Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the report Puppy smuggling, a tragedy ignored, published by Dogs Trust in July 2017, whether his Department has made representations to the countries cited in that report.

This Department takes puppy smuggling extremely seriously.

The Chief Veterinary Officer (CVO) has raised cases of abuse of the Pet Travel Scheme, based on evidence from UK enforcement bodies, with those authorities in the relevant Member States. This includes writing to the CVO’s Polish counterpart in October 2016 and Hungarian counterpart in November 2016 to notify them of the identification of several non-complaint puppies originating from their countries, which had been seized on entry to the UK. The CVO at the time of publication also had a number of exchanges with his Lithuanian counterpart.