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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what the steps the Government is taking to implement the ban on ear cropping dogs in the UK.

Under the Animal Welfare Act 2006, it is currently an offence in England and Wales to carry out a non-exempted mutilation e.g. where it is not carried out for medical purposes, including the cropping of a dog’s ears. The procedure is considered unnecessary and compromises the animal’s welfare. Once the Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Act 2021 comes into force on the 29 June 2021, anyone convicted of such an offence faces being sent to prison for up to five years, or receiving an unlimited fine, or both.

This strengthened penalty sends a clear message that animal cruelty will not be tolerated and will enable our courts to take a firmer approach to cases of illegally cropping a dog’s ears and other forms of cruelty such as dog fighting, abuse of puppies and kittens, or gross neglect of farm animals.

On 12 May 2021 the Government published its Action Plan for Animal Welfare. This is a wide-reaching and ambitious plan to set out our current and future work on animal welfare. The Government has a manifesto commitment to crack down on puppy smuggling and one of our key reforms in the plan is to end the abhorrent, cruel practice of puppy smuggling and low-welfare pet imports. We are planning to bring in powers that will allow us to prohibit the importation and non-commercial movement of dogs into Great Britain that have been subject to low welfare practices, such as ear cropping, in line with our domestic legislation on these practices.