Chamber and committees

My concern is that SNH then becomes judge, jury and ultimate appeal judge, which is contrary to common law and would be against the procedure where somebody else could review the licence. If the minister cannot give an assurance that she or a future minister will do that, will she set out an appeal procedure that people can go through?

[Inaudible.]

I find that interesting. If the person wrote an email saying that they thought that fox control was necessary, that would justify the position. A paper copy of the email could become part of the process. Rather than it being argued at the time that there was a reasonable justification, it would just become a prerequisite that someone had sent an email. Is that what you are suggesting?

I thank the committee for letting us participate in this debate, which is an important one. Many of my amendments in the group deal with rabbits, and I will speak to those first. I will deal with amendment 63 separately.

During the committee’s evidence sessions, which I heard, I found it really difficult to follow the reasoning behind the inclusion of rabbits in the bill. I think that people who carry out legitimate activities in the countryside fully understand the difference between hares and rabbits, which are significantly different animals. People who live and work in the countryside understand that hares and rabbits live in different sorts of habitats. Hares like to flee and will flee above ground, which is why they live in open fields and are so often seen in the spring in fields of growing crops, whereas rabbits tend to live on the edges of woodlands and fields. If someone is carrying out activities to control rabbits, they can identify them quite easily from the habitats in which they are working and the different size of the animals.

In my mind, it is rather lazy to include rabbits because, as I think the minister said, they might be used as an excuse to course hares. That is not the case. For someone who lives in the countryside, as I do, it is like people confusing hay and straw, or barley and wheat. They are substantially different, so there is no reason to conflate them. The only people who might do that are people who are trying to break the law, who will hide behind the fact that they are hunting for rabbits when they are clearly not.

Another reason that I have heard for including rabbits is that coursing is carried out at night. I am not sure how that happens, because coursing is carried out by sight. People might go out coursing at night-time and use lights, but they would be breaking the law and they should be prosecuted.

I do not believe that there is any reason to include rabbits. I have heard that they suffer more pain than other animals do, such as rats or mice, but I do not believe that that is the case. In this case, there is no evidence that rabbits suffer more than other animals. For that reason alone, I do not believe that it is necessary to include them. I therefore wish rabbits to be removed from the scope of the bill.

With regard to other animals, my amendments would exclude weasels, stoats, mink, polecats and ferrets. Polecats and ferrets will be domesticated animals that have gone wild, and stoats and weasels are accepted as a problem. I believe that members of the committee will understand the problems that mustelids cause on islands and the devastation that they can cause to breeding bird populations. They are animals that we are encouraged to control.

The Government encourages people to control mink. In the Cairngorms, there has been a mink eradication policy, and there was a mink officer who was responsible for encouraging landowners to kill and remove mink. Mink is a non-native species—they were introduced to this country and escaped from fur farms. It seems perfectly sensible to allow mink, polecats, ferrets, stoats and weasels to be controlled, yet that would not be allowed under the bill.

Most of my other amendments in the group are technical, supporting amendments. However, amendment 63 seeks to ensure that, if somebody is hunting an animal and they flush it, they will commit an offence only if they “subsequently” course it. I do not believe that it should be an offence to flush animals from thick growth such as a bramble bush. You might have more than two dogs working to flush an animal. If you subsequently caught it, it could be argued that you have broken the law. You should not be breaking the law if you flush the animal; you should be breaking the law only if you subsequently course it.

I will be interested to hear what Colin Smyth says about amendment 110 and the evidence that would be required. It is not clear from his amendment what evidence would be required, who would adjudicate on it, or who would decide whether it was satisfactory. On that basis, I struggle to understand the amendment, but I look forward to hearing more detail when my colleague speaks to it.

Those are the amendments that I wish to speak to at this stage. I look forward to the opportunity to debate them.

I take that point, but I am not defending the people who would try to circumvent the law; instead, I am trying to come at it from the angle of a person who would abide by the law.

I think that the suggested provision would be difficult to implement, because NatureScot’s licensing division would end up sitting on licences and saying, “Oh, they are doing this area, and therefore they need 12 guns,” which would mean that the process would become formulaic and would not take into account what was actually happening.

I will talk about my amendments first, which are on the issue of fees for licences. One of the reasons why I lodged the amendments was to help the minister. I believe that this could be a contentious area and that there will be discussion about fees in the future. Therefore, I believe that, rather than the matter being decided by the regulating authority, it should come before Parliament in regulations made under the affirmative procedure, so that it can be cleared and can be seen to be discussed and agreed in advance. I also believe that the minister is the logical person to whom an appeal should be made, should the licensing authority choose to deny a licence. In that way, the process would be open and transparent and could be seen to be truly democratic.

On amendments 105 and 106, I will listen to the minister’s reasoning as to why we still need to refer to Scottish Natural Heritage rather than NatureScot. Constantly changing names tends to confuse people—it certainly confuses me.

As for the other amendments in the group, I suspect that Ariane Burgess’s amendments are wrecking amendments and I take them as such. I was very interested to hear Jim Fairlie’s reasoned argument regarding the number of dogs and guns that should be specified in the licence, although I have some concerns about that. If you are, as in the example that Mr Fairlie used, putting dogs into a wood to flush a fox, the placement and number of the guns will be known by the person who is doing that, because foxes will always run on a certain line. That does not always happen, of course—if somebody coughs or is upwind of where the animal would be, they might deviate—but, if you have sensible gun placement, the keeper or land manager will know where the fox goes.

Will the member take an intervention?

You will know, minister, as I explained earlier, that rabbits and hares hide in different locations. When someone flushes a rabbit, its first instinct is to go down a burrow, which is usually nearby and often within 20m of where it is feeding, whereas hares hide in open ground. That is not coursing, because the rabbit will probably go straight underground.

The problem is, therefore, that a person might have committed an offence simply by flushing the rabbit using three dogs. That would not be their intent—most people would want to call their dogs off before they chased a rabbit, because letting them do so would be bad practice anyway. Do you accept that, on that basis, rabbits should not be included?

I believe that I have made the case for including weasels, stoats, polecats and ferrets. I understand what the minister has said about polecats, but there are domesticated polecats that have gone feral, which is why I have included them. I believe that we should have the ability to flush them from below ground and to search for them below ground.

As people will know, weasels often use mole burrows to hide, and using a terrier to move along a mole burrow to flush the weasel is an effective way of controlling it. Stoats, too, will hide in small holes, and it might be beneficial to use a dog to flush them.

I turn to the arguments on mink. It is important to keep mink in the section, because they are a predatory species that cause untold damage to the native fauna of Scotland. They damage important species that need to be protected, so they should be included in the bill.

On the other amendments in the group, I understand Ariane Burgess’s position on using dogs to flush animals from underground, but I do not believe that that is the case. There are times when that is important—for example, dogs are the only way of getting foxes out from stone cairns, and the foxes are subsequently shot.

On Jenni Minto’s comments, as I have stated, I believe that it is important to get rid of mink. You would not want mink on islands such as Orkney or Shetland, which Ariane Burgess represents, because they absolutely decimate ground-nesting birds, so controlling them by any means possible should be encouraged. I accept Ariane Burgess’s point that the mink officers were not encouraging the use of dogs underground, but they provided traps and rafts. They encouraged owners to kill mink.

I declare an interest. I have had a mink officer visit the bit of river that I am responsible for, and they encouraged me to kill mink by every legal method possible. I am sorry, convener: I probably should have said at the beginning that I am a farmer. I have declared that to the committee before. If there are any interests that relate to farming and field sports in my entry in the register of members’ interests, I should have declared them at the outset. I hope that the committee will forgive that oversight and accept my declaration at this stage.

I am not entirely sure what Colin Smyth’s amendment 117 is trying to achieve. Any wild mammal that comes to the surface would immediately be killed by shooting, where that is possible and safe to do.

Finally, if I were allowed to vote, I would support Rachael Hamilton’s amendment 225.

I would like all my amendments to be agreed to, because they are important for the control and management of the environment. I do not support Jenni Minto’s amendment, I do not understand Colin Smyth’s amendment and, sadly, I think that Ariane Burgess’s amendments are wrecking amendments that would remove an important legal form of control for predators in the countryside.

I make the observation that I make about every proposed group, before I say whether I think it is right or wrong. A large number of cross-party groups exist and MSPs are giving a great deal of commitment to them. I always raise the concern that another cross-party group—however worthwhile—will further strain the system. I think that we should be careful. That is my only comment.