Interesting thoughts. Personally I see this having a huge advantage in combating dog theft.

The other thing that this scheme does is it defines clearly who the legal owner of each dog is, regardless of whether it is KC reg'd or not. Also, having a central Govt database of each legal dog and who it belongs to will surely make a huge difference to the lives of dog wardens and should cut (drastically) the number of strays who are lost or stolen.

And that leads me to the stolen dogs issue.

Dog thieves would also need to be master forgers as well as being able to tap into central Govt database in order to 'sell on' on a stolen dog. Bearing in mind it becomes an offense to sell a dog to a non licence holder and that all dogs have legal owners, the life of the dog thief is going to be much, much harder, if not impossible. After all, who's going to want to buy a stolen dog from a man down the pub if the chances are you'll be stopped at some point either by a dog warden, a vet or any other official and asked to produce paperwork that you don't have. For people who want a dog, getting one through sensible, responsible legal means will suddenly make the most sense.

Regarding the funding issue. £240m is quite a lot of money when compared against some other areas of governance. Obviously the Govt themselves would have to decide what revenues required. I am by no means qualified to set budgets at that level

Ultimately if the Govt even decided this was worthy of putting public money into as well as the self financing elements, it would pay the country off economically. Having less dog attacks would reduce NHS bills and save lives.