A whopping 92 per cent of incidents involving police dogs have resulted in no charge while 75.7 per cent of dog handlers say their dogs have been punched or kicked.

These shocking figures were revealed when Finn’s law, the e-petition calling for attacks on police dogs and horses to be treated the same way as assaults on officers, was debated yesterday at Westminster House.

The Government previously described giving police animals the same right as officers as “unnecessary”, although that is the law in America, but acknowledged that sentencing and conviction rates need to be addressed.

Before the debate the Government said that there was adequate sentencing for attacks on police dogs and horses but the Minister of State for Policing and the Fire Service Brandon Lewis admitted that there has never been a conviction that resulted in the maximum of 10 years in prison.

When asked for a specific date for addressing a change in sentencing laws, Mr Lewis said “sometime in 2017”.

During the debate, MPs called on the government to acknowledge their bravery and to treat police dogs and horses as law enforcement personnel, pointing out that they are “sentient beings”.

The petition, which gained some 120,000 signatures, followed a viscous attack on Finn, a German Shephard police dog who nearly died when he was stabbed in the chest last month while trying to apprehend a suspected robber from Lewisham.

Kingston police brought attention to the case when they sent Finn presents and put it up on Facebook. 

Finn's handler PC Dave Wardell was stabbed in the hand during the attack in Stevenage in October.

PC Wardell's are classed as actual bodily harm in law, but Finn's stab wounds are only classed as criminal damage.

To be given a significant sentence the ‘property’ must be worth more than £5,000 even though, as Brandon Lewis said, “The cost of training and investing in service animals accounts to more than the £5,000 threshold required by law.”

The minister said that more data collection was needed to understand the extent of the problem and noted that a lot of incidents involving not only animals but police officers themselves go unreported.

Many dog handlers do not report attacks because they feel the report will not go anywhere.

To increase the rate of conviction MPs suggested using body cameras and changing sentence length but it seems unlikely that the Government will give the same rights to police dogs and horses as officers.   

Kennel Club Secretary Caroline Kisko said: “The Kennel Club commends the members of the public who signed the ‘Finn’s Law’ online petition to raise the status of police dogs and horses to the highest level, and consequently enabled this issue to be brought before Parliament for debate.

“It is sad to think that much loved, highly trained animals that are injured or even killed in the line of duty are not treated as sentient beings by the law.

"It is time this changed and instead of being classed as ‘criminal damage’, that those who injure police dogs are charged with assault or attempted murder.

"Not only does this reflect that the injury of police dogs is more than simply ‘collateral damage’, but it may even deter the sort of brutality that was shown to police dog, Finn, in the future.”