Chamber and committees

Mountain hare are protected by a close season during which no culling can be carried out by any method except under licence granted by Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH). Mountain hare are also covered by Regulation 41 of The Conservation (Natural Habitats, &c.) Regulations 1994 which prohibits the use of certain methods of taking or killing wild animals, including the use of traps which are non-selective according to their principle or their condition of use. The use of such traps can be licensed by SNH. The use of such traps is not permissible under the terms of a general licence but can be licenced by SNH.

In response to the Community Council Short-Life Working Group’s report and recommendations, the Scottish Government, in collaboration with COSLA, has agreed to support the Improvement Service to undertake a project to help enhance the role of community councils. The improvement service will initially work with Scotland’s 32 Community Council Liaison Officers (CCLO’s) based in each local authority, to support the 1,200 community councils active in Scotland.

This project includes providing training and development opportunities for community councillors, improving communications by establishing a communities of practice website and facilitating a number of networking events to help share good practice. In addition a national register of community councils and councillors will be made available digitally.

The Improvement Service will also work with CCLO’s to pilot and trial a range of practical solutions to some of the challenges facing community councils such as contested elections as identified by the Short Life Working Group’s report.

Licences are required to control mountain hares at any time using certain otherwise prohibited means, or to kill them by any method during the “closed season”. Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) is the licensing authority.

SNH received one application for the control of mountain hare by snaring in 2011. SNH granted that licence in 2012 and it has been amended twice. The licence was granted for the purpose of preventing serious damage to woodland.

SNH received five applications for the control of mountain hare in 2012. Two of these applications were refused. All of the remaining three were to shoot hares out-of-season and for preventing serious damage to woodland. One was in Highland, one in Moray and one in Aberdeenshire.

SNH received three applications for the control of mountain hare in 2013. Two of these were applications to renew licences issued in 2012 (one in Moray and one in Aberdeenshire). The remaining application was for another site in Moray, and again was for the purpose of preventing serious damage to woodland. Licences were granted for all three, and all three relating to shooting hares out-of-season.

The authors conclude that there is no compelling evidence base to suggest culling mountain hares might increase red grouse densities.

The Scottish Government intends to implement the principal proposal from the Recyclate Quality Action Plan consultation, a statutory testing regime for recyclate contamination levels by April 2014. We will publish a summary of the responses to our consultation before the end of the year.

The UK Government has consulted on a similar quality action plan, and we understand that the UK Government is considering its position on a statutory testing regime. The Scottish Government is not aware of any direct cross-border issues.

The Scottish Government continues to consider all representations from industry, and will maintain close dialogue with stakeholders and, where appropriate, with the UK Government during the final phase of this work.

The Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) Commissioned Report 278 indicated that a total of 24,529 mountain hares were harvested in 2006-07 across 90 sporting estates (of these, 11,906 were reported to have been taken by 26 estates). This represents 7% of the 1995 published Scottish population estimate of 350,000 and is subject to a 50% margin of error.

SNH Commissioned Report 278 on the distribution of Mountain Hare in Scotland shows hares present in all or part of the Special Protection Areas (SPAs) designated for golden eagles.

The Report also indicates that the vast majority of hare control occurs in the central and eastern Highlands. In these areas, Report 278 suggests that there is a mixed picture of hare distributional change between 1995-96 and 2006-07 with no clear pattern of decline. The 2006-07 data are the most recent SNH holds.

(a) Golden eagles take several years to reach breeding age and juvenile birds disperse from their parent’s breeding territory and range over the Highlands and islands to varying degrees i.e. the young birds are not tied to the SPAs.

As breeding adult birds are territorial, these young birds mainly use areas of suitable habitat that does not form part of a territorial range. Some of the areas these birds will be using will be areas where hare control is being carried out. SNH Report 278 indicates that more hares are controlled from September to February, although levels of hares removed for tick control are fairly similar across the year.

(b) Young golden eagles often return and try to settle close to where they were born although some settle elsewhere. The SPAs therefore are reliant on the wider golden eagle population to support recruitment. Only a proportion of the young eagles survive to reach breeding age and it is unknown what, if any, effect the reductions in hare numbers will have on recruitment.

(c) Live prey is of key importance for chick development and successful breeding. As with (a) and (b) there is a potential impact through reducing available prey and/or requiring the birds to prey more on grouse.

The Scottish Government does not hold any information on how many schools achieve a UNICEF Rights Respecting Schools Award as this is a UNICEF led programme. The Scottish Government is working with Education Scotland on developing a professional development resource to raise awareness of Children’s Rights entitled ‘Recognising and Realising Children’s Rights’ which will be available to all schools.

The estimated number of construction jobs likely to be delivered was based on Babcock’s figures which were noted and not disputed during the public local inquiry.

Information regarding how much it has cost each local authority to provide services for children with (a) formal and (b) informal kinship care arrangements in each of the last three years is not centrally held by the Scottish Government.

The data that we collect from local authorities on looked after children is about demographic information and not the cost of keeping a child in care.

We do not collect information on non-looked after children living in kinship care arrangements as local authorities are not currently obliged to provide specific support to those in informal kinship care arrangements, except under their general duties set out in section 22 of the Children (Scotland) Act 1995.

Estimated costings of some of the services provided to children living in formal and informal kinship care arrangements in relation to the Kinship Care Order proposed through the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill can be found at pages 65 – 75 of the Bill Financial Memorandum.

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/Bills/62233.aspx.

The Scottish Government, through the organisations we fund such as Children 1^st, Citizens Advice Scotland and Mentor UK, will continue review the needs of children in kinship care. We will also continue to engage with individual kinship carers and kinship care groups such as the Scottish Kinship Care Alliance, Kinsfolk Carers and Grandparents Parenting Again.

We have just recently completed an extensive engagement period with kinship carers, kinship care groups and other key stakeholders, such as those mentioned above during the consultation of the Children and Young People Bill.