SOLDIERS want anti-rabies laws relaxed so they can bring their pets home with them from Europe.

Pet owners were lobbying Parliament today at the start of a campaign to reform Britain's tough quarantine rules as a cross-party group of MPs unveiled a private bill aimed at reforming laws requiring pets brought into Britain to be locked up for six months.

Labour MP and animal campaigner Tony Banks claims these 90-year-old regulations are cruel, inconsistent and now unnecessary as well as too expensive for many families.

Backed by Tory and Liberal Democrat members, his bill, introduced today, seeks to switch to a system of pet passports for animals which are properly vaccinated against the disease and have a special computerised ID chip implanted in them.

British families living on the continent, especially service families waiting to return to Britain, are backing the idea.

Following the run down of the armed forces following the end of the Cold War thousands of soldiers, sailors and airmen - many of them from the North-West - stationed abroad are to return home, often to civvy street.

Many are based in Germany and have pets that they believe are rabies-free and want to bring them home without the cost, delay and trauma that quarantine imposes.

Mr Banks says similar more relaxed controls are already in force in many other countries including New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and Japan without any increased rabies problem. Mr Banks said: "Many countries which have changed to this system have been free of rabies even longer than the United Kingdom."

He pointed out that over the last quarter of a century there has not been a single case of rabies discovered in any of the thousands of animals kept in quarantine.

However more than 2,500 animals have died in quarantine because of the conditions under which they were being kept or because they picked up diseases from other animals in the kennels.

Kennel bills for animals kept in quarantine for six months range from £1,500 to £3,000.

Mr Banks said: "Many families simply cannot afford those bills and so get rid of their pets or have them put down."

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