Chamber and committees

It is still confusing, minister. There should be consistency in the bill. It cannot have two names.

Will the member give way on that point?

I understand your concerns, but I do not necessarily agree with them. My concern is that, on one side, we have a Government that for very good reasons is trying to control an invasive species, in the form of mink. The Government is encouraging people to control mink and is funding people to do that. Similarly, it is providing funding to control weasels and stoats when they have got into habitats where they are not welcome and are not used to being. On one hand, you are saying, “We don’t think you should control them,” but, on the other hand, the Government is saying, “We need to control them and we’re financing people to do it.” How do we strike a balance?

Are you going to speak to the other parts of the amendments on the licensing appeal procedure and whether the minister will be the ultimate arbiter of that?

Will the member give way on that point?

No, you do not—the convener could say that you do not have to.

On the basis that the convener has not said that, I will raise my concern, which is about the licence. I am thinking about what would happen if we had a licence and we stipulated the guns—I will give you an example, if I may.

When seal management was allowed and licensed in Scotland, those people who were able to control seals had to go on a course and had to have it on their firearms certificate, and it had to be listed on the licence when the licence was made. That resulted in some bailiffs, who were authorised, competent and complying with the licence conditions, to be victimised afterwards. I take the member’s point about being open and allowing it to be seen that the activity is allowed, but if the minister were tempted to go to that level, there would need to be a way to ensure that there was no way that people who were taking part could be victimised as a result of a legal activity.

I get confused when we talk about this issue and mix up species.

Currently, deer control is carried out by Forestry and Land Scotland. NatureScot is issuing licences to all seven regions of Forestry and Land Scotland for the out-of-season control of deer. That means the shooting of females that have dependent young, without necessarily ensuring that the dependent young are controlled. It seems that you are mixing up the two. It concerns me that you are looking for a stronger licensing procedure on this issue, whereas you will then promote the shooting of deer that have fawns at foot without killing the fawns. I have a problem with that. Can you justify it to me?

Sorry—it is just that mink are not just an important problem on islands, where they are definitely an invasive species; they also cause problems on the mainland, where they are also invasive. Consequently, many of the riverine courses on the mainland have trees and roots underneath which the mink hide. If you are trying to track down a mink and remove it, it often helps to have a terrier working through the roots, which, technically, according to the definition, could be taken to be under ground. However, I believe that in doing so you would be legitimately trying to carry out a policy that the Government is trying to support. Although the use of dogs might not be important on the islands, it is important on the mainland.

The deputy convener might be able to help on this point, but I think that when stoats—or perhaps it was weasels; I always get the two confused—were on Orkney, people originally used terriers to track them down and sent down tracking dogs to find out exactly which holes they were hiding in, so that they got the right ones in subsequent trapping. I think that I am right in saying that that was the practice for stoats, but I am sure that the deputy convener will correct me if I have got that wrong.

Will the minister take an intervention?

I am concerned about this. I will give you a real life example. A deer was hit by a lorry and it broke its jaw. It took four days of following that animal before it was possible to put it out of its misery. It could not eat and it was struggling to breathe, but it was still capable of running. The problem is that that animal might well have been tracked down quicker if more than two dogs had been used, but it went into a 200-acre wood and the best that we could have done to get at it and put it out of its misery was precluded because there were only two dogs. Therefore, I would have thought that a carefully worded exception for cases where there is evidence to prove that more than two dogs are required should be perfectly justifiable on the ground of being humane.