3. Will the First Minister make a statement on animal welfare in North Wales? OAQ52723

The Wales animal health and welfare framework implementation plan sets out Welsh Government priorities. The Cabinet Secretary’s oral statement in June set out plans to maintain and enhance companion animal welfare in Wales and she will make an oral statement on farmed animal welfare next month.

Thank you for that answer, First Minister. Finn's law is currently making its way through the UK Parliament's legislative process. This law proposes to give special status to service animals, like police dogs and horses, where they are harmed and removes the wiggle room around unnecessary suffering available to perpetrators under section 4 of the Animal Welfare Act 2006. I understand this change will come before the Assembly for consideration. First Minister, will your Government please support Finn's law?

These are matters that I know the Minister is looking at and she will seek to look favourably in terms of implementing that law. These are matters the Minister will deal with in due course. 

I'm sure you'll join me in congratulating the winners of RSPCA Cymru's community animal welfare footprint awards in north Wales—Conwy council, Denbighshire council, Wrexham council, Ynys Môn council, Clwyd Alyn Housing Association and Cartrefi Cymunedol Gwynedd—and also in acknowledging the delivery of animal welfare through local authorities being an important requirement of those local authorities. How, therefore, do you feel we should respond to concerns raised with me this summer, when I went out with an RSPCA inspector in Denbighshire, about the recent spate of animal injuries in the area caused by air rifles and crossbows?

That's deeply distressing. First of all, I join him of course in congratulating the local authorities involved. Where animals have been injured with weapons, people should have no compunction in reporting the matter to the police. I know that after the event has occurred it's far more difficult to track down the culprits, but where there is a pattern of behaviour in a particular area, at some point in time those people will make a mistake and quite often they get caught. It's deeply distressing, of course, for those who own pets and I would encourage them, even if they think that nothing will happen, I'd encourage them to register the issue with the police and report it as a crime. 

First Minister, I see that the Government in England is introducing a ban on third party puppy sales. I just would like to know from you, you're saying now that you're going to consider it, how long you're going to continue trying to regulate the misery instead of banning it outright.

The Minister plans to make an announcement on that before the end of term.