Pets: Theft

(asked on 5th January 2022) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many cases of pet theft were reported to the police in each year since 2015.


Answered by
Kit Malthouse Portrait
Kit Malthouse
This question was answered on 10th January 2022

Information on the scale pet theft was gathered as part of the recent Pet Theft Taskforce which engaged a number of key organisations and experts in the field to shine a light on the existing evidence, considered the issue from end to end, and set out a package of specific recommendations to tackle this crime.

The evidence included data from 33 police forces in England and Wales on trends in reported dog thefts since 2015 and is available here:

Pet theft taskforce report - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

The Government is acting on the recommendations of the Task Force which includes introducing a new dog abduction offence which has been added by the Government to the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill, bolstering the raft of measures it already includes to further protect pets, livestock and kept wild animals.

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