3. What action is the Welsh Government taking to combat the rise in dog thefts in Wales? OQ56467

I thank the Member for the question, Llywydd. While dog theft is not a devolved matter, officials across the UK are working together to develop proposals to tackle pet theft. The Welsh Government will act with others to ensure any such proposals have an effective impact here in Wales. 

Thank you, First Minister. For many people, their dog is not just a pet, they are a family member, and to have that family member violently ripped from you so someone can profit is unimaginable to me, and I'm sure every person with an ounce of compassion feels that way. I cannot imagine the heartache those people are going through. So, while I accept, First Minister, that crime and sentencing matters are reserved to the UK Government, we can take action to make these crimes more difficult to perpetrate. First Minister, will you consider imposing tougher restrictions on third-party sales of pets to ensure that not only stringent animal welfare standards are met but to cut off the black market in animal sales? Diolch.  

Llywydd, can I thank Caroline Jones? I share her view of the impact that dog thefts have on families where the care of an animal is absolutely part of what that family revolves around. I vividly remember, Llywydd, an early conversation with a food bank that I visited about the importance of being able to provide food for animals as part of the service that they provided for those families who relied upon the companionship of the dog that they spent a lot of their time and a lot of their lives with, so to have a dog stolen will be devastating for so many families. And I'm very pleased to be able to say in relation to the supplementary question that, next week, the Welsh Government will bring forward for debate on 23 March Lucy's law proposals—as they are sometimes called—to ban third-party sales of pets here in Wales. I look forward to that debate and, I'm sure, to support from Members for that action in many parts of the Chamber.

First Minister, as a dog lover, I know that your dog is often your best friend and, as has been said already this afternoon, is very much a family member. Now, it's deeply disturbing to know that criminals are targeting dogs and other pets to steal. These people are an absolute disgrace, an absolute disgrace. First Minister, what conversations have Welsh Government Ministers had with the police and the Home Office to ensure that these criminals are brought to justice, and what conversations have you had about the impact of UK Conservative police cuts and their failure to deliver on the promised 62 extra police officers in Deeside?

Llywydd, I thank Jack Sargeant for that. We've been just discussing the pandemic's impact here in Wales, and this question is connected to it as well. We know that in the conditions of having to work from home and stay at home, many families have acquired pets, and that means that the opportunity for criminal action has arisen because the prices of dogs have risen very fast over the last 12 months. And it is disgraceful, I agree absolutely with Jack Sargeant, that people should seek to exploit people's vulnerabilities in that way.

We have conversations, of course, with our police and crime commissioners and police forces. It's very good to see that Dyfed-Powys Police has recently appointed a chief inspector to head their task force on this matter. But our police forces are stretched in all directions, and policing the pandemic and dealing with volumes of crimes that have not abated, in many ways, during it, create enormous pressures for them and those pressures are exacerbated by a decade of cuts, a decade of Tory cuts in police forces, numbers reduced year after year after year.

The Welsh Government stepped in—as Jack Sargeant will know, and his father was very much part of this—stepped in to fund 500 police community support officers here in Wales, to allow our local forces to have more people on the ground in communities able to deal with issues like dog theft and the impact that that has on families. I know that the Conservative Party has committed itself to ensuring that were they to have any part to play in the next Senedd Government, that no funding would be provided for non-devolved matters. Well, that's the end of 500 police support officers in Wales, because we have put our money in to protect communities where the Conservative Government has failed, and if we're returned to Government after 6 May, then people in Wales can know that those beat officers—the people they meet day in, day out in their communities—they will be safe with a Labour Government, even while the Tories here in Wales are determined to defund them.