Chamber and committees

Potentially, Ms Grahame, but it is your bill and you have to answer the questions on what information you would like to see in some kind of register. I go back to the question, which I think was asked by Dr Allan, about what information the public register could usefully include that would help buyers to know anything about the puppies, the home or the breeder. What would the registration of those individuals mean in terms of animal welfare? What comfort could buyers take from the existence of the register?

Of course. I accept that any additional information could help any organisation that is involved in enforcement to join the dots.

I accept that, but I come back to our issues with part 2, which are to do with what it will actually achieve with regard to animal welfare.

It would be a code of practice that was targeted and focused on buying decisions and the provision of advice to people who were considering getting a puppy or a dog.

You will appreciate that I realised only a week past Tuesday that I was taking forward the bill. I was not involved in its drafting, so I cannot speak to that. The question is really for my predecessor, who is not accountable to the committee any more.

Bills change. If we make proposals, we have to ensure that the committee has the time to scrutinise them. That is why I made the announcement about the SSPCA yesterday, ahead of the committee deliberating on its report.

I am looking to my officials for when we think that we will have anything on the snaring proposals. I would want to get that to the committee sooner rather than later so that, when the committee puts together its stage 1 report, it has the full information.

You are right. You have pointed to the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission’s recommendations. We take that position seriously, and we look to the commission for advice. However, individuals, stakeholders and organisations have asked us to look at other views, which we are doing. We will come to a conclusion on that soon. It might be the same conclusion that you just cited.

As members will understand, I want to be sighted on all the decisions about that, as I now have responsibility for the bill. Before a decision is made, I want to see what has been looked at and what conclusions have been reached, and I want to do that quite quickly—as I have said, in the next couple of weeks. After this evidence session, I will look to see when we can give the committee a definitive date. If I can get a definitive date to the committee even more quickly than when it is going to be released, I will do that.

My officials and I need to decide what our policy objective is going to be and what our proposal and our amendments will be at stage 2. If that is to ban the sale of snares—in the same way as we propose to ban the sale of glue traps—there will immediately be a letter to notify the UK Government of our intention.

Thank you for that notice; it is not often that Christine Grahame gives ministers notice of her amendments.

The other thing that I would say, Ms Hamilton, is that the Werritty review was very clear in its recommendations to Government. We took on board a few of them, and it recommended that a licensing measure could make a difference in that area.

I know that, when they were in front of you, you asked my officials for more evidence as to the connection, which they sent on to the committee. That evidence was sent—that is a matter of record.

We cannot just stand by and accept the status quo; we need to go to the licensing that Professor Werritty and his team said would be an option if some of the other measures were not getting us to a solution on the issue. That is what we are proposing.

I am saying that the evidence is there to suggest that many of those crimes have taken place on grouse moors—that is a fact.