Thanks to the Minister for today's statement. I agree with the sentiments underlying the statement.

The majority of households that have pets have dogs, and there are several issues over the welfare of dogs, one obvious one being: in today's society, are they getting enough exercise and general stimulation? These days, a lot of households contain couples who are both out working during the day, so this can be a problem. So, we have to be sure that people purchasing dogs are involved in an appropriate lifestyle for owning dogs. If dogs are short of stimulation, they can exhibit behavioural problems such as anxiety, in some cases, or in others, aggression. They would then need to be dealt with through training classes. Now, training classes are mandatory for the owners of dogs purchased from a lot of rescue centres, but they're not mandatory for dogs purchased through other means like private sellers. I'm not saying that it has to be mandatory, but do we need, perhaps, to publicise more the benefits of putting dogs through training classes and do we need to do more to educate dog owners as to the welfare and costs of keeping their animals? I note that education is one of the themes in your statement today.

The microchipping regulations that were introduced for dogs you say are being reviewed. It seems sensible to introduce that with the increase in incidents of dognapping, particularly of expensive breeds. You mentioned that you are looking at whether there is a good case for the microchipping scheme to be extended to cats. I would think that there probably is a good case for it, but I know that you responded already to that when Paul Davies raised it, so you may not be able to say more on that issue today.

Can I mention horses? There isn't much detail in today's statement about horses, although I know that there is a revised code of practice that's going on. We know that the fly-tipping of sick and injured horses is at an all-time high, so this is a major issue. Indeed, the RSPCA claims that there is a horse crisis going on. One of the problems being that horses are relatively cheap to buy, but expensive to care for. So, one way of addressing it is to go back to the education angle—again, is there more that we can do to educate prospective horse owners about the cost and welfare of keeping horses? On a more parochial level, there's the case of people who have a single horse. Horses are actually herd animals, so keeping a horse all on its own is perhaps not a good idea for the animal's welfare. Now, there's a case that I know of—a couple of people near me who live two doors down from each other and each own a single horse. One of those horses in particular looks most forlorn and they'd probably be better off keeping the horses together in the same field. So, I suppose we're going back, again, to the issue of education. Are there any more specifics that we can do to promote education about the welfare of companion animals?