnock and Cumnack, but other than that, it is pretty much a rural area. Even at that, we would estimate that we have in the region of 40,000 to 50,000 dogs in the area. Basically, we estimate that we have probably one in three households as a dog. That would probably equate to around about 50,000 dogs in North Lanarkshire. In the Gael and Bute area, when I moved there 15 years ago, what caught my eye was the amount of dog ownership, but when you look at Gael and Bute and its terrain and its coastlines and what have you, people, it's an ideal place for a dog. I've never seen so many dog owners. There's a huge amount of dog owners, most of them are responsible, I must say, but with that you get problems with other ones. With the dog licensing system, clearly there's logistical problems around this, although the vast majority of licences, presumably, would just auto-renew as other licences do through the council. It would only be where there's a challenge, presumably, from the police or the council or whatever to a renewal of a licence, that it would actually start to chew up resources. Would that be correct? I think that it would depend if the part of getting the licences to ensure that the person is competent to own a dog or to be in charge of a dog, then for every licence application you would still have that at the outset, so I think that it would still have an impact on the resource for the local authority. Given the number of dogs that we're looking at, would that not raise a substantial amount of revenue that would allow for a proper administration of the scheme? You would hope so, but I think that even the practical implications of making sure that you had adequate resource that were adequately prepared to be able to carry out the test, if you like, of the person to be deemed to be suitable to have a dog, I think that even that initially it would kind of front load the burden initially, which hopefully over time would then sort of balance out, but I think initially it would still be quite problematic. Going back to what you were saying before, if there's a consensus among the panel that a dog licensing system is good, how would you handle it? How would you administer it? You're telling me the problems, what's the solution? It would have to be self-financing. I think that if we were going to go down the route of dog licences, there would be quite a lot of work to be done. I don't think that anybody in the room has got the answer, basically, how are we going to make it work, but it's workable. It could be made to work, so I think that if we did go down that road it would be useful and it would have to be self-financing. It would take a lot of resources. I guess even before the licensing regime was in place, you could do the preparatory work in terms of perhaps doing some training for staff that were already in existence, but if you're relying on the resources of the licences to then generate the resource to carry it out, it's going to be difficult to be able to be up and running as soon as the licensing regime was in place, so there would perhaps need to be something looked at whether there was potential to have particular funding set aside even to get that kick started. You would really need to get resources from the council itself in advance in order to be able to start the scheme so that you can start taking the money in to make it self-financing. Otherwise, it would be difficult for it to be a meaningful scheme if you're not going to have the resource to be able to check the reason that we're saying the licensing and talking about responsible ownership. If you're just going to be able to get a licence just by paying a fee to get a licence without those checks, then we already had that a long time ago and it didn't really make any difference and then that was scrapped. You really need to have the second element at the very outset of it if you're going to have that in place. In my mind, from the discussions in previous sessions, it was in my mind that it would be an annual licence. Is that ambitious? Yes. Given the number of dogs that any one of the authorities would see clearly seem to have, to renew a licence annually would be a massive administrative burden on the councils and a resource burden on the enforcement authorities who would challenge any unlicensed dogs. From my perspective, we do have a large number of people in the community who are responsible dog owners who lift their dog poop, look after their animals and make sure that they're regularly vet checked and do anything that they are required to do in terms of the law. The problem with the local authorities, in my opinion, would be the irresponsible dog owners who get a dog from their friend around the corner, keep it six months, move it on and they do nothing in terms of animal welfare or responsible dog ownership with that animal. That, to me, is the problem that local authorities would face, not the responsible dog owners who would licence their dog, have them microchipped, etc. It's the irresponsible dog owners within the community who get a dog, because they fancy it for six months, get fed up with it and essentially throw it out the door. How would you handle a situation where each council presumably would have its own database of the dogs within its area? Perhaps when a person moves to another area, would it have to be a national database that they feed into or could there be some sort of process for that dog transferring across? When the controller dogs act, I was involved in this eight and a half years ago, it was amazing how the years fly by, but we did have plans back then for a national database for dog control notices, but the technicalities and expense put that to bed and never actually happened. A national database for most things is a challenge and certainly a national database for licences would be useful, but I'm not quite sure if it would fall by the wayside the same way as the other one, but it would be something that would be useful. Can I just say at this point that we found your evidence that you provided us with written evidence, which is extremely useful. I thank you for that. It gave us real insight after hearing the stories from people who had experienced dog attacks both on their animals and on their children, so it was extremely useful. On the back of Colin Beattie's question, did I hear correctly from the evidence that you just gave that all the councils represented here are in favour of a dog licensing scheme or some sort of different scheme to administrate dog control? Asarbar, you had a supplementary to that. In principle, I support that licensing scheme as well. I'm just concerned about the figures around 40,000 and 50,000 to local authorities, sounds like we're talking about maybe between half a million to a million dogs across Scotland. Is it realistic to have a fully licensed compulsory scheme and isn't there a risk that the very people who are going to be the most irresponsible dog owners will be the ones that dodge the compulsory scheme anyway? Isn't that a risk? High risk that, as has been said before, all your responsible dog owners will be the first ones that will sign up for the scheme and apply for a licence, but the irresponsible dog owners are the ones that we want to focus on, albeit the ones that I'll just ignore. It would be up to us to try and identify those dog owners to then obviously take action to either enforce the dog licence scheme, but we've got to have the powers to be able to do that. It's a huge resource because then it's the manual labour of trying to identify who those dog owners are. I'll just follow up to that, Kate Watson. At the moment, the resource is going into identifying irresponsible dogs and dog owners in terms of incidents taking place, isn't there a risk that if the focus turns to policing the system rather than policing the bad dogs, you could then be targeting dog owners and dogs that are not going to the compulsory scheme, but perhaps might not be the most dangerous ones and therefore you're spreading the resource even thinner. As a consequence, what I think Colin asked this question and it wasn't really an answer and that's not a criticism because it's a difficult one, but it sounds like this needs a huge scale of investment to preload before it's a self-sustaining system. I suppose the first part is to yourself, Kate, and the second part is to the local authorities represented. Is what level of guestimate have you made about how much would be required to put such a system into place? I'd have to say that, from a ministerial perspective, that hasn't been considered. I would doubt very much other authorities have done the same thing. I simply couldn't figure on it. As has already been said and corroborated, the responsible dog owners will sign up for that. There is already existing legislation in the control of dogs order 1992, where dogs are required by law to have a disc with the name and address of the owner on it. That could also be implemented as part of an amended scheme, where, when a licence is issued, a dog is also issued with an identifiable tag that highlights to anyone just from looking at it that it already has that registration licence in place. It can perhaps diffuse the situation slightly in that local authorities can then more readily target those dogs that are not displaying a tag. There are ways around it where, if a dog is licensed, it has a tag and the responsible owner will wear it. We then have the opportunity to randomly target those dogs that are not displaying the appropriate disc. Is there possibly an argument to say that we recognise that those that are the responsible dog owners are the ones that are likely to sign up for the scheme, but having a scheme and building up a resource through that scheme can help to provide money to better police the bad dog owners? Is that a reasonable argument to make? At the moment, there is insufficient resource across the country to deal with the dogs that you are talking about that are the problematic ones. To then put on top of that the licensing without having the additional resource, there is already a lack of resource to tackle the issues with the problematic dogs. That point that you just made, Linda Gray, is really interesting. We have had quite a lot of evidence that the lack of funding and resources at the moment precludes you complying or enforcing what you are supposed to do in the first place, let alone bringing in a further licensing scheme. Are you able to help the committee to understand what are the current challenges in funding or what would extra funding allow you to do that you are not able to do at the moment? From my perspective, it is a very specialist role. I do not think that it is something that is able to be picked up by any enforcement officer because even the legislation says that it has to be someone who is skilled in the control of dogs and is able to pass that advice and information on to others. I do not think that everyone has necessarily got those skills at the outset. Even in terms of the resources that we have, I think that the role itself, even for future, I would prefer if it was a dedicated role that looked at the area of work rather than being tagged on to another part of environmental health work in the public health realm. Even funding, et cetera, would allow a dedicated resource to look at that, having spoken to colleagues and other authorities where that is what they do. You can see that there is quite a difference in the level of activity in this area of work. Anyone else? It is a topical subject just now at Argyll and Bute where the demands remain, as they have been for the past introduction of control of the Dogs Act in 26 February 2011. The services officer is a generic name for dog control, pest control and environmental enforcement. We have been relatively unscathed for the nine of us in the past number of years, but the budget has just been set in our authority and we are going from 94. I am not entirely sure who the four is going to be, but I am not entirely sure how that is going to work and how those roles are going to be. The topic of challenges and funding has come across us, so we will have to just get on with it. Before we move on, Jim Ferguson, you talked about a national database, and you mentioned that there was a funding challenge around that. Is that something that, were there to be resourced in a different way, such that there was more resource, that a national database suddenly becomes a possibility? The database was very much supported and continues, if you look at the control of the Dogs Act 2010. It still features on the front page, but it just has not came yet to fruition. I believe that there were technical reasons and funding reasons for that, but we have got by with what we have got. We will certainly support any move to introduce a national database and for licensing as well. There are 32 local authorities, and it is good to be able to have a national database, but it still features on here. It is not going away. Unless anyone else wants to come in on that point, I will move to Kay Watson, if I may, just with your Fife Council hat on. The submission from Fife Council takes a slightly different line insofar as Fife Council has made full use of the powers in your submission, and you have issued various dog control notices and various warning letters. Obviously, Fife Council faces the same funding challenges and funding decisions that everyone else will face. How has that balance been struck? Why is there a different outcome? With Fife Council, we originally started off with six dog control officers, and over the years that has been gradually whittled down with budget cuts and things like that, but we still do to have two full-time dedicated dog control officers all we deal with is dog control complaints. I think that that allows us to fully investigate every complaint that comes in. It allows us the time to monitor, patrol areas, etc., for dangerous and out-of-control dogs. From a funding point of view, I do not know how Fife Council has got that funding, but we have been subject to cuts. At the same time, we still have the resources that they have to be able to enforce the legislation that is available to us. Just to conclude from that, so I accept the point about licensing and national database, do we conclude really that the operation of the act, at least at your level, comes down to resourcing? Were resources to be available—finance and resource—then the outcomes that we were seeing a couple of weeks ago, for example, could be very different? Is that a fair conclusion? Can I ask questions to the local authority about interaction with Police Scotland now? I know that police are here and they are going to give evidence on the next panel that is sitting behind you, but it is in everyone's interests, both local authorities, police and public, that the work that we are doing on this committee aims to get this right, and we really need to hear what is happening. We had, in the written submissions, quite a few references to the situation in which dog attacks are being pinged back from councils to the police and then back again. There seems to be a perception in Glasgow's submission that there is perhaps reluctance for prosecutions under the dangerous dogs act, and then it has been referred back to councils to put a dog control notice on. Can you give me a wee bit of a flavour of—is there a problem in terms of where responsibility lies for dog control? Do the councils and police properly understand that? It is interesting that this has come up in your written evidence, because that is also what we have heard from the public. We did three public meetings, one in Dalkeith, one in Airdrie and one in Dundee, and we heard all the time that the public is not sure who is ultimately responsible. Can I open that up to the panel? There is a very clear national protocol that has been developed by Police Scotland, the National Dog Warden Association, the Society of Chief Officers of Environmental Health, the Crown Office and the Fiscal Service, which outlines, in my opinion, very clearly the responsibilities for taking action, either under the dangerous dogs act or the control of dogs act, lie. From my perspective, it is very clearly stated within the protocol in which the body will be responsible for taking action in certain circumstances. What we have found in a local perspective in East Ayrshire is that, if we want a better expression, beat cops are less aware of the existence of the protocol and the content of the same. What we have done when we have had occasion where there is some debate over which authority would be responsible provided local officers with copies of the protocol. In a local perspective, if we serve a dog control notice, we would always send a copy to the National Police Headquarters in Pit Street in Glasgow, the local divisional command and to the local police office in whose area the incident is taking place and the notice has been served. From an East Ayrshire perspective, we have a very good working relationship with Police Scotland and with the local fiscal service, who are only too happy to discuss with us any concerns that we have and provide any information that we need. That is good to hear. Linda Gray, I am going to put you on the spot here, I think that you probably guessed that. In Glasgow's submission, can I just read this? It says that there are an increasing number of referrals to local authorities from police, procurator, fiscal for dogs that have caused serious injuries where the case has failed. This is often inappropriate as the control of dogs legislation was designed to be proactive, i.e. prevent attacks. Can you explain a wee bit about what is going on in Glasgow? Although the protocol exists, one of the suggestions that I was going to make is that that either gets reissued or revisited. The protocol itself is quite clear on the roles and responsibilities, yet my experience within Glasgow is that the protocol is not being followed in terms of who picks up the investigation. We have had a number of cases referred to directly by the procurator fiscal where, for some reason, the case has not been successful in court and they have then looked to the local authority to issue a dog control notice. Having spoken directly to some of the procurator fiscal that have been involved in the cases, it was very evident that they did not understand what the role of the dog control notice was and what was involved in carrying out an assessment of the dog. They thought that it was a case of just writing out a notice and that that would get handed to the person and that that was the end of it. I think that there was definitely, across to me, very loud and clear that there was a lack of understanding of the overall process. I think that some of the cases that have been passed to us—I have got one case where someone's dog was so badly injured that it is literally thousands of pounds of cost to the person—has come to us because the police just said to pass it to the local authority. I think that it would definitely help all involved in dealing with the legislation if there was further clarity or reinforcement of the protocol that was perhaps originally agreed. I do not think that it is just an issue for the police. I think that it is even for everyone that has got a role to play in dealing with the legislation. You said that there is a lack of understanding among the ffiscals on that. There is a principle in law that good law is clear law. It has been pretty clear to me in the work that we have done on this so far that it is a mess. I think that the dangerous dogs act was the act itself that was called a dog's breakfast, but when you add on the control of dogs act that was passed by this Parliament and was very well-meaning, it seems quite a complicated legislative landscape that is clearly difficult to understand. Is that what I am hearing from you? I think so. I think that it is even sometimes there is confusion over which is the appropriate route to go down, which piece of legislation to make best use of. For example, we were always of the understanding that if it was a person that received an injury from a dog that would normally, if it was a serious injury, be taken up from police perspective rather than a dog control notice. However, in some occasions, those are the types of cases that are being passed to the local authority. Although I appreciate that sometimes a case can go to court and that the outcome may well be that a dog control notice is to be put in place, I understand that, it is almost as if that is now being the preferred route to avoid things having to go to court. It is certainly the impression that we are getting within the Glasgow area. I am not saying that it is necessarily true across the board, but it is certainly our experience in Glasgow. Linda Gray's testimony is that reflective of what happens in other places as well. I had a slightly different picture from Bill Gilchrist there, but the other three councils are similar to Glasgow. In the Gaelan, we have got a good relationship with Police Scotland. Police Scotland has this dangerous dog standard operating procedure, which I find that a lot of police officers have not seen. Within the document, there are roles and responsibilities for local authorities in Police Scotland. It contains a paragraph that says that, if there is an insufficient evidence or the procurator of fiscal takes no proceedings, the local authority dog warden will be updated promptly and has to consider the matter under the terms of the control of dog Scotland at 2010. That is pretty much what happens most of the time. We have a good relationship, but it does not always happen that way, because a lot of young police officers have not seen this. We also have inconsistencies across Scotland, because I am on the National Dog Warden Association focus group, where there is an authorised officer, some are better than others, some are trained better than others, and with long thoughts there should be some sort of SPQ for authorised officers to get consistency across the board, an SPQ level 2 or whatever. Part of the problem that we have is a variation in authorised officers' abilities, and police officers have not been really up to date on dogs. Thank you very much, Jim Ferguson. Sorry, I was calling Kay Farson, then I will come to you, Alasdair. Some ways I would disagree with how we work in Fife is that we have a great relationship with the police, and in most cases with the police, if they are going to be charging someone under the dangerous dogs act because the dog has quite severely bitten a person, they will also make us aware at that first stage so that we can issue a dog control notice in the meantime, depending on what is going to happen with the courts, so that from the day that that incident happened, that dog is then covered by a control notice, whether it has to be muzzled, whether it has to be leaded or whatever we can do to prevent any further incidents happening whilst the court is waiting to make their decision. We actually feel as a council that works quite well because it also makes us aware of cases that might otherwise not have been brought to our attention if it's attack on people and not on dogs, so I feel quite positive on how we work in Fife with the police and, as a general rule, they do try and make us aware of most cases. Thank you. Alasdair Lee. Sorry, I was going to say about the national protocol. It actually stipulates who should carry out the initial investigation. It lays down, as Bill Zawr already said, in fairly good detail who should carry out the initial investigation. Once that investigation is completed, if the police have carried out the investigation and can't proceed any further, it still enables them to pass the case over to the local authority for them to pursue under the control of dogs legislation. What we've found is that we have suspicion, as Bill Zawr already alluded to, that sometimes the local bobbies are not particularly aware of the protocol. They like to refer incidents of attacks over to the local authority without having gone through the complete investigation route, so they refer information over to the local authority without providing sufficient evidence and information to the local authority to pursue and take action under the control of dogs legislation. What we get is a phone call from a local police officer with information about a dog attack. No information about the person or the dog that was attacked. Basically, all we get is the information about the person who owns the dog and then a request for us to go out and investigate. That's insufficient evidence, insufficient information for us to proceed on, so it makes things very difficult. Things have improved slightly in the past six to twelve months, but it does still occur. Thank you very much. Thank you. That's really useful. I'm going to bring in Alex Neil and then we'll come back to his questions. Just the final point on the protocol. It would be helpful if we got a copy of the protocol and circulated to us, if that's possible. That would be very helpful. One of the issues—two themes come out of the panel that we had with people who had been victims of dog attacks. One was who does what, the local authority or the police, and that's very confusing to the public. To them, it looks as though it's passed the buck time in too many cases. Clearly, that needs to be sorted out. We're all agreed on that and I think that you're hinting at that. The second point was that very often offenders, people who have been served with a dog control notice, move out of the local authority area where the notice was served. The local authority doesn't always know that they've moved, but the information isn't then carried to the next authority, so basically rendering the effectiveness of the dog control notice useless. Clearly, with the absence of a national database, that makes matters even worse, because if you had a national database and people were compelled to notify when they moved, if they've got a dog control notice, then that may solve it. However, how do you tackle this issue of somebody who moves out of the area without notifying the local authority either the one they're leaving or the one they're going to? The new authority is aware that it has no idea that they've been served with a dog control notice and even if there's another offence, they still don't know that there's a history of offending. How do you solve that? It's the only way forward to try and avoid that happening. As it stands at the minute, if someone makes us aware that they're moving out with Fife to another region, we would contact the dog ward in that area to make them aware that they're there, but if they're not telling us, we have no idea where they are. We're completely unable to follow that up. That same dog can go and re-offend and start the whole process at the beginning again as a first offence. It's a major flaw in the legislation that needs to be addressed. In terms of the national database, presumably in your view, as the Scottish Government, who should be setting up the national database in co-operation with Police Scotland and Coslan, the local authorities, would that be correct? I would agree with that. When was the last time the lack of a national database to the best of your knowledge was raised with the Scottish Government? Has anybody nagged the Scottish Government to do what they're supposed to do under the terms of the legislation? No to that. You'll change that. Without a national database, there's a lot of aspects of this that I'm going to follow by the wayside. Is that not right? We asked the question back eight and a half years ago about is there going to be any additional funding or resources and we're told there's no plans for any additional funding or resources, so that hasn't been revisited since and the database hasn't been revisited either. You're just clear with something that we have to raise with the Government because they have a role to play in that as well. If you don't mind, just one item that you've spoken about about the national database, clearly we have other avenues of information available to local authorities, which, if they were able to be accessed in terms of the dog control legislation, those might actually have some benefit. I'm thinking particularly of electoral role in council tax registers because when a member of the public moves to another local authority, they may well put their name in an electoral role, which is updated monthly now. They may well have a liability for council tax. That sort of information might provide some sort of correlation to a name in a database, a national database for dog control, in which case there may be a pointer for the local authority into whose area they have moved to take action until they allow the initial issuing local authority to pass information on. If we can have an interplay between the bodies of information, that might be some assistance. The thing that doesn't change, obviously, is the microchip number of the dog. That's right, but that's the problem. We have a number of pet ID databases. There's no requirement for the person who has to get them a dog microchipped to put that ID number on a particular database, whereas if we had a national database where all dogs were registered, because, certainly, from a practical point of view, from our investigations, finding out which database the person who has actually had the dog microchipped on to, even in its own, provides a problem. If we go on to a different topic there, slightly? Well, slightly, but still relevant to the national database. Okay, if you can just finish the national database and I'm going to bring in Mr Coffey, then I'll come back to you. Okay. And that is the distinction between the owner and the person in charge of the dog at the time of the offence. At the moment, the law really goes for the owner, rather than the person in charge of the dog, but sometimes it's unclear about who actually is responsible, so you might have a responsible owner get somebody to walk the dog and the person walking the dog is deliberately stirring things up with the animal or it might be the owner's fault. It seems to me that another part of the legislation that needs to be strengthened is to make both the owner and whoever's in charge of the dog at the time of any offence both liable for prosecution. Would that be right? I think that would be valuable because it has been highlighted in some of the papers, we do have the situation where you have professional dog walkers who are maybe walking five or six animals at a time. They have to have some measure of responsibility for the dog's behaviour during the time when it's under their control or lack thereof, so I would certainly think that that's a very valid point, yes. Kate, thank you. I like coffee. Thank you very much. Good morning again to everybody. The act's purpose was to try to identify out of control dogs at an early stage and provide measures to change their behaviour before they become dangerous. For the record, would you say that that's whether that's been successful or not in your experience? I think that's one of the strongest parts of the legislation, is that we see ourselves as being the people who will prevent injury to children or adults. The control of the dogs act, when it was introduced, there was definitely a place for it. Police Scotland had so many cases where the dangerous dogs act, the case just wasn't good enough to be prosecuted and Police Scotland didn't have a lot of options opening them then. The control of the dogs act was ideal because it flagged up to us that situations where irresponsible dog ownership was causing potential to cause harm and we could step in and whether that's coaching the dog owner, training the dog owner, supporting the dog owner. Some dog owners are glad to see you because some of the money coping very well with their dog. The control of the dogs act has certainly been excellent for prevention. If we have to serve a dog control notice, then so be it. Even if we serve a dog control notice, we'll still be there to monitor it and to help the dog owner as much as we can. It's certainly a very useful piece of legislation that just needs tidied up a bit. What about other views? From Glasgow's perspective, usually the cases that you like or whether it be requests for us to get involved in anything usually come after there's been some kind of incident. From our point of view, whether that's because of a lack of resource being out and about, I know that some of the authorities were saying that they monitor areas and they've got dog wardens that are actively out and pick up on behaviour of dogs that they see out and about, but for us, ours is very much reacting to requests that come to us and the majority of those have been following on from some kind of incident. Some of them have been where the person—we've got a small number where people have just raised concerns with is it the behaviour of a dog, but there hasn't been a bite or anything. It's just the felt that the dog's been quite aggressive in its mannerisms and everything when they've been around and that they've expressed a concern, maybe that there's other children in the area or things like that, but I would have to say in the cases that we've investigated, that would be the minority of cases and it's usually followed an incident. As I say, I don't know where Glasgow sometimes is a wee bit of an anomaly, so it's maybe different in some of the other areas. We certainly encourage Police Scotland to inform us anything, even if it isn't following their dangerous dogs act, even if it's minor, to inform us anyway and we'll investigate it, because that little thing could become a big thing. That could be the start of something and we have to make sure that we're dealing with it and nothing comes. I think that that's a fair comment. We would all like to—and we do—get reports from the police and from the public where there has been an incident where a dog has been very aggressive or challenging towards another dog or to a person and placed them into a state of fear alarm. At that point, we would want to step in and, as has already been said, try to change the behaviour of the dog, recognise the behaviour of the dog and provide training and advice to the owners. I think that it's in everybody's best interests to get the local authority involved through the control of dogs legislation at a very early stage, rather than as a result of the incident, but I would certainly concur with what Linda says in the vast majority of the cases that we get involved as a result of an incident being reported to us. It has been effective, but it is by its very nature that it is a reactive piece of legislation. We do get involved after an incident has occurred. It may well be that it's not a major incident, it may be a minor incident that's occurred, which allows us to step in and mitigate things and actually prevent a possible future major incident, major attack, but it is by its very nature that it is a reactive piece of legislation. I completely agree. We are almost completely a reactive service. We can only respond to complaints that are coming in from members of the public unless we actually see dogs not being kept under control whilst we're out and about, but I also agree that the legislation has been successful in the fact that we can possibly get involved at the stage of where a dog has chased another dog, getting involved at that stage may possibly stop that dog going on to kill another dog. I do believe from that aspect that the legislation has been a success that we can get involved at early doors and try to prevent anything more serious happening. What about looking at potential measures that might intervene before attacks occur? I think from what you've said, it's more of a useful tool, the act in dealing with incidents after they've occurred. Had we looked across some other jurisdictions to see if there's any evidence or anything that tells us what measures they deploy to try to prevent dog attacks before they occur? Had we not been particularly successful in finding that, apart from an example that was given to us in Canada and Calgary, where their statistics and the actions that they have taken in terms of licensing and providing training for dogs and owners seems to have had a successful impact on reducing the number of dog bites over a period of years, what experience could you share with us or suggestions? Could you offer us that might intervene even before the dog attacks occur? We work very closely with the Dogs Trust and we have had a number of initiatives over the past three years or so where we have offered free microchipping of dogs to members of the community. The officers within my team have taken the opportunity to attend those sessions and provide advice on the existence of the dog control legislation and to highlight to dog owners the scope of the legislation how we would expect them to control their dog and make sure that their animal behaves well. We do work closely with other organisations to try to highlight the existence of the legislation, but that's really a bit as much as we have done at the moment, to be honest. Have you any success in terms of the reported attacks bill? As I said in my submission, we haven't been able to establish a long-term trend of reports to us. What I would say is that when we get reports to us, the people who are reporting incidents to us are aware of the legislation and in a few instances, but I would say that it is only a few, they have attended a microchipping event and spoken to my officers and become aware of the legislation at that time, so maybe a greater publicity surrounding the existence of the act may be of some use. We try our best to look at unfortunate incidents that happen and look to see where we can learn or other people can learn. We had one last summer at an ale festival near Inverary, and a chap took his dog on to the stage and held a festival with dogs. Loud music, people dancing, and the dog disfigured a five-year-old girl. Police and other two kinds of action, which was odd. The parent, the irate parent, came to the council to see what we were going to do and we hadn't been informed. Once we had gone down the road of the process, once we had been informed, we revamped our events pack, so all our events in Argyll and Root now will figure in dogs and the control of dogs and responsible behaviour when you are at events. That might lead to people leaving dogs and cars, so we have covered that as well. There are lessons to be learned from those types of situations where you have crowded places, people with dogs get a bit scared, so there are lessons for everybody there, unfortunate for the five-year-old girl, but we have certainly revamped our events paperwork. Any other views about how we can intervene earlier, even before the attacks? I think that the things that could also perhaps, we were certainly looking at, is working along with, even like our parks department in terms of doing responsible ownership, a mini-roadshow type thing, so that it is similar to what you have perhaps described, where you might look at the microchipping, but it was also perhaps making people aware of their responsibilities even in terms of the legislation as well, because I am not sure that everyone is fully aware of, even as a dog owner, what their role and responsibilities are. Promoting the legislation as well as offering support and guidance rather than having to tackle people by using the legislation would perhaps help in some cases. You are still always going to get some irresponsible dog owners that are not interested, but I think that even if we could reach even more of the people that are just unaware, then that might still help reduce some of the incidents. Do roadshow events with the public parks throughout the area, basically the same as bills and microchipping. We used to do free microchipping events, that is fallen by the wayside slightly now, because the dog's trust started to do free microchipping anyway, so the dog's trust are involved. They probably have a part to play dealing with the owners as well, it is not just local authorities. The dog's trust, I would suggest, probably have quite a big input into dealing with the owners, educating the owners. People have a problem with their dog, they do not tend to come to the local authority, they tend to go to either a pet behaviourist if they can find one, or to a PDSA, or one of the animal charities, so I would suggest that they could have an input into this. I think that just what everybody else has covered, we have previously done things like free microchipping, we do school visits, try and educate children on how to behave around dogs and what they should do, if dogs approach etc. We do various events, for example the SSPCR having an event in Fife this month, which we are also going to attend and put up a stall for education, and also we are doing free microchipping there as well, and the bids to try and speak to as many dog owners as possible. The downside is that the people that tend to go to those events are normally your responsible dog owners, so I would be happily open to any suggestions that can target that group of dog owners that are the biggest issue, but as of yet we have not found anything successful. Thank you very much. Jim Ferguson is really concerned about the incident that you described with the five-year-old girl on a stage. You said that she had been disfigured, does that permanently? Yes. I am concerned about police reaction in this case because if a human being had permanently disfigured a five-year-old girl on the stage, there would be no doubt that there would be a charge of assault at least. What was the police's reasoning for not bringing any action here? We had this phone call to our call centre from the upset parent and it was two weeks after and we searched and searched and searched and thought, we do not have this case, we do not have it. Surely we must have something, it must have been notified of something and it was the police call centre and governor that had pointed the lady in her direction and we were like, I cannot find anything. We had people back to her and said, we do not have this one file at all. I met with the police inspector and he said, do you know anything about this and he asked his officers, could you investigate, there were many cases from that event and a young police officer had been involved in this and had actually driven the child 25 miles to the hospital but there was no action taken under the dangerous dogs act. What was the inspector's reasoning for that no action being taken? He apologised, he met with the child's mother, it was quite clearly a feeling on the part of the police and highlights the inconsistencies that you do get as well as authorised officers and local authorities you get inconsistencies and obviously we had to start working on the case and we spoke to the organisers of the event who are quite a large company and they helped us and then they spoke to the stewards and the stewards had been aware of the incident but I had actually asked the chap to leave the event, the chap left in a car and one of the stewards remembered the car registration number, the dog owner and the car registration number was traced to, but coincidentally, K. Watson's area and we passed it over to K. Watson to take over but there was still no charge on the dangerous dogs act which was baffling but there was never a charge for dangerous dogs act but we said that this can't happen again, people go to events, ale festivals, music events, taking their dog, summer time, disney work. Do you agree with me that if that assault had been carried out by a man or a woman that there would definitely have been charges brought? Absolutely and it brings me back to this Greece Scotland document, it's in black and white and it has the roles and responsibilities, it covers everything, it's a good document, it doesn't pass the buck to the local authority, it's very balanced but it's not that well known in Greece Scotland. I think your story there is extremely upsetting and worrying but there's a huge issue of child safety here, we've already heard evidence I think from doctors a couple of weeks ago that dogs will go for children because of the height and size of children so there's a huge issue of child safety here. I'm trying to visualise the dance floor with people who have been drinking the height of the child and the height of the dog but there's very similar height and the role of the stewarding of the event and what they were thinking about. There's a lot of questions to be answered but we've certainly took robust action from our point of view and especially in event management. Thank you Jim Fergson. Do members have anything on that point specifically, I have a wider question I want to pursue and that's our work, the point about the story that we've just heard. Jim, I can see that you're physically emotional that you're in telling that story so thank you for sharing it in terms of the work with the committee. What's about the responsibility of the individual and that getting passed on and the failure of the police and that's perhaps something that we can take up with the next panel but do you think that the law should also look at the organisers of any such event and the responsibility that they have in terms of safety liability in terms of their own events and the impact of what happens there? I mean the idea that there was a dog and a five-year-old in a dance floor where loud music sounds ridiculous in itself. Our licence and standards officer is an ex-Polish Scotland superintendent so obviously he oversees the licensing of such events and with his background we were able to get this new procedure together, make it robust and make sure none of that happens again. The organisers contacted the child's mother, they apologised, I don't know if anything else came of it but they apologised to the child's mother but we passed the details of the child's mother to the organisers. At first the organisers were not co-operating, they weren't co-operating at first, that was the first, the first week or two they were not co-operating, they were in denial. At any point did the organisers break the law? No. In terms of allowing that situation even to take place? The organisers opinion was, it's not true because it wasn't our dog, it was a chap who came on by his dog, we can't stop that, we have no jurisdiction over dogs and children and who does what at these events and I totally disagree with that. So there's no choice now, we thought, if that's the grey area that we've got, let's get it closed, let's get it closed, it's closed now. And is that now closed across all local authorities? It won't be, no it won't be. I think that's something that we need to address as well. Three. Bill Bowman. Thank you convener, I have a couple of areas that I'd like to ask some questions on. The first one we've I think I'm discussing a little bit of detail which is the Scottish dogs control database and in evidence we've been told that not having a database was quotes a big miss in this act and I think it was interesting what Tim Ferguson said mentioned technicalities which so far anyway in the evidence we haven't heard of as a reason. But just briefly on this particular area, can I take it that all of you and all of your local authorities would support a database? I mean the concept of a database, okay. I'll leave that one there and move on to a different topic. We've heard that not all local authorities have appointed officers who have an understanding of dog behaviour and dog control issues to enforce the act. In some instances it was dog control duties have been added to the remits of environmental health officers, community wardens, pest control officers. So can you tell us the steps in your local authorities that you've taken to ensure that the people who have been appointed have the skills and knowledge to carry out these duties? The National Dog Warden Association holds two training seminars a year, one in May and one in October. The primary function is that practically every local authority pays a membership fee to the National Dog Warden Association and that money goes towards training. Last year we got the Crown Office Procurator Fiscal Service to come along because we could see a need where dog control, notice, breaches, a lot of dog wardens say, what's the point, Procurator Fiscal Service? They don't bother. Dogs, they're not interested. But the Procurator Fiscal is quite clear that that's not the case and a lot of the submissions they get from local authorities is of very poor quality and you have some difficult way of getting that through a sheriff court. So the fiscal service came along and did a training day at the seminar on evidence and what you need to get something through court. Again, that covers what we're talking about, the inconsistency of local authorised officers and local authorities, their skills and abilities and people who were doing another role now doing a new role in dogs and maybe not had the training. Are you saying then that your people have all had training? My people have all had training as far as the National Dog Warden Association goes and that's been my training and working with people that have been dog control officers for 30 years or so, what I call the traditional dog control officers, there's very few left because there was a time where that was a specialist area and that's what the person did and I think that K is still in that sort of realm but it's rare now, it's quite rare now. We would be the pest control, environmental enforcement, fly-tipping, litter fines and also the dog control officers so it's a lot to learn but that's why I think to get some uniform standardisation across Scotland we need some sort of SVQ, we need something. Your authority, you are appointing people who have the skills and the training? I believe that we have people who have the appropriate skills and training but I do not believe that that's consistent across the country. Well maybe hear from the others. Okay Glasgow doesn't come up very favourably in terms of the number of officers that carry out this function and one of the things we realised that is, as I said earlier, I feel as if this is quite a specialist role because you do have to have the experience and the skills that are necessary in dealing with the dogs that as a result of that we looked to get some training put in place by Elaine Henley and I think she was involved at the outset of the kind of legislation coming in, she was part of some of the experts involved in it, we had looked to getting her to come and do some training with staff, however there were some issues raised about did the staff, the existing staff that carried out enforcement functions, did they have already the experience that would then even lend itself to getting the appropriate training etc so because of a number of concerns that were raised we have now got an interim measure in place where we have a secondment from a member of staff that carries out this kind of role in another local authority to help us in the meantime while we come up with a more permanent solution to the training and the experience necessary for carrying out the function. I think that obviously I saw some of the comments from the previous meeting where it was clear that Glasgow was being highlighted perhaps as not issuing the same volume of dog control notices as some of the other authorities, in particular Cays authority, so when you looked at the size of the local authorities it was probably quite puzzling as to why there was such a discrepancy, but since we've had this interim measure in place we've turned around the volume of investigations taking place and indeed dog control notices being issued but we are looking to get a more permanent solution to that within Glasgow. In this issue, the investigation issue of dog control notices is done by environmental health officers within my team. They have the necessary skills in relation to investigation techniques and evidence gathering statement taking. They've also had training from Elaine Henley as well. They had a 2-day training course. Day 1 was a classroom-based session on the legislation and animal characteristics and behaviours. The second day was actually a practical training session involving their interacting with dogs, which had different behavioural characteristics and could show signs of aggression. They were taught how to recognise those signs and to deal with them. We have two pest control officers, Stoke Dog Wardens, who have also had training in handling aggressive dogs and have the necessary equipment to do so. Not everyone has to answer. If you feel the general position of your council has already been covered then please don't feel— I would like to hear that they all can confirm that. I just mean that you don't need to go into a lot of detail if you don't want to. Kay Watson. I think that we are exceptionally lucky at Five Council. We have two full-time dedicated dog wardens and it's a role that we went into because it's something that we're interested in coming from dog backgrounds previously and then carrying on our training within the role. So I think that as a council we are exceptionally lucky to have that. And I do believe that that shows in a lot of our figures because we do have those dedicated officers. Similarly in North Lanarkshire, we are very well placed. We have three full-time equivalent dog wardens. They all came from an animal welfare background. They all came from animal welfare charities dealing with dangerous dogs. Dogs would behavioural problems, so they have no problems whatsoever dealing with any of these dogs at the concurs. I think that as well, Elaine Henley did a lot of training with all the local authorities when the legislation was first introduced, but I think that just as is the way with local authorities, they turn over even of staffing things. It means that some of the people that may be originally had training are no longer carrying out that particular function as well, but yes, we are very much a work in progress. Jim. Yeah, I've met Elaine Henley. She's from the Association of Pet Behaviourists and we have had her in to train some of our wardens, but we are a multi-disciplined service. There's nine of us, certainly before, and we have multiple roles to but we are as trained as we can be. I always think about the pest control side of things, where pest control is very robust training, continuous personal development, you have to go and renew your licence. We need something that's a bit more robust for the dogs. North Lanarkshire seems to have a good situation there, five has a good situation, but it's not across the board. I think we're good at what we do. I think we're good at what we do, but we'll have to get there ourselves. Thank you very much. I hear what you say, but Alasdair, in North Lanarkshire, you've issued a total, in the seven years that the legislation has been going, you've issued a total of 11. Well, according to the statistics that we have— The statistics are out of date, and I'm afraid we've issued 28 DCAs. So, this is up to 2017-18, and it says 11, even 18. Orkney has issued more than you in the seven years. Similarly, with Glasgow, Glasgow is a total of three over the seven years, and the figures aren't available for the last two years. It's good that you've got three dog wardens, but even 18—presumably they're in recent times, aren't they? 28, but I wouldn't use the number of dog control notices. I should have been a good marker, to be quite honest with you. They get involved with investigations, they will give verbal advice, they will give written warnings, which don't actually come under the— So, how do we judge success then? I would say by the number of dog attacks that don't happen. Well, that's—nobody records that—nobody knows that. That's not a better measure than that. That is the problem. Tax in Scotland are rising. And if you look at A&E admissions, even in Lanarkshire— It's 5,000 across. That's right, exactly. That would indicate that there's a big problem out there. If dog control notices aren't a measure of success, we need a better measure of success, but not the number of dog attacks that don't happen, you can't measure that. No, that is the problem. So, what should the measure of success be? I'm not in a position to say. Linda? First of all, if I can clarify just the figures from Glasgow now to give you more up to date, we've issued nine dog control notices within the past 14 months. Again, partly due to the interim measure that we put in place by getting someone that was suitably experienced, etc. We've investigated 100 different reports to us, all at various stages. Some of those include cases referred by the Police and the Procurator Fiscal. Other ones are just from members of the public. I'm just talking about in the past 14 months, and that's been 100 cases that we've investigated, resulting in nine dog control notices. However, I can see whether it's a measure of that people now realise that we're taking forward the legislation. It's an increasing number of reports or requests that we're getting through to look into it. I'm not sure that I agree that dog control notices are only one measure in terms of the legislation. The dog control notice sometimes relies on sufficient information to allow you to put that in place, which is not always there when you're investigating the matter. I don't know that that's necessarily given the full picture of what works carried out. Is that an issue? How do we measure such things? I think that it's very difficult. From my point of view, a decrease in the number of reports would perhaps be a measure, but given that there's not enough awareness even necessarily within the public, within the agencies involved in dealing with the legislation, I'm not sure that a decrease would necessarily reflect that it's an improvement in the situation. I think that the more people are aware, the more they will perhaps report, so that it may show a rise in the number of incidents being reported, but not necessarily the number of incidents that have been taking place for a period of time. I've heard a story from Jim Ferguson, where there was no police report or prosecution in a really serious case. This issue of dog control notices, when we took this issue out to the public, in the three public meetings that we did across the country, a really strong theme coming back was that people had reported either attacks on their children or on dog attacks to the council. They think that a dog control notice had been issued. They weren't sure, because what they were hearing back from the council is that data protection doesn't allow you, as council officers, to tell the person whose dog or child was attacked what controls have been put in place. Let me give you an example. There was one couple in Dundee whose dog had been seriously attacked by another dog—I think that its ear was hanging off—and this dog who'd attacked it lived around the corner, but they kept seeing it when they were out walking their dog. It was off the leash and it wasn't muzzled and it was just roaming free. They had no way to know what restrictions had been put on this dog and what the owner had been asked to do. Is that a reasonable situation for the public to be in? In the case in East Ayrshire, we would always provide a list of conditions attached to a dog control notice to the complainant in the first instance. I think that the issue arises is where you identify the recipient of the notice to the complainant. We would not do that. However, we would say that, in relation to an attack on your dog at such and such a time, a dog control notice has been imposed imposing the following conditions. The only data protection issue would arise is where you identify the recipient of the notice. We would either predict the notice or simply provide a list of conditions that were attached to a notice issued in relation to that attack. Bill, let me try to unpick that a bit. What we have heard from the public is that dog wardens have said to people who have been attacked that they cannot tell them anything about the conditions of the dog control notice because of data protection. Are you saying that that is a very wide reading of data protection and that you can inform people who have suffered a dog attack of the restrictions of the dog control notice? That is precisely what I am going to say. We would adopt that stance as well with the GDPR. We had one situation on an island where— Sorry, you would adopt which stance, Jim, that you could not say anything or that you can share information? We cannot say anything. We cannot pass that information to the complainant. You cannot pass any information to a complainant. How come Bill Gilchrist is not under those data protection reasons? We are under the data protection regulations. However, the data protection regulations, as we interpret it, allow us to provide information, providing we do not identify an individual within that information. We have served a dog control notice. We do not see on whom. We simply say that we have served a dog control notice and these are the conditions that we would apply. We would do that in the form of a letter rather than issue a redacted copy of the notice. You are just saying that you do not put the dog owner's name on it, but obviously the person whose dog attacked. If it lives around the corner, they are going to know, but the law does not allow you to identify them, which is fair enough, but they get the list of restrictions on them, so they can monitor themselves what is going on. I think that that provides very valuable information to the council in the case of another incident, but it also provides a reasonable measure of assurance to the person who has been the victim of the attack in the first place. In terms of natural justice, that is unreasonable. To be honest, that is what I would have assumed would be the sensible outcome. Are we getting here that other local authorities are taking a very broad reading of this data protection and just not issuing any information at all? I think that it depends on how the data protection regulations are interpreted by the legal services section or the freedom of information officer. Gosh, so we have got a mixed picture right across the country. Do any of the rest of you want to shed some light on that? I think that we would just share with the person the fact that we were investigating the incident that they have passed the information about. We would say that that could potentially lead. We would go through what the potential outcomes of that would be, including a dog control notice and explain to them what types of things would be considered within that dog control notice, but not actually saying that that is what we have issued to a particular person. We could say to them that we are investigating your complete note, take whatever action is appropriate, given the investigation and what that brings out. I agree that that is still not a very satisfactory outcome for someone who is perhaps being subject to an attack or their dog being attacked. It is not ideal, but I feel as if we are very limited in the information that we can share. We have different interpretations by different council legal services about information. I think that that is something that we need to clear up as well. Let me ask you one more thing on the dog control notice. We had evidence from a woman whose daughter suffered severe disfigurement by a dog. It was back in 2010, it was at the start of the legislation, but her understanding was that that dog was under a dog control notice. What do you all do about irresponsible owners who have put a dog control notice on, but who just blatantly ignore it? We are finding a big problem is that when a dog control notice is breached, there are two separate issues. One, we cannot change a dog control notice without the owner's permission. For example, there may not be enough evidence to put a breach case to the procreate or fiscal, but we have enough evidence to believe that they are failing to adhere to their dog control notice. I cannot go and change a dog control notice to say, right, your dog now has to be muzzled because I do not believe that you are keeping it under proper control. I cannot do that without their permission, which I think is ridiculous. The owner of the dog, I have to obtain their permission to change the dog control notice. The only other option that is available to me is to remove that dog control notice and issue a new dog control notice, but if I am issuing a new dog control notice, I need to have enough evidence to support that I am issuing that correctly in case they appeal it. Whereas if an option was available to me to change a control notice, I can put it further measures in place there and then. The second set of issues is that, as Fife Council, when we send it to the procreate or fiscal's office, it can take nine months to a year for that case to be heard. We are finding more often than not that our cases just are not heard or just dropped. Dropped by the crown? Dropped by the crown, yes. They will usually set a date for the case, and whether the person does not turn up or plead is not guilty, it is not carried further. That is prosecution under the dangers dogs act? No, that is under the control of the dogs Scotland act. Any further quick points on that, Linda? It is probably because we have only issued a limited number of dog control notices, but the ones that we have issued, we do regular monitoring of them, which again is something that varies what that actually means across the board. We monitor on the basis of the detail of the dog control notice, what the incident was that has led to it and other circumstances. However, the ones that we have issued today have all been in compliance with people at this point in time, but, as I say, we have only issued nine. It is whether that is a measure of what it will be like when it increases, I am not really sure, and probably because we were able to give it more dedicated attention. Super. Liam Kerr. Thank you, convener. I will direct to you, Linda Gray. We have had some evidence that suggests that the legislation would be improved if there was an offensive obstruction. What would that look like in your view, and what would it allow the local authority or indeed the courts to do? I think that the reason that we included that in our submission was that we have had a couple of instances where we have been trying to investigate a matter, and we were at the point where we were going to issue a dog control notice and the person had, I think, been living with her parent, and then we went to issue the dog control notice, and the owner of the dog and the dog were no longer present, and the person just said that they have just moved away. They would not give us any details, and we have no power to force that information when we can. I think that we actually, on one occasion, had tried to work along with our colleagues in the police to see if that would even encourage any sharing of the information. We found ourselves in a position where a dog control notice would have been issued, but we were unable to do it because the person moved, and we were unable to trace them. There was no comeback for that person, just refusing to give us any information. Because of my background, even within enforcement with other legislation, quite often legislation does have a charge of obstruction, which you can remind people that they should fail to provide you with the information. There will be repercussions in that, whereas, as it stands at the moment, there is nothing. That is very useful. Final question. I will let the director, Bill Gilchrist, at East Ayrshire. You talk about a fixed penalty notice being of interest. Can you just tell us a bit about that, please? Certainly, my team, we deal with the strategy and the use and provisions of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. We have the ability to serve fixed penalty notices in the event that an abatement notice is breached. We have found that to be a highly effective tool in securing compliance with the notice. If there is a financial penalty involved, we think that it is far more effective than, as I have already said, to submit a report to the Procurator Fiscal, which, generally speaking, in our experience, would be taken. However, there is a huge burden in the court system at the moment. To clarify, Bill Gilchrist, there is a breach of a dog control notice, as far as you are aware. You would then have the power to serve a 100-pound fixed penalty notice to say that you have breached that and that you are also 100 pounds. Is that right? I think that it should be an option. I do not think that it should be the only option available to us. Given the circumstances of the breach of the dog control notice, the option should still be there for the local authority to refer the matter to the fiscal, particularly if there is injury to a person or animal. However, if it is a minor breach of the notice, for example, failing to have the dog muscled on a particular occasion, a lack of secure fencing around the garden so that the dog can escape, I think that, in those instances, a fixed penalty notice would provide a much more effective remedy than a referral to the fiscal, which might not go anywhere anyway. Thank you very much indeed for your evidence this morning. It has been a long session. I appreciate you all being very open and honest with us about the situation in each of your local authorities. I am going to suspend the committee meeting for a changeover of witnesses until 1022. Item 2 is Post-legislative Scrutiny Control of Dogs Scotland Act 2010. I would like to welcome our second panel of witnesses to the committee's meeting this morning. Alan Murray, chief superintendent and John McKaig, sergeant, local policing and development support both from Police Scotland. You are very welcome. Anthony McGeehan, head of policy from the Crown Office and Fraser Gibson, procurator Fiscal Scotland, South Strathclyde, Dumfries and Galloway, and you are both from Crown Office and the procurator Fiscal Service. You are very welcome. Thank you very much. Mr Neil, you were going to kick off questioning on the second panel. Are you ready? Yes. First, I will start with the point that was raised in the latter part of the previous evidence session about the number of cases dropped by the procurator Fiscal Service before they get to court. How many of those cases do we know were dropped? Why does it take nine months between being reported to the procurator Fiscal Service before any action is taken? I will take that question. In answering that question, it is important that we understand the framework within which the procuratorial decision making takes place. The framework in Scots law is that the procurator when receiving a case must consider three essential elements. The first is that the report discloses a crime known to the law of Scotland. The second is that there is sufficient evidence in relation to each of the essential elements of that offence. Finally, the procurator must make an assessment as to whether or not it is in the public interest to initiate a prostitution or take alternative procuratorial action. One of the key points to highlight within that three-step test is that, in relation to efficiency, in Scotland there is a requirement for corroboration in relation to each of the essential elements of an offence. We need evidence from at least two sources in relation to each essential element of that offence. That is the framework that applies to all reports received by COPFS, and it is a framework that applies in relation to relevant offences reported under both the 2010 act and the 1991 act. With that understanding, I can describe some relevant statistics and what those relevant statistics might tell us in relation to some of the evidence that the committee has heard over the course of not only today's evidence session but previous evidence sessions. I can go through that if that would be a benefit. I think that it certainly depends on how detailed it is. Clearly, I think that the two things we need to get to the bottom of. I hear what you are saying about the criteria that needs to be met, but how many cases are actually dropped before they go anywhere in terms of prosecution? Why does it take nine months or longer before a decision is taken? Well, again, perhaps I misheard this morning's evidence, but I did not hear that it took nine months before a decision was made. I think that what one of the witnesses was describing was a situation whereby her understanding was that it took nine months for cases to be dropped, proceedings having been initiated. My understanding of the evidence that is available to the committee is that that evidence is not supported by the available statistics. If you look at the number of persons prosecuted versus the number of persons convicted. I think that it would be useful if we got it, and I know that this might not be readily available, but if we got the figures saved the last three or four years of the number of allegations reported to the Procurator Fiscal, we know that we have the figures and how many were resulted in prosecutions. Roughly two thirds of those under the Dangerous Dogs Act roughly two thirds of those prosecuted ended in a conviction, which I would have thought is a reasonable rate. It is a higher rate under the Control of Dogs Act, but if you look at the number prosecuted under the Control of Dogs Act, for the first two years of the legislation there were none, then it was four, four, eleven, seven, ten and ten. Now, to be fair, a very high percentage of those, almost 90 per cent of those ended in a conviction, but those are very low numbers for the horror Scotland. Those are the statistics that I was referring to when considering the evidence that the committee heard in the latter portion of this morning's session whereby what was described was a series of cases that were initiated by the Procurator Fiscal, took approximately nine months to reach a conclusion, and that prior to that conclusion, for reasons unknown to the witness, the case was brought to an end. Those statistics, I would suggest, are not consistent with that evidence. Those statistics are consistent with where a prosecution is initiated by COPFS in relation to a contravention of section 5. There is a high conviction rate. I think that one of the areas of interest that the committee may have is in relation to what happens to charges, not accused persons, charges reported to COPFS and the prosecutorial decision making in relation to those charges. I would suggest that the committee must understand that the data in relation to persons convicted and persons prosecuted is different from the available data in relation to the number of charges reported to COPFS. Individual accused persons may be reported to COPFS for multiple charges. For example, in relation to a contravention of section 5, an accused person might be reported and we have an instance of this for 10 separate charges of a contravention of section 5, so 10 separate incidents of contravention of a dog control notice. That would be 10 separate charges, but the prosecution of that individual would represent one prosecution and one conviction rate. Statistics are available and they point to the challenges faced by both the police and COPFS in relation to proving charges under both the 1991 act and the 2010 act. I have those statistics available today and can provide those to the committee. That's good, but if we could get those circulated to the committee because clearly that matters each stage of the process and what happens at each stage and how long it takes and so on, because we certainly in the previous panel from people who were victims also took evidence, which was quite critical, both of the police and of local authorities, but also of what happened or didn't happen in terms of prosecution. So there's clearly an issue in there that we need to address, so that would be extremely helpful if we could get that information. One of the things that strikes me is the low numbers. The evidence—we had some medics give us evidence, medical professionals—gave us evidence about the number of people who turn up at A and E as a result of dog attacks. Across Scotland, I think that the total figure is estimated to be of the order of 5,000 per year. What worries us, I think, is the evidence from these people, from medics, and a lot of these if they're turning up at A and E it's serious enough to turn up at A and E and some of them are very serious indeed, but given 5,000 people turn up in Scotland every year as a result of dog attacks, and we end up with 10 prosecutions and 10 convictions under the controller dogs act, and 105 prosecutions of which 82 led to convictions under the dangerous dogs act. Something's going wrong somewhere, surely? 5,000 versus those figures? Again, it may be useful if I clarify your area of interest. Are you interested in the numbers, the discrepancy between the numbers of incidents reported by medics and the numbers of reports made to the police and by the police to COPFS? What I'm interested in is trying to reconcile the fact that there are 5,000 people turning up at A and E as a result of dog attacks, and yet that only leads to, under both acts, if you take the last year, the combined figure for both acts was 115 prosecutions of which there were 92 convictions. I'm not blaming anybody. Clearly, one contributing factor is that the medics are not obliged to report these cases to the police unless they think that it's very serious. Although that wasn't really defined, that was what we were advised. Clearly, one reason for the discrepancy is the fact that every incident isn't reported by the medics because basically they won't do it without the patient's permission, and it's not always the case that the patient wants to report the incident. That's one reason, but what I'm trying to find out from both the police and the prosecution service is that, from your perspective, why is there such a massive discrepancy between the number of people clearly injured as a result of dog attacks and the relatively comparable low level of prosecutions and convictions? If we could break that down into two particular sections, and I'll maybe take up the second section, which is what happens to a case and the challenges faced by the Crown Office when a case is reported to the COPFS, the committee may wish to hear from police colleagues in relation to the first stage, which is an incident that occurs in the community, and whether or not that incident is reported to Police Scotland and the challenges faced by Police Scotland? Back to help, Mr Neil. We've aligned people reporting these incidents to assassinate, and it certainly looks to me as if there's an underreporting. I'd also be interested to know the circumstances of those incidents. For example, was it the family dog that bit someone? I would accept that it looks as if there's been underreporting. Since 2010, we've received a total of 8,234 reports. Not all of them are dog attacks or dogs mean dangers out of control. It's the five elements of dog legislation that we have, so it's clearly nowhere near the figures that are presenting to accident emergency. There's also a lot of the dog bites that won't necessarily fulfil the criteria for a criminal case. I'm quite sure among those dog bites, but I would suspect that there's an element of underreporting. Well, there is a rule being applied, which is not actually in the legislation, but there is a rule that we understand being applied by prosecutors, that if the dogs only bit somebody once, they won't be prosecuted unless it's very serious. Apparently, that's in some guidelines somewhere. No, I'm happy to answer that if it would assist the committee. There is, in reading the material for the committee today, we obviously came across reference to, I think, some organisation that I've described as a one free bite rule. There is no such rule. There's no such rule either in law or in our guidance. What we do have to comply with in any prosecution under the dangerous dogs act is the statutory enactment that states what's required to constitute that offence, and we have to prove that by corroborated evidence. For the dangerous dogs act, there's a statutory requirement that a dog shall be regarded as being dangerously out of control on any occasion on which there are grounds for reasonable apprehension that it will injure any person or assistance dog whether or not it actually does so. That phrase in the legislation has been interpreted by the Scottish Courts. The decisions of the Scottish Courts are binding upon us. In essence, what is required before we can successfully prosecute a case under the dangerous dogs act is to prove that there was reasonable apprehension that that dog would bite someone. We have to prove that there's an element of foreseeability that is brought in through those decisions. If, for example, there's one incident and there's no history in relation to the dog, there's a very short incident, that will not satisfy in Scots law the requirements of that section. That is where a number of the challenges around dangerous dogs act offences, both for the police and for us, and in the understanding of it, because it's complex, it's not straightforward to come in. Satisfy the section of which piece of legislation? Section 3 of the dangerous dogs act, as interpreted by the Scottish Courts, and you have to look at the Scottish Courts decisions on that matter, which are binding on us. We'd be happy to share some of them with the committee. I think that that would be very helpful. That is, and I saw a reference to that in some of the submissions from some of the other parties in the case. So basically what you're saying is that cases that have already been to court and the judiciary has decided that there has to be this proof, you have to prove that the dog would be likely to bite again, basically. Is that what you're saying? There's got to be a reasonable apprehension that that dog would injure a person, and it is a person, so the assistance dog provision was brought in by statutory amendment 2014, it's not a dog, so previous actions relating to dogs maybe have limited relevance and proof in this section. So can I ask you then, I'm not a lawyer, right? So if I hammer somebody, if I assault Anas, and I've never assaulted anybody in my life, by the way, but if I assault Anas and it goes to court, I could get off because I'm not likely to assault anyone ever again. There's not necessarily any direct equivalent between the common law offences as we understand them relating to people and these offences relating to dogs. So, for example, an assault as we understand it is governed by common law, dogs offences are all governed by statute, they're all created by statute, and they depend on what the statute says. Secondly, there's another difference. I'm sorry to interrupt you, so even if it's a serious bite, and it's the first time the dog is recorded as having bitten anybody, but if it's a serious bite, will the, you're saying, you still might not take that to court because the judiciary likely to say, you know, if you can't prove it's likely to do it again? There, if what we are talking about is a very serious bite, it would depend, it all depends on every case and the facts and circumstances of the case, but the severity of the bite in and of itself would not be sufficient in itself to satisfy the requirements of dangerous dogs. So, if a dog mulls a child, the judiciary is likely to let the dog off the hook? It's not necessarily a question of what. You won't even take it to the court because they're likely to make that kind of decision? It's not about whether or not the judiciary is likely to make that decision, it's whether or not there's a sufficiency in law with reference to the relevant statute. So, the law isn't strong enough? Mr McGeehan, to protect children? The law is an asset, it sounds as though. Is that right? No, the law is what it is. Yes, from your point of view, from our point of view, yes. It is whether or not the law reflects or addresses the particular need or risk identified, but the law is what it is. No, I understand that. So, just to be absolutely clear, if a dog bites for the first time a child and mulls that child, disfigures that child, if you can't persuade the judge or you think you can't persuade the judge or the sheriff that the dog is likely to bite again, you might not take it to court. I mean, how bad does it need to be for the justice system, including prosecutors and judges, to put a bit justice for the child and their family? Well, again, in terms of justice for the child and family, that's perhaps not a question to ask of us as proshooters. As proshooters, we look to the law and it's whether or not the law captures the situation that you describe in the way that the legislature thinks appropriate. But our reference point would be the relevant statutory offence that may be applicable to the particular circumstances of an individual case and whether or not the facts and circumstances of that individual case firstly meet the circumstances of the offence as set out with their relevant statute and secondly whether there is sufficient evidence of each element of that offence and again, with the reference to Scott's law, sufficient evidence means evidence from more than one source in relation to each of those essential elements. Absolutely, but you have to satisfy all the criteria and I think Mr Gibson was saying one of the criteria is to be able to persuade the judge that this dog is likely or possibly could bite again. It's not a question of again, it's about in the incident where the bite, if it's a bite, we're talking about has happened, that there was a reasonable apprehension that that dog would injure any person, so you're actually generally looking backwards to see if there's evidence of prior behaviour by that dog that might give rise to concern, whether in some particularly unique circumstances where it's a very long incident, whether the length of the incident and the way the dog and the owner has behaved in that incident can give rise to that apprehension. But generally you're looking backwards, not forwards, to try and establish at the time the offence occurred, whether there was a reasonable apprehension of injury, that's what the case law which is winding on. I think very clearly this needs to be a change in the law, this sounds absurd to you. I mean it is absurd and it's my strong view listening to all the evidence that actually the law is a lot harder on human beings that have a conscience and free will than animals who can can be completely out of control. I'm going to say, just following up from Alec Neill's point, there is, if you take the Jim Ferguson example from the first session with the five-year-old that was mawled on the stage, that sounds like an argument that says the dog's never going to be on a music stage again with a five-year-old, so it's never going to attack a child again, so therefore no action should be taken against the individual that owns the dog or the dog itself, that just sounds absurd. It's not about whether we would want or not to take action in the circumstance of the case, it's whether as prosecutors there is sufficient evidence and law for us to prosecute that person for it. If we're talking about that example, you would have to be able to establish that there was a reasonable apprehension of injury to a person to be able to prosecute that case. If we're going to talk about this case specifically, can we refer this to Police Scotland? Because one of my main concerns around the story Jim Ferguson told us, if I heard it correctly, was that police didn't bring charges. Why was that Police Scotland? I don't know about this, I'm not aware of this particular case. Sure, but I don't think that it can be an isolated incident. If you look at the statistics on prosecutions— What would you say—I'm not referring to that particular case because I don't know the circumstances, but I think that, as my colleague from the Fiscal Service says, just because a dog bites someone even severely does not make the owner of the person in charge of it to be liable to a competent charge under the Dangerous Dogs Act. There has to be a reasonable apprehension. My understanding in simple terms, if the person in charge of the dog had a pretty fair idea that the circumstances were such that it was out of control in a manner that might bite someone or give rise to that fear, then that's a competent charge. If the bite, if you like, came out of the blue and the person in charge of the dog didn't know that that was going to happen, then it's not necessarily a competent charge. I think that's the way that I understand it in simple terms. Probably one of the stated cases that I know about is when a dog bit two children in a play park, but it was held in appeal that the owner had no reasonable apprehension. Surely a crowded concert with loud music and dancing and a dog on a stage with a five-year-old is a reasonable apprehension that something bad might happen? I said that I can't speak about the circumstances. I do understand that it doesn't seem like an appropriate venue to have a dog, whether or not that amounts to— But just in conversation, would you class that as being a reasonable apprehension that something bad might happen? Again, I'd need to know the full circumstances, but it's not necessarily. There are dogs quite often in noisy, busy circumstances in parks, etc., but I said that I find it difficult to comment on a particular case because there's always context in circumstances that would have to be taken account, both for the police and the fiscal service. Alan Murray, we had evidence from Glasgow City Council and I quote, "...there appears to be a lack of desire to take prosecution cases under the dangerous dogs legislation, but instead to refer it to local authorities." Is that the situation with Police Scotland? That would not be my understanding if there's an incident where there's a report and that there's a crime being committed under the dangerous dogs act and we think that there's a sufficency of evidence or a sufficency of evidence to present the case to the Procurator Fiscal for consideration, then we would make charges under it, but there would need to be a sufficency of evidence. We've also heard evidence that there are an increasing number of referrals back to local authorities from police and the Procurator Fiscal for dogs that have caused serious injury. Is that because of what the Crown Office has just described there about evidence? John McKay, you're nodding your head. Yes, it will be, and it's because of that threshold to an extent whereby proving the reasonable apprehensiveness. I would point towards the Scottish Crime Recording Standards too. The Scottish Crime Recording Board, which is chaired by the Scottish Government Justice Analytical Services, describes how all legislation and offences should be recorded. It's a document that's on the Scottish Government website. I'm referring to the dangerous dogs act, section 3, keeping under proper control. It provides a scenario of a dog tied up on a short lead, perhaps outside a shop, and bites a person walking past. It actually starts off by saying that this is not a police matter, as the dog was not dangerously out of control. Consideration should be given to reporting the matter to the local authority. Further note to that there was that police should investigate in the first instance if a person is bitten by a dog. That is certainly to establish whether, under the full circumstances as the police know them to be, whether that crime has taken place or not. Let me put Jim Ferguson's story to you. If the five-year-old girl had been disfigured by an assault that I had assaulted her, would there have been an immediate charge against me? That comes back to what our colleagues were saying. Under common law, with an assault, there's not that requirement that there is under statute under the dangerous dogs act for that reasonable apprehensiveness. I would be charged immediately for that crime against that child. Yes, there's that disconnect between what happens between humans and common law. But dogs get a second chance. Well, I wouldn't necessarily put it as that, because the law provides what the circumstances are when an offence can be proven to have been committed. Okay. Liam Kerr. Briefly, since we're on this, if I may, Jim Ferguson told us about an operating procedure. He showed us a couple of times an operating procedure that said when it was something was in Police Scotland's remit, but he suggested that elements of Police Scotland were not aware of this or not enforcing it. Do you accept the procedure? Do you, Police Scotland, accept that that procedure exists? Is it clear and do you accept that not all the areas of the force know about it? The answer is yes. The procedure that described where we should be reporting things to the local authorities, absolutely that protocol is there. I think that there is an inconsistency. I think that one of the council reps said that not all beat cops are aware of it, and certainly from our investigations into this, I would accept that there is an inconsistency across the country. It's quite often mirrored by the... Commitment isn't the right word, but the councils who have dog wardens and have put that investment into the dog wardens, it seems to be mirrored by the police that there's far better information sharing, but I would accept that there will be police officers who will not be aware that if there is not enough for a charge under the dangerous dogs act, that they should then refer it to the local authority for consideration of a control order. It's a fair comment that it would be inconsistent across the country, and that's reflected by the investigations that we've carried out prior to coming here today. On whom does the onus lie to remedy that situation within Police Scotland? We're currently reviewing our procedures for matters relevant to dogs, and I think that when that's been reviewed, it would be incumbent and enforced to make sure that that's disseminated and reinforced, and certainly that would be a recommendation arising from these hearings that we need to be sure that across the country that there is sufficient knowledge that when cops are dealt to deal with dog attacks they know that. What I would say is that it's clearly there's a lot of dog reports, but it's not something that police officers will deal with day in, day out. Statistically it's very unlikely in the course of any one year that a specific beat cop, if you like, will deal with this, which maybe contributes to it, but I think that there is definitely a gap that we need to address in that knowledge. I wonder if I could ask our colleagues from the fiscal services to clarify the issue about reasonable apprehension. Please forgive me for asking again. Did you say that, even if it's established and clear that an attack has taken place and a bite has taken place, that the priority is still given to reasonable apprehension being demonstrated over the fact that an attack has taken place? It's not a question of priority. It's a question of what the Lord requires us to prove, and it requires us to prove by corroborating the evidence that there was a reasonable apprehension of injury, so simply a bite would not be enough in and of itself, except perhaps in special circumstances. We've had some evidence that there's not a great deal of joined upness between councils, police and so forth in this. Where a case has originally been pursued under the dangerous dogs act 1991, and there's no action being taken, is there a process for referring this to the local authority for action under the 2010 act? Yes, the approach that Robert was referred to, that if we are investigating a case under the dangerous dogs act and there is not sufficient evidence to report it to the procurator fiscal, we should then refer that to the local authority for consideration of action under the 2010 act. It should, but does it happen that there seems to be no evidence of that effect? It's difficult to tell how often it happens and it doesn't. Again, because there is no database, it's difficult to tell how many times it's been referred and how much it's harassed. Potentially incumbent upon the relationship with the local authority, and it's been discussed earlier the investment there and in the police, but certainly our protocol and our guidance says that if we're dealing with a dog that has been out of control, then we should certainly be informing the local authority of that. Whilst we could continue our investigation in terms of the criminal offence, the dog control notice is a civil order and the local authority. We work best when we work in collaboration and it's that information sharing that is so important. Jumping on again about that information, we spoke earlier about the dog control notice register that has not been implemented nationally. That could potentially be a great form of evidence that if we know that a dog has previously had a dog control notice applied to it in a different part of Scotland, then if we're building a case about under the dangerous dogs act, we can demonstrate that proof that there's been a dog control notice or that there's been warning letters or whatever it may be, then that would contribute towards that. It seems a bit ad hoc. You're saying that it depends on the relationship locally, effectively. I'm not sure if ad hoc's a description is used, but there is, in some respects, a disconnect. Some of it comes from that there is no single point of information with the database that's been talked about, the information that we cross-check across local authorities and between the police and local authorities to see what action has been taken before, what reports have been made before. I think that's what John is talking about, about that information sharing is probably where that disconnect comes, that when we supply information, if we supply the information, then what happens to that information then? There is no national database that that goes on. That would be certainly when it comes to proving a case of the dangerous dogs act, certainly proving that a dog has previously been subject to an investigation that's been dangerously out of control would certainly give rise to the fact that there might have been reasonable apprehension that it might be again. I think that sufficient evidence has been put forward saying that a national database would be desirable and certainly make a difference. However, that shouldn't stop cases being referred to local authority where they have failed to be prosecuted under the dangerous dogs act 1991. It's not just whether a dog fails to be prosecuted, it should be both at all times when there's information about an out of control dog within the community that the local authority dog warden is made aware of that and the police can investigate to establish whether any criminal offences have taken place. So would the dog warden be aware that the case had been dropped or whatever? I noted in the earlier session that the committee does not appear to have a copy of the relevant protocol, but this issue is covered within the protocol. I would ask the committee to view some of the evidence that the committee has heard from individual local authorities through the lens of the protocol and what the protocol provides for in relation to interaction between the 1991 act offence and the 2010 act offence. In relation to the protocol at page 5, the second paragraph provides that it is important to note that, whilst the policy presentation of the 2010 act has often been in the context of the DCN regime being trying to prevent attacks from taking place, the law itself does not restrict imposition of a DCN to only where attacks have not taken place. Given the discussion about the 1991 act, which is fully discussed within the terms of the protocol, and that discussion is mirrored this morning in terms of the challenges faced by prosecutors and police in relation to the 1991 act, it provides that it can be the case that imposition of a DCN may be appropriate for cases that are originally considered under the 1991 act, but where a lack of evidence exists to support a prosecution. The system operated by COPFS is that where a case cannot be taken forward by COPFS, it is not the case that a prosecution has failed, but rather that the prosecutor cannot take the case forward as a result of the evidential test that must be met with reference to the 1991 act. Prosecutors will ask the police to refer the matter to the relevant local authority, and that is the process that was described by some of the witnesses this morning, and some of the witnesses this morning described what we understand to be a complementary approach whereby, if an offence cannot be taken forward in terms of the 1991 act, there is an opportunity for the local authority to consider action in relation to dog control notice because of the different evidential tests that must be met in relation to that DCN, and also, as my police colleague has said, with reference to the future, that that DCN might well be a reference point should that dog misbehave in the future and there is an opportunity to be available again to consider whether or not a prosecution in terms of the 1991 act is available. There is a process for automatically referring this to the local authority. Is that process working? We, in every case that we can't take up a case under the Dangerous Dogs Act, ask the police to refer it to the local authority. That is part of our guidance. Okay, so you ask the police to refer it. Do the police refer it? We should, and in some occasions we do, but I think that there have been failings. Clearly, the statistics would tend to suggest that we don't, on all occasions, and maybe that there should be a tighter process for that. I think that that's what we're seeing, that there's processes and so forth in place and protocols in place, but they're not really being adhered to. That would be my impression. If a dog attacks a postal worker or a police officer and they're carrying out their duties as opposed to a random attack on a member of the public, is there any different way that you can deal with that dog? No, the same law would apply. You might have better evidence, perhaps, but apart from that. We may have better evidence, but there may be different evidential challenges. If we think about the law in Scotland in relation to the requirement for corroboration, we need evidence from at least two sources of each essential element. If we think about the circumstance in which a postman or a postwoman may be bitten by a dog, the challenge is identifying two sources of evidence for each of the essential elements of the offence in relation to those circumstances. There's no particular protection for the police, let's say, carrying out their duties. Can I ask the panel? We had evidence—I think that you were all here—to hear the first panel. We heard evidence saying that there was a lack of understanding among prosecutors of the law on this. Can I ask the Crown Office to respond to that, please? We would reject that evidence. There are specific guidance for prosecutors in relation to each of the relevant offences. Those offences are marked by specialist prosecutors, and I note the source of that evidence. That evidence was given in connection with the interaction between COPFS and local authorities in relation to consideration of a DCN. What was described was increasing referrals to a local authority in circumstances in which a prosecution had failed. Again, I would challenge that language of understanding and challenge that the referral of a case in which a prosecution is not possible to a local authority is not appropriate and is not evidence of good practice in the part of COPFS and good knowledge in the part of prosecutors as to options that may be available and should be considered in circumstances in which a prosecution cannot take place. That is helpful. Can I also put another piece of evidence that we have heard to the Crown Office? We heard that local authorities often receive requests from procurator Fiscal for dog control notices to be served on dogs whose owners await prosecution under the Dangerous Dogs Act. It goes on to say that there is a suspicion that this may be to avoid the costs incurred with seizing and kennalling dangerous dogs until the owner's case reaches court. Is that correct? Absolutely not. I noticed that the allegation was a suspicion rather than one based on evidence. The protocol makes it quite clear that in cases in which we cannot take action, we will refer cases to the council. Again, as my colleague referred to, those comments seem to not taking licence of that section of the protocol, which clearly expresses and makes it clear that such referrals will happen. When we do not have a sufficiency of evidence, we will ask—and the police do, in my general experience—refer on those referrals to the relevant local council to consider whether or not the dog warden can take action in respect of that. It may be that there is a misunderstanding of what stage in the process that happens. Of course, our case stays live until we close it, but we will have taken our decision about sufficiency. We will wait in terms of recording the steps that we take in the case to close the case until we have had that communication with the police. Are you saying that you make the judgment on whether you seize and kennel a dog or give it back to the council for a dog control notice on the sufficiency of evidence that you have? Should the test not be public safety? For instance, a dog has bitten a child and there is a prosecution pending under the dangerous dogs act, but you refer it back to the council for a dog control notice, which you have no sense that that dog control notice will be adhered to. Is it not more in the public interest and public safety that you seize and kennel a dog? When it comes back to the sufficiency of evidence, the police will have made the decision by that point whether to seize the dog or not. That is the police's decision. There will be the first people dealing with that. The evidence says that they received requests from the Procurator Fiscal for DCNs to be served on dogs. That is the evidence that local authorities can clarify. We will have made a decision about whether there is a sufficiency of evidence to prosecute the owner or the person in control of that dog by the time. If there isn't, we will vent because we can do nothing more at that point because we do not have a sufficiency of evidence. We will refer the matter on to the local authority to see if there are any steps that they can take in terms of their powers under the Dogs Control Act as a responsible public authority. That is obviously a proper thing for us to do. That is a different scenario than the one that I have just put to you in evidence. You are saying whether there is a sufficiency of evidence, i.e., you might not prosecute. However, that piece of evidence says that while the owner is awaiting prosecution, I am concerned that what you are telling me is that you are making a decision on a very legal point, the sufficiency of evidence, whereas there is a public safety issue here. Basically, you are making a decision as to whether to leave the dog in the community with no guarantees that it is going to behave, rather than seizing it and kennalling it after it is bitten by a child. That is not our evidence. Again, that is a local authority. That is not the situation. I return to my opening evidence and connection with the legal framework in which a prosecutor must operate. There has to be a sufficiency of evidence before a prosecutor can act and take prosecutorial action. Where we are referring cases to a local authority for consideration of a DCN is where there is insufficient evidence to allow the prosecutor to take action. You are saying that seizing and kennalling is a prosecutorial action? No. Seizing and kennalling takes place before the case is reported to COPFS. The case is reported to COPFS with the dog potentially having been seized and kennalled. The decision for COPFS at that stage is whether or not there is sufficient evidence for us to take prosecutorial action. If there is insufficient evidence, we cannot take action. If there is insufficient evidence, we cannot move on to the public interest test. If there is insufficient evidence for us to take prosecutorial action, we would be unlawful. We cannot take action. In light of that fact, that is when we are referring the matter to local authority because there is an opportunity to set out in the protocol for a local authority to take action in connection with a DCN and to try to address those public safety issues that you have highlighted. I think that my point still stands. You could still have the situation under what you are telling me that a dog bites a severe bite of a child and because you do not have sufficient evidence, the dog is left in the community and is just given a DCN rather than being seized and kennalled. Again, that comes back to what a prostitute I can lawfully do. Sufficiency of evidence is that by people witnessing it independently or does it include the injury? Is the injury contributing to the sufficiency of evidence test? There is a requirement for evidence of injury in connection with an aggravated offence in terms of the 1991 act. I would encourage the committee to look at the terms of the 1991 act both in terms of the offence and the interpretive section in terms of section 10 of the 1991 act. That is what prostitutes are referring to. We are required to prove injury in terms of an aggravated offence under the 1991 act, but you are perhaps asking whether or not injury would lead or form part of the case in relation to reasonable apprehension, and the answer is not. We have heard contradictory evidence in terms of the application of the Data Protection Act. We had previous evidence as well, but this morning we heard that one local authority East Ayrshire, where a dog control notice has been issued issues to the complainant, the contents of the dog control notice provision, without naming the culprit. Whereas it was in Glasgow, they said that they do not go as far as that because of data protection. There seems to be a real variability about the interpretation of the Data Protection Act. From the COPF point of view, who is right in terms of the Data Protection Act? Can you issue the complainant with the detail of the content and the conditions of the control notice or can't you? It is not for COPFS as criminal prostitutes to offer a view on the operation of a civil regime by a local authority and its compliance with data protection obligations. Briefly, if I may, Police Scotland, you heard me ask earlier on about fixed penalty notices, which have been brought up by at least one of the councils. Does Police Scotland have any view on fixed penalty notices for breach of a DCN? Is it more efficient in your view for a minor breach? If so, what is a minor breach? It may be more efficient. I think that a range of disposals for any offencer crime can be helpful if it does not overcomplicate things as long as it does not overcomplicate things. What would constitute a minor breach would depend on the terms. In many respects, the things that go on dog control orders are to stop it presenting a danger. You could argue that if any of those conditions were not fulfilled and the danger presented, it would represent a breach. Possibly, again, it would be the circumstances and the context, and the result of whatever action it was would guide what the disposals should be. However, I think that a fixed penalty may well be an option for breaches. It would add to your toolkit? In principle, I think that it would add to the toolkit, yes. Grant, a final question for anyone on the panel. I also asked earlier about an offensive obstruction. Do any of you take a view on whether that would be a useful addition to the toolkit? It would be. If there is an order issued in the person who the order applies to, does not comply with the order or the spirit of the order, then there has to be some sort of sanction or mechanism for making sure that they do in simple terms. Again, in principle, I think that I would support that. Thank you. Do members have any further points for our witnesses this morning? Can I thank you all very much indeed for your evidence? I now close the meeting to the public as the committee moves into private session.