In speaking to my motion on dog attack figures, I would like to mention four organisations that have brought the subject back to our attention and have run a magnificent campaign on the need for us to review the Control of Dogs (Scotland) Act 2010. The first of those organisations is Clyde 1, which has run the lead the way campaign to protect children from dog attacks that has been led by Natalie Crawford. Clyde 1 has already given a lot of airtime to the subject, and has elicited a lot of additional information of which we were not aware.
The second organisation to which many thanks are due, as was the case during the passage of the original legislation, is the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, particularly for the role that has been played by Mike Flynn. The third is the Communication Workers Union, which has been running a substantial campaign on the subject across the United Kingdom to protect its members, which has been led by Dave Joyce.
Finally, and most important, we must thank the victims of dog attacks and the families of people who have been subjected to dog bites and attacks down the years.
It is necessary to reopen the debate for three fundamental reasons. First, the problem of dog bites and dog attacks is not only still with us, but is actually getting worse. Only seven of the 14 national health service territorial boards have been able to provide us with figures, but even those seven health boards, which cover half of Scotland, report figures that show the rate of attacks to be well over 4,000 a year. In the Greater Glasgow and Clyde NHS Board area, for example, the figure is up from 1,900 attacks in 2015 to 2,027 in 2016. The number is high and rising.
Secondly, the number of dog control notices that have been issued under the 2010 act accounts for 290 of the incidents, so fewer than 10 per cent of all the incidents have resulted in dog control notices. That shows that the act is not being implemented properly. If we look at enforcement and at the number of animal control wardens, we find that the biggest local authority in Scotland, Glasgow City Council, has one animal control warden for a population of nearly 600,000 people. Meanwhile, Renfrewshire Council, which has a population of 175,000 people, has two control wardens.
In Dundee, which is another city that is afflicted by the problem, nine in 10 dangerous dog reports go unpunished. Not only is the problem bad and getting worse, but implementation of the 2010 act varies greatly from local authority to local authority. That is not good enough, because it should not matter whether a person is attacked by a dog in Dundee, in Glasgow, in Renfrewshire or anywhere else. If someone is attacked by a dog, appropriate action should be taken and, under the legislation, appropriate action by the local authority is particularly important.
The third issue is that many of the current measures are, to be frank, not powerful enough. The reason why we needed the 2010 act was that the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, which that was passed at Westminster, concentrated on the breed of dog, and not on the deed. One of the objectives of the 2010 act was to ensure that, irrespective of the breed, if the deed was antisocial and threatened people—not only children, but people delivering mail and working in parks or elsewhere—appropriate action would be taken. The deed matters more than the breed, because the breeds that are not listed in the 1991 act are capable of doing as much damage to human tissue as those that are listed.
The three issues are that the problem is getting worse, the existing measures on the statute book are not being properly implemented and the powers that are available, particularly to the police, are not sufficient. One of the deficiencies of the current legislation is that a dog is entitled to one bite before it is punished, but very often the first bite should be punished because it can lead to so much damage to children, for example.
It is not just about attacks on humans; there is the wider problem of attacks on farm animals and attacks by dogs on dogs. However, my primary concern in the debate is attacks on human beings. A leading plastic surgeon of the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh, Dr Judy Evans, said:
“The emotional trauma can be so difficult to deal with because it’s on-going. They have to deal with the trauma of the attack and of the constant operations to repair the damage. I have seen young children who have had massive bite marks and scarring to their face ... I have seen tearing of the flesh. It can be so tricky to repair this sort of damage. There’s also a massive risk of infection because of the nature of the injury.”
The Royal Mail and the Communications Workers Union officially back the Radio Clyde lead the way campaign. The Royal Mail recorded 231 attacks on its employees in 2017, and it desperately feels the need for additional measures.
As I said earlier, the importance of the legislation cannot be overestimated. We need a fundamental review of the operation of current legislation—particularly, but not only, the 2010 act. We also need to identify where additional measures are required to ensure enforcement of existing and future provisions, as well as to give additional powers to the authorities, where necessary.
This is a really important debate. There is a need for us to speak out on behalf of people who are threatened by or who have been the victims of dog attacks, and to represent their views. Sometimes, the threat can be as damaging to the psyche, particularly the psyche of a child, as an attack.
I hope that members will agree on the need for action. When the Minister for Community Safety and Legal Affairs sums up, I hope that she will give a favourable response on the need for us to look at the issue again, and that she will ensure that more robust action is taken by Parliament to protect our people from out of control dogs.