Dr Scott Arthur

Absolutely. A few years ago, we looked after my daughter’s cat for a short period—three years, it turned out. It was a fantastic cat, and its pastime was chasing foxes, but one day it was in the garden and then darted across the road, almost getting run over, so I get that it is not always—or even seldom—the driver’s fault. I like to think that if it happened to me, I would stop and perhaps explain what had happened. Lost cat signs have become common on lamp posts right across the UK. They are almost so common that we hardly see them at all now. Only last month, a constituent contacted my office, deeply distressed after a driver tragically killed her two-year-old kitten. She was left searching for answers and completely bewildered as to why the police could not intervene or help clarify what had happened. This is not about criminalising drivers; it is about compassion and accountability. Leaving an injured cat on the roadside deprives it of potentially lifesaving veterinary care and leaves owners in agonising uncertainty. I am very proud to have a People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals hospital in my constituency. I visited it a few months ago. Two cats I saw had had had operations after they had suffered some kind of trauma, and the assumption was that that was being hit by a car. That is just two cats on one day in that one hospital. I thank the PDSA for its fantastic work to support people on low incomes being able to access excellent veterinary treatment. Updating the legislation would not place an inordinate burden on drivers or the police. With microchipping now compulsory in England—and needed in Scotland, as we heard earlier—identifying the owner and offering closure is easier and faster than ever before. The petition shows a very real public mandate for a change that people demand. At the same time, I recognise that some voices in the animal welfare sector are concerned that amending the Road Traffic Act to include cats might have the unintended consequences of imposing criminal and civil liability on owners of cats involved in collisions. Of course, it is the job of this place to consider unintended consequences and to ensure that they are absolutely minimised or, we hope, do not happen at all. I urge the Government to explore how to update the Act in a manner that will protect owners while giving the same basic duty of care to cats that we extend to dogs. We heard that Gibraltar and Jersey already have some such provisions. They are places with close connections to the UK and I am sure we can learn lots from how they approached the problem. Finally, as a Scottish MP, I have to acknowledge that this is a devolved matter; I appreciate that in Scotland it falls under the Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006. I very much hope for progress at a UK level, but we can also speak to colleagues in Scotland, perhaps at the same time talking about mandating chipping in Scotland and—something else I am passionate about—heavily regulating people who choose to breed cats at home for a profit, which involves at least a lot of distress for the cats. That needs to be addressed north and south of the border.