Under the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018, anyone in the business of breeding and selling cats as pets needs to have a valid licence issued by their local authority, and licensees must meet strict statutory minimum welfare standards, which are enforced by local authorities.
As a proud cat dad to two cats, one of which was beaten to the title of Purr Minister by Attlee, Mr Speaker’s cat, it has amazed me to find out that the 2018 regulations on animal breeding focus merely on dogs and not cat breeding. Can the Minister therefore assure me that he will look at updating the regulations to include cats?
I thank the hon. Member for his question and for his references. The Animal Welfare Committee has provided its opinion on the welfare implications of current and emergent feline breeding practices, and we will be looking at those and coming back with measures in future. In passing, may I pay tribute to organisations such as Cats Protection, which does such wonderful work? I am told that it recently pointed the Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice (Emma Hardy), to her new kittens, Lily and Meglatron.
There are 12.5 million cat owners in the UK, and hundreds of thousands of cats are killed on the roads every year. The previous Government agreed that it would be right to include cats in the Road Safety Act 2006, but they simply did not do it. This means that cats are regularly hit and, because there is no legal duty to report it, are just scooped to the side of the road. Does the Minister agree that this is something that we should do to bring parity to cats and dogs when it comes to safety on the road?
This is an issue that has been widely discussed. Our advice is that it would be difficult to enforce in practice, but I fully recognise the distress and concern that it causes.