Animal Welfare (Import of Dogs, Cats and Ferrets) Bill

Lord Black of Brentwood Excerpts

Friday 5th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

My Lords, I strongly support this long-overdue Bill and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Trees, on skilfully steering it through this House. My noble friend Lady Fookes has asked me to say how much she wishes she had been able to be here—she is at a long-standing event for the War Widows’ Association—and that she, too, supports the Bill.

I want to talk specifically about the plight of cats and kittens being smuggled into the country. I declare an interest as patron of International Cat Care. I am also grateful to Cats Protection and Battersea for their tireless work in this area. I declare an interest as a cat owner, as I know is the Minister, proud owner of Sid. The commercial market for cats has been changing over the last few years. Cats Protection’s Cats and Their Stats report for 2024 revealed a significant rise in the number of pure bred and pedigree cats in the UK. For the first time, the number of these cats acquired over the last year has overtaken the market for moggies like my own, with significant consequences because of the increase in the smuggling of such cats from abroad. According to the Cats Protection survey, 4% of the cats acquired in the 12-month survey period were from abroad. That is an astonishing 65,000 cats and kittens.

As any cat owner knows simply from a visit to the vet, travel is very traumatic for most cats, particularly for very young ones. It causes severe stress, in turn causing serious clinical symptoms. Yet far too many cats are being transported or smuggled into this country in distressing conditions, often many in a vehicle at the same time. This Bill will help tackle the problem by banning the import of kittens under six months and of pregnant cats in the last one-third of their gestation period, and reducing the number of cats that can enter in a single motor vehicle to five. That is still a large number and, ideally, I think that number should be three per vehicle, which is still a significant number and would not impact in any way on the vast majority of UK cat owners. Perhaps the Minister can explain why the number was set at five, not three.

The result of all that will not just be an improvement in the welfare of imported cats; it will, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Trees, protect humans from imported diseases. Cat smuggling is known to be a public health risk, with some diseases being zoonotic: they can spread from cats to humans, with potentially fatal consequences. We need to ensure we avert that risk.

I have often raised the issue of the horrendous impact on cats of mutilations undertaken for cosmetic or designer purposes. One important aspect of this Bill is to ban the importation of cats with mutilations, particularly those that have been declawed, a barbaric and painful procedure. As noble Lords know, declawing is illegal here, and we must deter any market interest developing in bringing such benighted animals to the UK.

If I have one problem with this Bill, it is that it is enabling legislation, requiring national authorities to make regulations and opening up the possibility of endless consultation and delay. That has become an issue with the Animals (Low-Welfare Activities Abroad) Act 2023, the subject of an Oral Question earlier this week. The Minister heard the concern of noble Lords across the House about the delay in implementing it. Two years on from its reaching the statute book, we are stuck in a doom cycle of consultation and delay, highlighting the problem of enabling legislation, We also encountered problems under the last Government with the regulations concerning electronic shock collars, inexplicably delayed before the general election. Nothing has been heard of that since, and cats and dogs are still suffering needlessly. The same thing must not happen to this legislation. I ask for a commitment from the Minister to implement it with the maximum possible speed and not to allow it to become victim to the same problems that have affected other animal welfare laws. With that caveat, I strongly support this Bill and wish it well. Let us get it on to the statute book unamended as soon as possible.