Docking law is cruel and backward step

It’s the last week of business at Holyrood before summer recess and I’m looking forward to being out and about in the region.

My office at the top of King Street is open and I’ve enjoyed welcoming visitors. It was saddening though to be on the receiving end of some mindless vandalism as the old windows of the shop were smashed last week. But we are still open as usual on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday and the next surgery for constituents is on Saturday, July 1 from 10-11am.

Gandhi once said that “the greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated”. Even in times of far bigger political questions, the needs of the smallest, voiceless creatures provide a reflection of our values and how we carry ourselves. Last week’s vote at Holyrood to bring back tail amputations in healthy puppies destined to become working dogs brought this into focus again.

‘Tail docking’ or ‘shortening’ as it is sometimes called has been banned in Scotland for a decade. The vote was to reintroduce it for working dogs on game shoots where they can be vulnerable to injury. Tail docking in a puppy is a painful amputation that has to be carried out without pain relief given the age of the dog. It makes no difference in terms of pain, as to whether the tail is totally removed or shortened.

Clearly if you remove a tail then it can’t be damaged in later life, but the same could be said of ears which were routinely ‘cropped’ until the practice was banned in 1899.

The Government’s conservative estimate is that 80 puppies’ tails would have to be amputated to prevent a single amputation in an adult working dog, so how is that a net benefit to animal welfare? Does a puppy feel 80 times less pain than an amputated adult dog? There was no evidence for this.

There was no research into the negative impact of tail docking on behaviour, communication and confrontations between dogs. Neither was there research on the other causes of tail injury such as poor kennelling and no analysis of alternatives to protect working dogs such as ‘tail sheathing’ which is used in the US.

The evidence was so weak that every single veterinary professional body across the UK was in opposition, yet most SNP, Tory and LibDem MSPs voted the law change through.

The Scottish Government has now copied the loopholes in England which effectively lead to non-working dogs having their tails docked for cosmetic reasons, simply because they are born into a litter where some dogs will go on to work. An illogical backward step in the law and a dangerous anti-science precedent for Parliament to take.

A year into the Holyrood session now and we are chasing the Scottish Government on a commitment they made to the Greens on supporting incredible young carers.

Out of 49,000 young carers only 7000 provide enough hours of care under the current rules to qualify for Carers’ Allowance. The UK Government insists only those providing more than 35 hours of care a week should be eligible. It’s also a concern that young people are denied access to Carers’ Allowance if they are already receiving a benefit such as Jobseekers’ Allowance, as this does not take into account the additional costs of caring.

We have an opportunity in Scotland to take a fairer approach and provide financial support for thousands of young people providing care through a Young Carers Allowance. We’ll keep pushing the Government hard on this till young carers get what they need.