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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether his Department has considered the potential merits of re-introducing the imposition of dog licences.

We have no plans at this time to reintroduce an annual registration scheme or dog licenses. The old dog licence was repealed by the Local Government Act 1988 because it cost more to administer than the revenue it generated and was in effect an ownership registration scheme. Now that microchipping and registration on a compliant database is mandatory, this is no longer necessary.