Chamber and committees

Let me go back to my initial point in my statement. Regardless of proposals that have been put to us about licensing—which we need to dig into, and which we need to take time to consider—we believe that more humane methods of wildlife control, such as shooting and trapping, are available to land managers here as they are in other countries across Europe. The Welsh Government and Parliament have also made a decision on that.

I am confident that a ban on the use of snares would not prevent anyone from undertaking necessary wildlife management. As I have mentioned, there are other landowners involved in conservation who do not believe that snaring is necessary. Snares are already used only in very limited circumstances under the current legislation; they cannot be used in situations where they might attract other species or where species that they are not intended to trap might unintentionally get caught. That still happens, regardless of the professionalism of the individual who sets the snare.

That is my starting point. Had we not had calls from SLE to consider humane cable restraints, we would have put that in the bill. That would have been our starting point, and I would have dealt with all of that in the initial evidence session. We are taking the time, however, to do all the work required in that respect.

My starting point is that I am not at all convinced that we can continue with snares in Scotland because of the animal welfare issues with any kind of snare. There are other methods that have been used successfully in other countries in Europe, and we might need to adapt and use those methods, which are effective.

The monitoring aspect, to my knowledge, also came up during the passage of the Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill, so how we are going to monitor the effectiveness of the bill is a reasonable question. Obviously, the Scottish Government will monitor the effectiveness of any legislation that it introduces. Also, committees can do post-legislative scrutiny, and it is within the gift of the committee to do its scrutiny.

The Government and the agencies will obviously monitor the effectiveness of what they are doing. We have routine tranches of work that are done on things such as the impact on biodiversity—the state of nature report, for example. NatureScot has the task of monitoring biodiversity and species management. The Scottish Government also has strong relationships with land managers, and, if the bill is passed, I will continue to have conversations with stakeholders about the effectiveness of the laws that the Parliament has put through and where there are issues that we might be able to look at.

Jim Fairlie just brought up the issue of licensing under the Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Act 2023. I will take that away. I should have said to him before he went that he is welcome to write to me about that issue. In the same way, the Government will continue to listen to people who are impacted by the legislation that we pass.

I guess that data collection will relate to biodiversity as well, but it will be about the conversations that we will have with stakeholders over the time in which that legislation is put in place.

Vicarious liability applies when a person who is working for an organisation does something. It is not just they who are liable; it is also the person who employs them. It is usually applied in situations where the person who is held liable has the power to control the actions of the person who has committed an offence. For example, if a gamekeeper is setting a trap, it might be because the person who employs that gamekeeper has asked them to do that. That is vicarious liability.

The Animals and Wildlife (Penalties, Protections and Powers) (Scotland) Act 2020, which I mentioned earlier, already extended vicarious liability to include certain snaring offences, including setting an illegal self-locking snare; positioning snares in such a way as to cause unnecessary animal suffering; and using snares to purposely trap protected animals such as badgers or otters. Given that Parliament has recently added vicarious liability to those already illegal situations and offences, it would be reasonable for it to remain in place in relation to relevant new snaring offences in the bill.

I am still considering my final position on whether the status quo is enough in that respect, and I have not arrived at a final position on vicarious liability with regard to any new offences.

Mr McArthur will know that gun control regulations in Scotland are extremely tight in terms of who can get a licence to have a shotgun and what they have to do to secure it and use it. I come back to the fact that the people who are undertaking that land management are professional people. I do not think that we will see an uptick in Joe Bloggs having a shotgun.

It would be helpful for you to speak to the SSPCA about the training that its officers already get, because it already gathers evidence on wildlife crime. However, the issue has been the nature of the evidence that it has been able to collect and what it has not been allowed to collect. As you know, the SSPCA regularly gives evidence on any matters that are taken forward by the procurator fiscal involving a range of offences including animal welfare, animal cruelty or wildlife crime.

In that regard, the training will be about the protocols that the police and the SSPCA work on in order to make sure that the evidence is gathered, as you rightly put it, professionally, correctly and in a way that does not compromise that. It will make sure that there are protocols about reporting evidence to the police and the channels of communication between the two bodies. The SSPCA is already well versed in collecting evidence that is admissible in cases and it already has a relationship with the procurator fiscal and the police in that regard.

Therefore, the training will build on existing training, and it will be specific officers who will undergo it. It will not be a case of rolling out the training to absolutely every single officer in the SSPCA. Specific officers will be identified, trained and involved in the setting up of the protocols and the partnership working that we have talked about.

I know the SSPCA well, and I would say that Mike Flynn, whom I meet regularly on a range of animal welfare issues, is the best person to ask whether the SSPCA thinks that it can take on these powers. However, what Mr Flynn, as the representative of the SSPCA, has put to me is that the organisation has found it quite wasteful of its resource to be called to an incident involving a live animal only to find when it gets there that the animal is dead and it has to walk away. It is saying that what is being proposed is actually a more efficient use of its ability to deal with wildlife crime and to assist the police, particularly when it is first at the scene.

Nobody is suggesting that the SSPCA will replace the police in that regard, because police will still respond to wildlife crime calls. The SSPCA is an agency that people will often call if they see an animal in distress, before they think about phoning the police. It is a complementary provision. The SSPCA has said to us that it does not see resource implications arising from it taking on those powers.

I will add that to the list of data that you require.

I think that I have been clear that I would expect the police to be involved in an investigation that would have a consequence with regard to a licence.

I have made the point that a protocol would not be part of the text of the bill for scrutiny. If the committee was minded to recommend something around that, we would certainly look at it.

I will just comment on the back of what Hugh Dignon said. The illegality is about how snares can be used and whether they are used in accordance with the 1981 act. It is not illegal to make a snare. You cannot call a snare that has been made by somebody who knows what they are doing and has been making snares for decades an illegal snare. There is one type of snare that is currently banned, which is the self-locking snare. The sale of self-locking snares is banned, so you could call that type of snare illegal. You could also say that there is illegal snaring activity because it is not in accordance with the 1981 act, but it is not illegal to make a home-made snare.