Gavin Williamson, MP for South Staffordshire, attended a parliamentary event raising awareness for stolen and missing pets.
The Stolen and Missing Pets Alliance hosted a drop in event and photo call for Dog Theft Awareness Day in Parliament to raise awareness amongst MPs about the increasing rate of thefts across the country.
Dog Theft has risen by 24% in the last three years. The crime hits families, the elderly, the disabled and the homeless. The alliance are calling for tougher sentences, better detection and compulsory scanning of microchips to help reduce the number of dog thefts across the country.
Gavin has previously supported campaigns that work to prevent Dog Theft such as the One Big Bark campaign that highlights the use of social media to reunite missing dogs with their rightful owners and emphasises the use of microchipping and ID Tags.
Gavin has also encouraged dog owners in South Staffordshire to get their dogs microchipped after it became compulsory in England last year. Details of pets and their owners should be recorded on a microchip database so they can be re-united if a pet goes missing, and the new microchipping requirement ensures these details will be kept up to date. The database should be informed when a pet is lost or stolen: if a stolen pet is identified through scanning, it can advise the owner on what steps can be taken.
On attending the event Gavin commented: “Our pets are part of our family and there is understandable distress when an animal is lost or stolen from a family home. It is certainly not acceptable that dogs are being stolen and I hope that with microchipping becoming compulsory this will deter people in the future.
“I am pleased to support the campaigns of The Stolen and Missing Pets Alliance, One Big Bark and DogT.A.G. and I encourage the work that they do in our area, seeking help for those families who have had a dog stolen. In some cases, by the power of social media, dogs can be reunited with their families and I very much applaud their work.”