Chamber and committees

The root of my question was that you can deal only with situations that you are aware of. To go back to what I said earlier, I imagine that it is much harder to follow up the anonymous guy with a puppy in the boot of a car than it is to follow up someone who is already in contact with some sort of organisation or body, which means that the public will be critical in looking out for problems. Gilly Mendes Ferreira made a fascinating point about certificates improving the rights of the buyer, who will have documentation and proof, even if that flags up inaccurate details.

Good morning. I do have a few questions about certificates.

In the evidence thus far, there has been a lot of emphasis on breeders and the fault lying there, whereas a certificate is presumably designed to trigger a commitment from the buyer to care for the puppy. I have quite a few questions about that. Do you think that the balance is right with regard to the proposal in the bill? On whom should the balance of responsibility lie: the buyer or on the breeder?

Secondly, there are already informal certificates that buyers can commit to, but they are not enshrined in legislation. Are there any learnings to be had from previous informal certificates that have worked? What are the right questions to trigger that commitment among buyers? I do not know who wants to go first.

For the record, if someone is tempted to rescue a little puppy from the boot of a car, what should they do?

My question goes back to a point that Gilly Mendes Ferreira made about enforcement. As always, and as with any legislation, its aims might be laudable but, if it cannot be enforced, we will not see the behavioural change that we are all keen to see. My first question also goes back to my earlier point about certification. To what extent will more formalised documentation and more of a record help with enforcement? Secondly, is it purely a question of financing boots on the ground to go and check or are there other ways of intercepting poor behaviour that does not meet the standards?

I know that I already alluded to this, but I will put it on the record. What would reassure the committee to an extent is a willingness on the part of the Government to return at some point—say, in a year—to review the evidence over the course of the year, where there has been evidence, for example, of relatively newly born male deer being shot. Could we get a commitment that the minister will return in a year, when we can consider the evidence of how the measure has been implemented?

That is very helpful. You might be familiar with the Country Food Trust, which does a great job in taking venison that might otherwise go to waste and creating nutritious meals that it then donates to food banks.

One of the risks, however, is that, if there is a massive increase in culling, particularly out of season, that has a huge impact on the likelihood of that meat being eaten. The idea that we might be wasting meat sits so wrongly with me. Does the Scottish Government have a word of warning to give that, if we are to see culling increase, particularly out of season, that is not a licence to see far more carcases going to waste, especially if one of the benefits of this SSI is actually to see more carcases going into the food network?

No, we have not—we are very much still on the first SSI.

Good morning. As I understand it, one reason for the SSI is to make non-lead alternatives more accessible so that more carcases can enter the food chain, which is a positive thing. In the past few years, we have seen examples of huge levels of waste, particularly when non-shooting, non-commercial estates have culled tens, if not hundreds, of deer and left them to rot. What engagement has the Scottish Government had with estates that might be considering doing that? What encouragement is being given to ensure that that great meat source is relieving hunger in this country rather than being wasted?

This may be a slight tangent. I know that the minister will be very familiar with the two large wildfires in my constituency over the summer, one at Daviot and one at Cannich. I went to visit the site of one of the fires and was repeatedly told, by environmental charities as well as by gamekeepers, that one primary reason for the wildfires spreading so quickly, particularly at Cannich, was the fuel load. There had been a build-up of vegetation and there was a lot of stuff to burn across vast areas where the only option might be the aerial application of something to control bracken.

In your deliberations about the importance of bracken control, did you consider the risk of the fast spread of wildfires? Might that be a consideration as you weigh up the pros and cons of using particular methods of bracken control?

An example from recent years is mountain hares. In the debate about that, one argument that was made as to why land managers should still be allowed to shoot and cull mountain hares was that high growth in numbers would lead to hare starvation because the habitat could not sustain them. I think that we need to think more carefully about how we explain the fact that we have taken a very different direction on mountain hares, which have a detrimental impact on vegetation and on trees—I believe—that is equal to that of deer. The gamekeepers who have questioned me have asked how we explain the two different approaches that the Government is taking to mountain hares, for example, and deer.