Thank you, Presiding Officer. [Interruption.] There are so many papers on my desk, and there are so many amendments. I will get to the right one, which I hope is one that the Government will allow.

Amendment 95 is intended to ensure that the Government consults land managers, which I have been asking all along for it to do. It is a simple amendment to allow land managers to have input into the muirburn code. I suspect that that is not appropriate, but I wait to hear the answer.

I have lodged amendment 57 to help the Government. The bill is meant to be about grouse moor licensing and we should be aiming for it to do what it says on the tin. My amendment seeks to ensure that it does what it says on the tin and that game birds cannot be added to the schedule of birds that are protected by the bill unless they are on the amber or red list—that is, they are in significant danger of going extinct.

The Government has simply put grouse into part 1B of schedule 2 to the 1981 act and it can add whatever other species it wants to. That sends out the wrong message if the bill is about grouse moor licensing. If the bill is about licensing all forms of field sports in Scotland, it should say that, but I do not believe that that is what was consulted on or what people are expecting the bill to do.

My amendment is straightforward, the provision is easily quantifiable and there is an accepted way of getting species on to the amber and red list, which allows the Government to ensure that any species that need protection are protected.

Rachael Hamilton’s amendments go somewhat further, and I commend her for them. I will support them if my amendment 57 is unlikely to find favour.

By lodging amendment 57, I am saying to the Government that, if it means what it has said that it will do in the bill, it should stick to that and should not add other species. The way to do that is to ensure that other species cannot be added unless that is for conservation reasons.

Amendment 57 relates not to any birds but to game birds that are recognised under the Game (Scotland) Act 1832, as amended. Those are the birds that could not be added to the list unless they met a high conservation standard or required conservation. Could Rhoda Grant support the amendment on that basis?

Amendment 63 says that if the relevant authority refuses a licence, it

“must give written notice to the applicant of the reasons for doing so.”

Can Rachael Hamilton think of a single reason why it would not want to do that in the first place?

I mention that for two reasons. First, I suspect that, if the Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill is passed, I will be sent for continuing professional development on how to be a farmer, despite having been doing it for 40 years. I will have to do a course while the people who are being appointed as inspectors will not.

On the minister’s comments in answer to Rhoda Grant’s request, I thought that it was a reasonable request. To review the powers once every five years would not be a great difficulty. Let us get on and be reasonable. Let us get the inspectors doing courses and let us get a report on what is going on.

Amendment 73, as articulated by Dr Allan, sounds eminently sensible. In fact, it is so sensible that it is almost exactly the same as my amendment 74. It looks suspiciously like an amendment that the Government offered to me to lodge prior to this meeting, but I decided not to do that, because I think that my amendments 74 and 75 are better, in that they include a reference to land managers.

The simple reason for wanting to put a reference to land managers in the bill is that they are the people who work on and use the land. It does not matter what they are using it for; it could be any group of land managers. The approach in amendment 73 is a bit like trying to rewrite a health plan without including doctors. My amendments 74 and 75 would bring land managers into the bill. It is a toss-up between amendments 73 and 74, and I think that amendment 75 is eminently reasonable.

I am afraid that Mr Smyth and I are going to disagree on amendments 71 and 72. Sometimes, there are no other options, which is why people go out and legally remove predators by killing them—it is not possible to relocate, as that just creates additional problems for other people or exacerbates the problems. It would be a bit like trying to move mustelids from Orkney on to the mainland. I am not sure that people on the mainland would necessarily approve of that.

I urge the Parliament to vote for my amendments 74 and 75; not to vote for amendment 73; and to see amendments 71 and 72 as wrecking amendments and not to vote for those either.

I will not do what I normally do, which is to open on my amendment. I start by saying that I would much rather that amendment 81 was not needed and that amendment 82 was agreed to. As I do not think that that is likely, I intend to press amendment 81. If amendments 81 and 82 fail, amendment 17 in the name of Rhoda Grant is an amendment that I would be happy to support. Ms Grant does not look surprised, nor should she be, because it is a sensible and reasonable amendment.

Amendment 81 says that those people who are appointed as inspectors should do a course. I am sure that the minister will support that. The Government makes keepers do courses, even if they have been doing it all their lives, and it makes other people do courses. My point is that an animal inspector who is drafted in as a result of this legislation should do a course. The Government could set the course content that it wants, but the inspectors should do a course. I would be highly surprised if the minister were to vote against that, having spoken so eloquently about why courses are required for everyone else. However, I will listen to hear how he manages to do that.

I move amendment 81.

Good news, I think: I will not move amendment 92, for the simple reason that I have considered the rationale behind it and have taken advice. I am pleased to understand that it is not the Government’s intention to issue muirburn licences for set periods of time. My concern was that it was going to. A muirburn procedure for an area of ground could last for a long time.

We will come on to the reasons for muirburn and how and why it is carried out later, but it is done on a rotational basis, and eight years would be the minimum time, to my mind. As the Government has not set a target length, I do not propose to move amendment 92.

Amendments 90 and 91 were consequential amendments to an amendment of mine that failed earlier, so I have no wish to push them.

I will speak to my amendments in the group first. Amendments 46 and 47 are technical amendments to help the Government to understand that it is illegal to kill a wild bird by trapping it, which is why I want to amend the bill to prevent that bit from being in it. People cannot do that, so why is the Government suggesting that they can? I am trying to be helpful. I will be interested in seeing whether the minister thinks that that is the case.

Amendment 48 is on grandfather rights, as they are called—I suppose that we should say “grandparent rights”. It is about not teaching your granny to suck eggs. I was told not to do that when I was younger. If someone has been around for a bit and they understand what they are doing, we should not make them go and do a course to do it. At stage 2, I suggested that there was no requirement to send somebody who is over 40 years old and has been trapping for 10 years on a course to learn how to do that.

Having spent 12 years in the Army and having been taught how to fire a rifle, I found it somewhat odd that I was made to carry out a shooting test to see whether I was capable of shooting a deer. I was allowed to shoot in the Army and I was considered proficient at it, but it seemed that I was not allowed to shoot deer.

My amendment 48 is an attempt to stop that happening. I have taken into account the fact that the Government does not like the suggestion that people should not have to go on a course to do everything nowadays. I have suggested that, when someone reaches the age of 50—not 40—and they have been doing the activity for 10 years and can prove it as part of their employment, they do not need to go off and do a course to learn how to do it. The course would probably be taught by a person of 22 or 23 years old who had been authorised to teach it.

At stage 2, the Government said that the organisations were quite happy with its approach, but some of them were happy because they were told that, if people did not go off and do the courses, they would not be given the right, so it was slightly disingenuous to say that they were happy with it. I note that some of the organisations—such as the British Association for Shooting and Conservation—do not support my amendments. That does not surprise me, because they would be running the courses. Why would they cut off an income stream for themselves by allowing people who have experience to carry on doing what they are doing?

Amendment 50 seeks to allow the Government to oversee training courses and make sure that the content is correct. That seems sensible to me.

Amendment 51 seeks to ensure that a trapping licence may not be withheld from anyone on a matter of hearsay. The relevant authority would have to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that an offence had been committed.

That is what my amendments say. They seem to me to be perfectly reasonable, unless we have an interest in making everyone do a course to do everything and we do not accept that some people know more about what they are doing, having done it for a considerable time, than others.

The other amendments in the group are interesting. I am interested to hear what the members who lodged them have to say, so I will leave it at that and comment on them when I sum up at the end of the debate on the group.

I move amendment 46.

I will give way to you, minister.