Proposals to microchip Britain’s eight million dogs

BRITISH dog owners may be forced to microchip their pets and take out insurance, part of a proposed crackdown on the country’s dangerous canines.

This may be good news for postmen but civil libertarians worry that Britain’s sprawling surveillance state wants to track the nation’s estimated eight million dogs. Others complain that the insurance plan would impose a financial penalty on innocent pet owners – while criminals who own violent animals will simply shirk the law.

“This is yet more surveillance and continuous data- grabbing by government who want to have as much information on us as it can possibly have,” said Dylan Sharpe, a campaigner with privacy rights group Big Brother Watch. Opposition lawmaker Nick Herbert said the proposal risked “penalising millions of law-abiding dog owners with the blunt instrument of a dog tax”.