Dr Danny Chambers
MP for Winchester · Liberal Democrat · United Kingdom
“The Government invested more than £560 million in AMR programmes between 2020 and 2024, so it is reasonable that Parliament should receive an annual assessment of AMR-related deaths to ensure that that significant public investment is delivering results, represents value for money and is targeted where it can have the greatest impact.”
“Surveillance has already identified significant variations by age, deprivation and geography. Understanding where deaths are occurring, and in who, would help direct resources to the communities and services that are most affected.”
“I thank the Minister for her comments. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion. Clause, by leave, withdrawn. New Clause 32 Review on deaths related to antimicrobial resistant infection “Within six months of the passage of this Act, the Secretary of State must conduct and publish a review into the number of yearly deaths in the UK which…”
“This is not simply a matter of people dying from infections that could not be treated; nearly all the advances in modern medicine over the last 50, 60 or 70 years would be null and void.”
“We very much welcome the Government’s initiative to give children free bus travel throughout the summer—it is a great idea. The only problem is that in Winchester and its surrounding area, Hampshire county council keeps cutting funding for bus services.”
“I thank the Minister for her comments. We understand that the Government take this matter very seriously, but we are working on estimated numbers of deaths for something that will eventually be killing more people than covid. We really need some tangible figures, so I will press the new clause to a Division.”
The complete record
Every one of 601 lines we hold for Dr Danny Chambers, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 9 of 13.
“No one should be condemned to suffer for years on end because they cannot access treatment. We must all be committed to tackling damaging stigma. We must take an evidence-based approach to preventing eating disorders, which are hugely multifactorial. The factors are often non-clinical; social media has been mentioned already. Eating disorders are the mental health crisis hiding in plain sight. They carry the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness, yet services are being cut, waiting time standards have been abandoned and young people are being left to deteriorate before help arrives. Early intervention saves lives, and we must be bold and move heaven and earth to deliver it.”
“He said, “If I, as a consultant psychiatrist, am struggling to navigate the system to get healthcare for my own child, what hope does anyone else have?” It is a very confusing situation. There are plenty of other elements of this topic that are a real cause of concern. I will not repeat what everyone else has said, but I am really concerned that eating disorders are increasing, with hospital numbers doubling in a decade, and yet 24 of the nation’s 42 NHS integrated care boards are due to reduce their spending on under-18s in 2024-25, once inflation is taken into account. It is a really difficult situation: there will be increased pressure and less real-time resource to deliver. We must all remember that although they are very serious, eating disorders are treatable.”
“The Minister and the Opposition spokesperson both served with me on the Public Bill Committee on the Mental Health Bill. It was a conciliatory piece of legislation with cross-party support; there was genuine intention and passion on all sides to improve mental health in the UK. The disjointed provision of mental health care, especially for eating disorders, was one reason why I tabled an amendment to review how services for eating disorders are delivered. I will never forget a consultant psychiatrist coming to my surgery. He said that he was trying to get mental health care for his own child; it was not specifically about eating disorders, but he was struggling to navigate the system.”
“I am reminded of several people I spoke to while knocking on doors in Winchester. Securing mental health care for children seems to be one of the top issues with which people are struggling. In particular, I remember two different mothers saying that they had been told that their daughters, who were suffering from eating disorders, had to reach a lower BMI before they qualified for treatment. We know that that means having to be sicker for longer, so not only is a successful outcome less likely, but it will require longer and more intensive treatment and will be more expensive for the NHS. As the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley) highlighted, with the benefit of his expertise, it is more cost-effective to have early intervention than to treat people once they have been sick for a long period.”
“It is a honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I thank the hon. Member for Isle of Wight West (Mr Quigley) for securing this important debate, but also for very bravely and emotively discussing his personal experience. Those of us in this Chamber who have had relatives suffering from these disorders know that it can be so frustrating when someone does not appear to want to help themselves. It causes a huge amount of stress for the family and for the carers who are looking after them. We know that eating disorders kill more people than any other mental health condition. Those who do recover have been robbed of years of life: they have missed their adolescence and have had their school and social life affected. That can have ongoing effects for the rest of their life.”
“Many carers have told me how much they rely on respite care to protect their own physical and mental health so that they can continue to care for their loved ones day in, day out. The wonderful Chesil Lodge day centre in Winchester has recently been threatened with closure, and I have been fighting alongside constituents to keep it open. How will the Department ensure that respite services such as those at Chesil Lodge are consistently available and are not subject to a postcode lottery? Can I also—”
“Hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza are being deliberately starved to death; aid convoys are coming under fire; children are being shot by soldiers; and schools and hospitals are being bombed. Can the Foreign Secretary outline what further war crimes would need to take place before the UK Government sanctioned the Israeli Government and Prime Minister Netanyahu himself?”
“If a child is eight or nine years old and has to wait two years for diagnosis, it is very difficult for them to make up for that lost time. Although we should be clear that ADHD and being on the autism spectrum are not themselves mental health issues, if such conditions are unrecognised and undiagnosed, and are not supported in school, that can lead to mental health issues, including children feeling inadequate and struggling to achieve what they should. That causes a lot of stress and anxiety.”
“It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Sir Edward, and I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) for securing this hugely important debate. Like many other Members here, SEND is probably the subject that I get the most emails about, and it is very closely related to children’s mental health, which I will start by discussing. The process of struggling to access an educational support plan starts right from trying to get a diagnosis. It is difficult to get a diagnosis through CAMHS for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or for being on the autism spectrum. Delays of more than two years are not only awful for individuals, but make up a huge chunk of their time in school.”
“They will not get a job that pays as well as one they could otherwise have got and they will be more likely to end up on welfare throughout the rest of their life. We have a prison in Winchester, and some 25% of the prison population are diagnosed with ADHD, compared with 3% to 4% of the general population, while 9% have autism spectrum disorder, compared with 1% to 2% of the general population. It costs £50,000 a year to keep someone in prison, yet apparently we cannot afford to give people the support they need in school to help them to make better life choices. If we did that, it would be better for those individuals and more cost effective for the taxpayer in the long run.”
“In this instance, Hampshire county council has failed to plan on time and ignored parental choice. It is insisting at the last minute on a wholly unsuitable mainstream school, which has no record that the child is coming and says that it cannot meet his needs—and we are talking here about a parent who managed get the package required for their child in primary school. I could talk about this for half an hour, given the amount of casework I have. There is a huge issue about how we pay for SEND, but we must also consider what happens if we do not pay for it, as some other Members have touched on. The issue is a little like free school meals: if a child goes to school either hungry, or with undiagnosed learning needs that are not being met, they are clearly not going to fulfil their full educational potential.”
“I completely agree. The issue that everyone has brought up today is that the system is adversarial right from the point that parents try to get a diagnosis in the first place to show that their child needs support. When they finally do, they then have to fight tooth and nail—including in time-wasting tribunals, which take a large emotional and financial toll—to get the support that their child is entitled to. Even once the child gets the support package required, that is not guaranteed all the way through schooling. Let me give a bit of an extreme example: I was recently contacted by a parent whose child, who has just one week to go in primary school, still does not know where he will go to secondary school. The parent and the headteacher of the primary school have asked continually, but there is no clear response.”
“Will the Minister join me in congratulating the fantastic Lib Dem-run Winchester city council on being rated the greenest council in the UK by Climate Action UK? That is a lot of work by politicians, and it shows what politicians who dearly believe in this issue can achieve if they crack on and deal with it, rather than weaponising it in some kind of culture war.”
“We must see alcohol harm and alcohol-related cancer as preventable public health issues. That means that we need the political will to expand social prescribing to reduce isolation, deliver mental health MOTs at key life stages, open mental health walk-in hubs in every community, and legislate for a cancer survival Act to ensure that patients start treatment promptly and that research is funded for cancers with the poorest outcomes. Alcohol is a legal product, but it is not harmless. People have the right to know the risks and get support when they need it. We need to stop treating alcohol-related cancer as an inconvenient truth and recognise this as a crisis of alcoholism.”
“As the Medical Council on Alcohol’s research shows, rates of alcohol-related cancer, liver disease and premature death are highest in the most deprived communities. This is a matter of health inequality, and it should shame us that we have allowed those disparities to grow. I was on the Tobacco and Vapes Bill Committee for several weeks. Fascinatingly, Professor Whitty told the Committee that the Bill was not only the single biggest piece of public health legislation in about 30 years, but probably the most impactful piece of legislation in addressing inequalities, because health inequalities between the wealthiest and most deprived postcodes are so large partly because of smoking rates—and, we also know, partly because of patterns of alcohol drinking.”
“They can be treated as many times as they need to be when they get to a physical crisis-point, but we are never treating the underlying mental health issue that needs to be addressed. We need to restore the public health grant so that social services can run alcohol cessation and early intervention programmes. We also need to invest in digital tools, including a kitemark for apps that are clinically proven to help people reduce their alcohol intake and live healthier lives. We must recognise the wider context in which alcohol causes harm. Alcohol misuse does not happen in isolation; it is often closely linked to trauma, poor mental health, loneliness and disadvantage. Crucially, alcohol harm is not equally distributed.”
“Along with the Medical Council on Alcohol, the Liberal Democrats are calling for a comprehensive national alcohol strategy that is properly funded, cross-departmental and informed by the latest evidence and public health expertise. Part of that strategy must be rebuilding and reintegrating alcohol treatment services, ensuring that addiction support is fully joined up with mental and physical healthcare. We have heard from so many doctors who talk about people being admitted to hospital for their physical symptoms to be treated, but once they have been detoxed, essentially, they are discharged without any automatic mental health support. Of course, that means that they eventually come back in for further physical treatment.”
“We have had roundtables here in Parliament, including with the British Liver Trust; its headquarters are in Winchester, so I have worked closely with it. I have also spoken on panels at the Royal College of Physicians. All those experts discussed alcohol and alcohol-related harms. There is not only a human cost but an economic cost. Alcohol-related harms cost the NHS £4.91 billion every year, and that is before we even consider the wider cost to families, employers and society. Other hon. Members pointed out that the misery and loneliness of the pandemic resulted in people increasing their alcohol intake, and that intake has not really decreased since that time. That has resulted in alcohol-related deaths increasing by 42% since 2019, which means that over 10,000 lives were lost in 2023 alone.”
“We know that alcohol gets metabolised into toxic chemicals. It damages DNA and has effects on other hormones in the body that increase cell division. These are well-evidenced biological processes. Indeed, the British Journal of Cancer has found that between 2% and 4% of cancer cases in the UK are attributable to alcohol, which means that thousands of lives are affected every year, many of which could be saved through better public health, education and early intervention. I pay tribute to Professor Julia Sinclair, who lives in Winchester and works at the University of Southampton. She is a professor of addiction psychiatry and focuses very much on alcohol. I have worked closely with her, even before I was elected.”
“The only way to get anywhere near it was to give it a huge amount of beer. It would get completely drunk and pass out, and then we could safely go and trim its feet. We had to repeat that performance every six months. That is my own experience of using alcohol in veterinary medicine. The point of this debate—highlighting the link between alcohol and cancer—has been made repeatedly by other Members. Most people are aware that alcohol causes liver problems, but so many people are not aware of the proven link between alcohol intake and cancer. We have listed at least seven related cancers, including breast, bowel and liver cancer. It does not matter whether the alcohol consumed is beer, wine or spirits; the risk it poses is real and increases with consumption. The mechanisms are well understood.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. I very much appreciate the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Cat Smith) securing this important debate. We vets often treat liver disease and cancers, but in animals they are rarely caused by excess intake of alcohol. On the few occasions that we use alcohol in veterinary medicine, it is therapeutic. It is quite common for cats to drink antifreeze, which causes kidney damage, and one way of treating that is to hook them up to a drip with vodka, because it is the antidote to antifreeze. That has probably saved the lives of thousands of cats in the UK over the last few years. I remember that when I was a student there was a particularly vicious boar that everyone was too scared to go anywhere near, but its feet needed trimming.”
“A woman from Winchester wrote to me saying: “It feels as though every department that should have protected us has instead failed us”. After years of high-risk domestic abuse, she went through a CID investigation to prove that she needed financial separation, but the police missed the Crown Prosecution Service investigation deadline and no charges were brought. She is now unable to secure child maintenance. Her abuser remains in financial control, which is effectively enabled by Government systems. What discussions is the Minister having with colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions and His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to ensure that perpetrators of domestic abuse can no longer use financial systems to maintain power and control over their victims?”
“My many years in veterinary practice, working both in Winchester and in Romsey—in your beautiful constituency, Madam Deputy Speaker—as well as around the rest of country, have shown me just how deeply the people of this nation care for their pets. They are companions, and they are sometimes sole companions to people who live alone. I have lost count of the number of times, especially during covid, that we were treating animals and someone would say, “I haven’t seen anyone else for months, and my dog or my cat is my only companion.” Pets are absolutely vital for many people’s mental health, especially when we have an epidemic of loneliness. Pets are sometimes part of the antidote to that.”
“I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time. I am delighted to present this Bill for its Third Reading. I begin by stating how grateful I am to all the Members from across the House who have engaged with this Bill, especially during the Public Bill Committee. It became quite clear very quickly how passionate every Committee member was about animal welfare, and we had a huge amount of contributions, with many taking the opportunity to name check their own pets from home. I thought I had heard every cat name during my years in clinical practice, but I have to say that I was really impressed by the imagination of the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Johanna Baxter), who revealed that her cats were named Clement Catlee and Mo Meowlam.”
“All of the pets who have been mentioned in this Chamber, and others who have not been, are close to our hearts and serve to remind us of the importance of this Bill. Although my pets and yours, Madam Deputy Speaker—Alfie and—”
“We were at one of my friends’ houses for dinner recently, and one of their children looked at Frank and said, “Frank is really ugly.” The other child said, “You shouldn’t say that, because he might have been in an accident.” It was possibly a genetic accident, but I want to make clear on the record that beneath his appearance, he is a gentle and loving companion, and he brings a smile to the face of everyone who sees him. I know that many other Members, as well as people across the country, will feel as strongly about protecting animal welfare as I and other vets do. Pets like Frank and Moose have such profound impacts on our everyday lives and happiness, and it is crucial that we do all we can to ensure dogs like them are protected from the cruel practices involved in pet smuggling.”
“There are so many fantastic organisations like Canine Partners. Another one is the Cinnamon Trust. If a person ends up going into hospital for an extended period of time, the Cinnamon Trust will take care of their pet for them and give it back to them when they are discharged. That takes away so much of the worry. My partner Emma and I have two dogs: Frank and Moose. Frank has been mentioned before in Parliament, because I managed to wish him a very happy 15th birthday recently. He is a pug cross border terrier. I think the best way to describe how he looks, with his undershot jaw and his big buggy eyes, is quirky. I admit that he gets a mixed reception; one Liberal Democrat Member saw a picture of him and called him ugly, which I was horrendously offended by. [Hon. Members: “Shame!”] It was awful—shame!”
“Alfie and Luna. They are cockapoos —I am sure they keep you very fit. Although our pets, and all the pets of the other hon. Members who are in the Chamber today, are well cared for and have loving homes, that is not the case for all cats and dogs in the UK. As a vet, I have seen the devastating consequences of puppy smuggling. It is unimaginably cruel to separate puppies and kittens from their mothers at a very young age and then bring them across borders in substandard conditions, where they are sold for maximum profit by unscrupulous traders who prioritise profit over welfare.”
“When people go to buy a puppy, they are completely unaware that there is a reasonable chance that it has been smuggled in from abroad.”
“I very much appreciate that intervention from my hon. Friend. Yes, one important part of this Bill—which I will come on to—is biosecurity. There are a lot of diseases that we do not see in the UK that can affect humans as well, such as rabies and Brucella canis. There are also diseases such as distemper that affect other dogs; we do not see those diseases in the UK, but there is a risk of them coming in and becoming endemic. My partner Emma, who is here today, is an epidemiologist at the University of Surrey, studying diseases such as rabies in dogs and the risk of them transferring across borders. It is a very live issue. Those who purchase an animal are often completely unaware of the smuggling process, which is devastating.”
“That is an insightful intervention from my hon. Friend. Yes, most people are shocked at the sheer scale of puppy smuggling. The Dogs Trust did a study looking at one of the online platforms with puppy adverts, and up to 50% of those adverts turned out to be for puppies that had possibly been smuggled in from abroad. In the last 12 months, one in five vets said they had treated animals that they believed had been smuggled from abroad. This is not a niche issue; it is a systemic issue within the pet trade, and these loopholes need to be closed.”
“When owners buy a new puppy, often they do not realise that it has been smuggled and taken from its mother far too soon. That can cause a lot of medical issues and other diseases, such as parvo virus. It is not unusual for someone to buy a new puppy and, within the first week or two, have to go to the vet repeatedly with a very sick animal, whose problems are often quite hard to diagnose. Sometimes these diseases are fatal. There are few things more heartbreaking than a family who, within a few days of ownership, not only have an expensive veterinary bill but have lost their new puppy.”
“Dog-on-dog attacks are a huge issue. It largely comes down to socialisation when they are puppies. It was made a lot worse during the covid pandemic when people could not attend normal puppy training classes, and puppies could not walk and meet other dogs or have normal training regimes. I will also come on to the problem of dogs having illegally cropped ears—when their ears are cut off—because dogs communicate by body language, and part of their body language is ear position. If they cannot move their ears, they cannot communicate in normal ways to other dogs that they are not a threat, and they are more likely to get into fights and difficulties. It is the same if their tails are cut off and they cannot show whether they are happy, sad, angry or confident.”
“Crucially, the Bill places a duty on the Government to use these regulation-making powers to deliver three key measures: a ban on the import of puppies and kittens under six months old; a ban on the import of heavily pregnant dogs and cats that are more than 42 days pregnant; and a ban on the import of dogs and cats that have been mutilated. Raising the minimum age at which dogs and cats can be imported will ensure that very young animals are not taken from their mothers too soon. Separating a puppy or kitten from its mother too young has huge implications for its health and welfare.”
“That is why we are striving to end those practices by delivering the measures in the Bill. The Bill closes loopholes in our pet travel rules that are currently exploited. It does so by reducing the number of animals permitted per non-commercial movement from five per person to five per vehicle—including vehicles on board a train or ferry—and to three per person for foot or air passengers. Careful consideration has been given to setting these limits, balancing the need to disrupt illegal trade with minimising the impact on genuine pet owners. To underpin this, only an owner, not an authorised person, will be permitted to sign a declaration that the movement of a dog or cat is non-commercial.”
“I know that the hon. Lady speaks with authority as her husband is a vet. I thank her for sitting on the Committee and for pushing the Bill through. She also has a private Member’s Bill on animal welfare. She makes an important point that has been consuming the veterinary profession for the last couple of years. A lot of dogs brought in from abroad have a disease called Brucella canis, which can affect humans. It can cause infertility and miscarriages. Obviously, if a dog has been illegally smuggled in, owners might not be aware of the risk because they assume it has been born in the UK. It is a huge human health risk as well. Just last night, I was still receiving messages from veterinary colleagues about treating animals that they strongly suspect have been smuggled in because of the type of illnesses that they are seeing.”
“The great thing about closing that loophole is that there will be no excuse for owning a dog in the UK with cropped ears, and no one will be able to claim that such a dog has been brought in from abroad.”
“For anyone who is not aware, ear cropping is when someone cuts a dog’s ears off to make it look more aggressive. It often happens to breeds such as XL bullies and Dobermanns. It has been illegal in the UK for more than a decade—since, I think, 2013. People are still performing the procedure in the UK, without veterinary supervision and probably with no anaesthetic, and then claiming that the dogs have been brought in from abroad, because it is still legal to bring them in from abroad. I received messages last night from about a dozen vets, saying that just in the last couple of months, they have treated dogs that have clearly had their ears hacked off in the UK, and that now have infections and need the rest of the ear amputated. This is going on now.”
“Currently, the minimum age is technically 15 weeks, but it is very hard even for vets to accurately age animals. By the time they get to six months old, they have lost all their deciduous teeth—their baby teeth—and have mostly adult teeth, so we can be much more confident about their age. Raising the minimum age will be much better for their welfare, but it will also help tackle the criminals’ business model, because the demand is for puppies, not dogs that are over six months. We hope that if people cannot bring in dogs at six months old, it will take away the incentive to try to get them across the border. I come to mutilation, which includes ear cropping, the declawing of cats and tail docking. It is very cruel and should not be tolerated.”
“We know that some dogs are being taken back and forth; they get pregnant again, and then are brought back to give birth. It really is abuse of these bitches. They are basically puppy factories. The transportation of heavily pregnant dogs and cats is dangerous to the health and welfare of both the mother and the offspring, especially in heatwaves, given the heat inside vans when they have a few pregnant dogs in the back, so it is paramount that we remain on the front foot and use the Bill to prevent this practice becoming commonplace. The Bill will raise the minimum age at which cats and dogs can be imported to ensure that very young animals are not taken from their mothers too soon, and that we can age puppies and kittens more accurately.”
“Yes, ferrets are some of the most quirky and engaging creatures you can ever meet—great personalities. I have to say I hate them coming into the consult room, because you can smell that they have been there for several hours afterwards, but they bring a lot of joy and pleasure to the people who own them. We anticipate that traders may respond to an increase in the minimum age for importing puppies and kittens by increasing the number of pregnant dogs and cats that they import. The evidence from stakeholders suggests that even at present, traders are importing very heavily pregnant dogs and cats in order to benefit from their trade as soon as the puppies and kittens are born, because it is much cheaper and easier to bring in an animal before it gives birth than to try to move a whole load of puppies.”
“It has been a joy to see the House united on animal welfare, and to see the commitment to working together across parties to end puppy smuggling. I urge all Members to support these crucial measures.”
“Finally, in Committee the Bill was amended to remove the power that would have enabled the Secretary of State to make consequential changes that might have been required as a result of changes that the Bill makes to the pet travel rules and corresponding commercial import rules. Further consideration of the legislation has taken place since the Bill was introduced, and we have greater confidence that no further consequential amendments will be required. Should further changes to the pet travel schemes legal framework be needed, the Government may be able to make them using existing powers in other legislation. The Bill will play a pivotal role in disrupting the cruel pet smuggling trade, a shared objective of Members from across the House.”
“The Bill was amended in Committee to allow the appropriate authority to exempt pet owners from the new requirements in articles 5 and 5A of the pet travel regulation in exceptional and compelling circumstances. This aims to ensure that the new measures will not disadvantage protected groups such as assistance dog users. It will also provide flexibility in emergency situations, such as cases where genuine owners can no longer travel within five days of their pets, for example because they have a medical emergency. I know that has caused some concern, and I reassure hon. Members that it is intended for use in limited circumstances, which must be exceptional or compelling. Exemptions sought will need to be considered on a case-by-case basis, and the Government have provided reassurances that no blanket exemptions will be granted.”
“It’s maddening, frustrating and pitiful all at the same time.” Cutting a dog’s ears off with no anaesthetic is obviously physically harmful, but it can also affect the dog’s psychology for the rest of their life, so they will not let anyone go near their head. It is quite interesting; we know that dogs love to be stroked, particularly on their heads, and studies show that both a human’s and a dog’s cortisol levels go down when a human pets a dog. The relationship is mutual and symbiotic. Depriving an animal of that type of relationship for the rest of its life is really upsetting. What is the point in owning a dog if you cannot even stroke it? It is a real shame. There is no reason to mutilate an animal in this way. It is a cruel practice, only carried out for aesthetic reasons, and the Bill will help us to close that loophole for good.”
“Clarity about the fact that there is no excuse for having a dog with cropped ears should make prosecution and enforcement of the law a lot more straightforward. I will read out a message that I received from a veterinary colleague last night: “Just saw for repeat meds check this week, 3yo cropped Doberman, imported but clearly was very young and Owner was not given any passport or papers. He had his ears cropped (supposedly done abroad before being imported, but was probably done in the UK). Lovely bright dog until anyone puts a hand towards his head when it will explode with aggression. Big enough dog to be life threatening if a child approached him. Now exists near permanently muzzled and dosed up on Prozac.”
“That is a very good point about social media. One reason why there is such an interest in dogs with cropped ears is that a lot of influencers on Instagram and other social media platforms pose with dogs, or show that they have new dogs, with cropped ears. Many people are not aware that it is a mutilation; they think it is how dogs’ ears normally look. That drives a demand for dogs that look like that. We will be running a “stop the crop” campaign to try to get influencers and companies that use crop-eared dogs in adverts to stop doing that, so that cropping is not normalised among the general public. I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that point.”
“I also thank Emily Kitchen and her cat Tango—the most clumsy cat in the world—and Sophie Hammond, my parliamentary assistant, who is on maternity leave.”
“He was my dean at Liverpool vet school, and in my third year, he failed my parasitology viva, which meant I had to spend a summer revising and coming back for resits instead of having fun. Given that this Bill will help prevent parasitological diseases from coming into the UK, I hope he might consider giving me a retrospective distinction. I know that the Bill will be in good hands in the upper House. I also thank my team. A private Member’s Bill is a lot of work, especially for a new team. I noticed a couple of last-minute changes to my speech—I think I can guess who made some of them. I thank my team, including my chief of staff, Tom Wood, and his cat Luma, who is clearly the most intelligent cat in the world.”
“I thank all Members who have been involved with this Bill at all its stages, including in Committee, and for forwarding me a lot of correspondence from their constituents about it. I also thank the Government and the Minister for their support for this Bill, and the civil servants and the Clerks of the House for the support they gave my office in getting this done. About 10 years ago, I was on the British Veterinary Association’s policy committee, and we were pushing to tackle puppy smuggling. We were working with other organisations, such as the RSPCA, the Dogs Trust, Cats Protection, FOUR PAWS and Battersea Dogs and Cats Home. Today is a great day for all those organisations, which have wanted this to happen for so long. I thank Lord Trees, who is kindly sponsoring this Bill through the upper House.”