Karl McCartney – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Karl McCartney on 2016-01-21.

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps she plans to take to ensure that local authorities which find a dog dead or injured scan the dog’s microchip and contact its owners.

George Eustice

Following a debate in the Westminster Hall on 2 March 2015, the then Minister of State, for the Department of Transport undertook to instruct the Highways Agency to make it their policy to ensure that it collects and identifies every animal that is killed on the strategic road network and to contact the owners by whatever practicable means. The Minister also wrote to all local highway authorities and Transport for London to draw attention to the Government’s policy and reflect on their own policy. It is established good practice for all authorities, including local authorities and dog rescue centres that come into contact with a stray, injured or deceased dog to scan it for a microchip so that the dog’s keeper can be traced. To assist this process, the Kennel Club has donated microchip scanners to every local authority in England and Wales. The compulsory microchipping of all dogs in Great Britain comes into force on 6 April 2016.