Chamber and committees

I am saying that concentrating on one species and not having a holistic approach will not achieve much. Therefore, I would rather go back to a holistic approach—as you suggested with your previous amendment, Mr Ruskell, which I supported and moved to ensure was agreed to. That kind of holistic approach is what the Deer Commission for Scotland had in the past, and it is what I am trying to achieve by removing the proposed new section 6ZB of the 1996 act from the bill.

Amendment 142 would oblige Scottish ministers to consult experts when planning objections to a control scheme. My amendment 143 would further qualify that provision by stipulating that such experts should be “recognised in the industry” as having a relevant amount of expertise, rather than people who consider themselves fit by reading books or scientific papers. I want the people who consider and make judgments on this issue to have dirt under their fingernails from managing deer, instead of just having read about it.

Amendments 145 and 146 would offer two approaches to the scrutiny of deer control agreements and control schemes. Amendment 145 would require NatureScot to conduct a full financial and socioeconomic impact assessment before exercising the relevant functions. It would also require that a move towards a control agreement be informed by robust analysis. That is surely the right way of moving forward—making sure that control plans and agreements are economically viable, instead of causing a desert and having no one there as a result.

That impact assessment would report on the

“cost of enhanced deer management”

and the burden on neighbouring landowners, and it would ensure that the impact on deer management jobs in neighbouring properties would be considered in the control order. It would be part of a holistic approach—the deer management plan approach—that considers the whole catchment, rather than one catchment in particular. Introducing statutory requirements for socioeconomic assessments would ensure that decisions were made with the full knowledge of the consequences for those who would be affected.

Amendment 146 would go further than amendment 145 by inserting two new sections—8A and 8B—after section 8 of the 1996 act. Those sections would create a statutory requirement for financial and socioeconomic impact assessments, as in amendment 145, and they would also establish independent scrutiny of control agreements and control schemes by an independent panel of experts. That has to be good, because we should be bringing in the experts. After all, they are the people who know about, and have done, deer management.

Currently, SNH has authority to implement control agreements or schemes to manage deer populations. However, the impacts of those decisions and measures on local economies and employment, and the cost to landowners and businesses, are often—symptomatically—not addressed or effectively scrutinised. The panel would do that scrutiny. I do not see why the minister would not support such a move, as it would protect him, and the Scottish Government, from any legal actions in the future, if they had not considered everything.

All of these amendments are vital in ensuring that control schemes are appropriately scrutinised and that the welfare of our deer is something that we are proud of, instead of its being a matter of simply going out to machine-gun deer at the expense of everything else, which would be wrong.

I move amendment 132.

I want to make a brief intervention. I am not trying to disrupt.

For over 40 years, now, I have been told by various people that venison will come on to the market and be a great success, and I am still hearing that every day. However, I know of game dealers across Scotland who are not taking in venison, because they have nowhere to put it. We are putting scrawny old stags on to the market in February and March, when they are in no condition for anyone to eat—the meat is probably better as dog food than human food. Surely, if we are going to make venison a quality product, those stags ought to be coming on to the market when they are in peak condition and ready for the human food chain. We should not be getting them at a time of year when they can be culled more easily, because they are so—excuse the expression—knackered that they cannot avoid the hunter’s bullet.

The issue is that sporting rights can be separated from the land. They are a legal right to which somebody is entitled.

The issue was covered by the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill, which I am sure you followed as closely as I did and which gave the tenants a right to claim against game damage, and deer were included in that. My concern, Dr Allan, is that we would be extinguishing or interfering with a property right that somebody has at law, and, in my opinion, if the Government makes this law, it will leave itself open to legal challenge.

I do not know whether it helps to say this, but I do not propose to move amendments 148 to 151. I am happy if you want to put a question on those amendments en bloc. If not, I will simply say, “Not moved.”

At the moment, being taken out on the hill by a qualified stalker is usually considered to be sufficient. The qualified stalker goes through every possible eventuality by taking people to a target before they go to the hill. People occasionally have to move in different directions, which might mean that an individual is on his or her own when they shoot the deer. If they are not fit and competent, they could not do that, could they?

I am not absolutely convinced that that is the case. I would perhaps be convinced if I knew, for example, how many of all the animals that go through the Forestry and Land Scotland larder have been wounded and how many have been rejected by game dealers. However, none of that information has been provided. Mandatory training might not actually prove to have that effect. I go back to an amendment that Dr Allan moved on allowing crofters to shoot deer. Many crofters have been shooting deer for generations, but we will now say to them, “Ah, because you’ve been shooting deer for generations, you’re not fit and competent. We’re going to send you off for a test.” I can tell you that, having been considered to be competent for 12 years to carry a firearm in the military, I found it immensely frustrating that I was not considered competent to shoot deer.

I would be absolutely delighted to see the wounding rates. The best way to convince me about wounding rates is to go to the organisation that probably kills as many deer as any organisation—Forestry and Land Scotland. If you can give me the wounding and miss rates from that organisation, I will have more belief in what you are doing. That is what I am asking you to do through my amendment.

Oh, but firearms licensing is a reserved matter under UK legislation.

As I alluded to when speaking to the previous group, I will make a slightly fuller declaration of interests than I did the last time. I remind members of my entry in the register of members’ interests, which says that I own and manage approximately 500 acres of farmland in Moray. I have been involved in deer management for more than 50 years. I have written deer management plans for various deer management groups across Scotland, some of which—I am pleased to say—still remain in force; they have stood the test of time.

My amendment 131 would place a duty on ministers to ensure that rural employment associated with deer management is not just protected but promoted in the bill. Organisations such as the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, Scottish Land & Estates and the Scottish Gamekeepers Association have shared with me their concerns about the lack of safeguarding of jobs and livelihoods relating to deer management. Those jobs and livelihoods must never be sacrificed to meet the aim of the Government, and of some other people, to turbocharge deer reduction.

I will talk about that when we come to the next section, but—to be frank—a lot of full-time jobs are being pushed sideways on to contract killers who are brought in to kill deer. Deer managers and gamekeepers have real concerns about the fact that the bill does not recognise the invaluable work that they do. Not only is shooting worth about £760 million to the Scottish economy; the bill risks undermining the very jobs on which we rely.

Minister, the other day, you chaired a meeting—kindly and with skill—of a group that was set up as a result of the Dava fires to discuss the importance of ensuring that such fires are controlled. To me, it was clear that it was a lot of gamekeepers and deer managers who actually stopped those fires spreading beyond where they did and prevented damage from being incurred across a wider area. In fact, I believe that the selfless action of those people prevented the loss of life. It seems only right, therefore, that we should be protecting those jobs and ensuring that, when it comes to deer management, we give them due consideration.

I could speak to Tim Eagle’s amendments, but I am not going to do so. I am interested specifically in Mark Ruskell’s amendment 28, and I want to hear what he says, because it would appear that he proposes to shift deer control out of the control of NatureScot or Scottish Natural Heritage—whatever it is now.

Perhaps that is a reversion to the good old days, when deer management was done by an organisation called the Deer Commission for Scotland. It was a Government organisation—perhaps the minister will remember it—that drew everyone together, helped to set cull targets and worked extremely well in the field of deer management. It was collaborative and wide ranging, and everyone felt that they had a say. There was some stick behind its powers, but it was unfortunately dissolved by the Government in 2010 and subsumed within Scottish Natural Heritage—something that has, I think, been to the detriment of deer management.

If Mark Ruskell’s amendment 28 seeks to bring back the Deer Commission for Scotland into a separate organisation, I will be bound to support it—which might be the kiss of death to it, Mr Ruskell. We will wait and see, convener. I have nothing further to add on that matter.