Chamber and committees

I have some figures here.

I will mention domestic fuel bills, because obviously the exemption is recouped. The measure will have very little impact on domestic fuel bills.

I will have a look for the figures.

I will need to check my notes on that, Ms Boyack. I do not think that I have that information to hand. Obviously, you are making a decision today. If we can find that information we will provide it to the committee.

The industries that are involved have already been set and the amendment will not allow any others to come into the scheme. They are already agreed and set. The exemption was 85 per cent and it will now be 100 per cent. We have seen in the last couple of years that particular energy intensive industries have found it quite difficult to keep employing people and to keep operations from losing money.

It adds a very small amount. It is important to mention, Mr Lumsden, that this will be across the UK. Households typically account for about 40 per cent of renewables obligation costs recovered by suppliers. The average cost is currently about £77.50 per year on an electricity bill. The exemption is likely to cost just an extra pound or two.

We do not want a situation where household bills are affected by things like that, but I think the reason behind this is that there is an awful lot more at stake if we do not have an exemption. The particular sectors that are affected by this employ a large number of people, not just in Scotland but throughout the UK, particularly in manufacturing.

The UK Government has decided to increase the exemption to 100 per cent. It has historically been the case that the Scottish Government has not gone on a different path and we too want to stay on the path and have agreed to act alongside the UK Government.

Also, we do not want carbon leakage. If we have a landscape in the UK or Scotland where it is increasingly unprofitable for those industries to exist, the chances are that they will go elsewhere. It will be not just carbon leakage but economic leakage. This is a way in which we can protect those industries from their overheads being so onerous that they might have to think about taking their operations elsewhere.

The UK Government analysis suggests that the amount that would go on to a domestic bill would be 80p or £1.10 per year for the average household. You balance that—80p or £1.10 added on to a bill in a year—versus the potential for people to lose their jobs. I think that that seems to be a pretty fair balance.

I am always concerned about the effects on household bills. The UK Government’s review of electricity market arrangements and the reform of the energy markets in general are far more critical in relation to the worries that Mr Lumsden describes. Decoupling the price of gas and electricity would have more of an effect on household bills than anything that this particular instrument does.

No, I am happy to leave it as it is.

Motion agreed to.

The 100 per cent exemption will reduce eligible energy intensive industries’ electricity costs by between £5 per megawatt hour and £7 per megawatt hour. That will amount to quite a substantial sum if you think about the huge amount of fuel that is used by those particular industries. [Gillian Martin has corrected this contribution. See end of report.]

We are following UK legislation. If we did not follow it, what might be the effect of that on Scottish energy intensive industries? I imagine—and Mr Lumsden would be the first to be critical of this—that they might look at a situation where there is a 100 per cent exemption in the rest of the UK but only an 85 per cent exemption in Scotland, and they might decide to relocate their operations. I imagine that Mr Lumsden would join me in being concerned about that. That is why we are agreeing to the UK legislation.

I never think that it is particularly fair when householders have to shoulder any kind of burden. I suggest that the review of the energy markets is far more critical in that regard. I look forward to Douglas Lumsden joining with me in asking for protections for consumers, particularly things such as a social tariff, which would mean that vulnerable consumers would be protected from any price increases. In my view, that would be far more effective and far fairer than 80p or £1.10 being added to a bill to save highly skilled manufacturing jobs in Scotland.

My amendment 54 seeks to introduce a comprehensive ban on the use of snares, as is recommended by the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission. The amendment introduces an offence of using a snare or setting one in position either to kill or to take any animal other than a wild bird. It will also be an offence to set a snare in a position where it is likely to cause bodily injury to any such animal coming into contact with it. My provisions set out two very important exceptions, which Colin Smyth is seeking to remove in his amendments, and I will speak to that issue in a moment.

As I said in the stage 1 debate, I believe that the Parliament can no longer ignore the weight of evidence that snares lead to unacceptable levels of suffering, not just for wild animals but for domestic animals, which can become trapped in them. The decision to ban the use of snares has not been made lightly or quickly, and my decision takes into account the wealth of evidence and opinion that has been presented to the Parliament on the matter over the years.

Unfortunately, even where snares are used in very strict accordance with the conditions set out in the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, they remain indiscriminate by their nature and, as such, they pose an unacceptable risk to non-target species, including other wildlife, endangered species and domestic species such as cats. According to the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission, it is estimated that between 21 and 69 per cent of animals caught in snares are non-target species. That is simply unacceptable.

More humane methods of wildlife control such as shooting and trapping are available to land managers. Indeed, shooting foxes at night using lamps or thermal scopes remains the predominant method of fox control by a considerable margin. Moreover, alternatives such as live-capture traps are still available where, for example, the lack of a suitable backstop can mean that shooting is not appropriate in certain circumstances.

I recognise that control of predators is necessary to protect vulnerable species as well as livestock and agriculture and that land managers should be allowed to take action to effectively manage wildlife for those purposes. I am also aware that some people have claimed that the removal of snaring as an option might reduce the ability of land managers to protect ground-nesting species of bird, particularly curlew, lapwing and other wader species of serious conservation concern.

However, I remain confident that there are sufficient alternative methods of predator control, which a number of landowners, managers and organisations already use. Those include the RSPB, which has policies to prohibit the use of snares and believes that it is still able to undertake sufficient predator control to protect vulnerable species. The same view was reached by the Welsh Parliament when it banned the use of snares in the Agriculture (Wales) Act 2023, in recognition of poor animal welfare outcomes.

I am confident that a ban on the use of snares would not prevent anyone from undertaking necessary wildlife management. In our public consultation on snaring, 70 per cent of respondents supported a complete ban on the use of all snares, including so-called humane cable restraints. It is clear that there is widespread support for that among the general public. Snares are already banned in many European countries, and land managers have adapted. We can learn from that and provide advice and information where that is helpful.

Some have called for the ban on the continued use of humane cable restraints under a licensing regime for the purpose of killing and taking an animal. I have carefully considered that and the welfare impacts of such a scheme on target and non-target species, alongside the need to provide for effective predator control.