Chamber and committees

Edward Mountain’s amendment 176 would allow members of the public to use glue traps to control rats and mice in educational, catering or medical premises. The Scottish Animal Welfare Commission published a report on glue traps that concluded that

“animal welfare issues connected with the use of glue traps would justify an immediate outright ban on their sale and use.”

Because of the weight of evidence that glue traps are the least humane method of rodent control and that they cause unacceptable levels of suffering to the animals that are caught by them, continuing to allow their use was not considered to be a viable option. More than three quarters of respondents to our consultation also agreed that glue traps should be banned completely in Scotland.

In its stage 1 report, the committee stated:

“It is clear to the Committee that glue traps do cause suffering to vertebrate animals.”

It went on:

“The Committee agrees, therefore, that members of the general public should be banned from using or purchasing glue traps.”

It is also important to note that professional pest controllers fully support a ban on the use of glue traps by members of the public. Both the UK and Welsh Parliaments have already passed legislation that makes it an offence for members of the public to use them for any purpose. I do not believe that we can ignore the weight of evidence that glue traps lead to unacceptable levels of suffering, not just for rats and mice but for other animals that are not the intended catch but can also become trapped in them.

I am not entirely sure why Mr Mountain has submitted the amendment in its current form, as it does not really have any support from animal welfare experts or professionals, or from the committee, because it would allow the public to use glue traps. I understand the rationale for setting out circumstances in which glue traps can be used as a last option in the settings that he described. Nevertheless, the amendment would still allow members of the public to have access to such traps. I hope, therefore, that he will not press the amendment. If he does, I would encourage other members to vote against it.

Amendments 4 to 7 propose the creation of a licensing scheme to allow pest controllers to continue to use rodent glue traps and provide for associated training requirements on applicants for the use of such traps. I note that the amendments seek to apply the same sort of regime in Scotland for which the UK Government has legislated largely in England.

I spoke to the British Pest Control Association in January, when we discussed glue traps, and I welcomed the constructive conversation that I had with its representatives. They explained that the association’s members rarely use glue traps but that, when they do, it is in order to react quickly to an infestation in a high-risk area such as a hospital or food environment. It is worth noting that 11 of the 14 local authority pest control departments from which the committee heard already do not use glue traps at all to control rodents in any setting for which they are responsible.

I am sympathetic to what the pest controllers had to say to me in that meeting, because public health is an absolute priority. However, if we were to allow pest controllers to continue to use glue traps in any capacity, that would need to be very tightly regulated in order to ensure that no one got hold of such a trap if they were not supposed to, and that, when the traps were used, there were safeguards in place to reduce animal suffering. I am prepared to give that aspect further consideration.

I understand why Edward Mountain has put forward those proposals; however, I do not think that his proposed licensing scheme is workable as it is currently drafted. Amendment 6 would not limit who could undertake the approved training or who could apply for a licence other than “a pest controller”. There would be difficulties in ascertaining who is a pest controller, as there is no standard occupational classification code for pest controllers, no qualifications or licensing are needed to work in the pest control industry, and there is no regulatory authority that oversees them.

Those issues mean that it would be very difficult for retailers to restrict sales to so-called professionals, thereby increasing the risk that members of the public would be able to continue to purchase and use glue traps. In addition, there are no requirements to adhere to the standards that are set out in the training course. That could give rise to the inconsistent deployment of glue traps.

Those amendments fall far short of providing the reassurance that I need that the risks to animal welfare from using glue traps have been mitigated, so I cannot support them. For all those reasons, I encourage the committee members to vote against them.

I turn to Colin Smyth’s amendments. Amendment 106 specifies that the offence of using a glue trap to kill or take an animal includes “restraining”. In my view, with the greatest respect, the amendment is unnecessary. Section 1 of the bill as currently drafted makes it

“an offence ... to use a glue trap”

to kill or take

“any animal other than an invertebrate.”

I assure Colin Smyth that the ordinary meaning of “take”, or “taking” as the bill states, would include “restrain”, so it is not necessary to change the wording. Restraining a rodent using a glue trap would be comparable to using a live capture trap in that the animal is considered to be taken from the wild and is under the control of the person who is setting or laying the trap. If that aspect would benefit from more clarification, I could arrange to update the explanatory notes that accompany the bill in order to set that out. On that basis, I ask Mr Smyth not to move amendment 106. If he does so, I would encourage committee members to vote against it.

Amendments 107 and 108 would introduce the offence of knowingly causing or permitting the use of a glue trap. As the committee knows, I had initially wanted to include in the bill an offence regarding the sale of glue traps, and it is still my intention to do so at stage 3. However, as work is continuing to be taken forward to secure an exclusion to the UK Internal Market Act 2020, I have not lodged any of my amendments on glue traps at stage 2.

Having listened to Colin Smyth’s reasons for including an offence of knowingly causing or permitting the use of a glue trap, I am minded to include that in the bill. He makes a good argument, and I understand it. However, I would like to reflect on the matter a bit further and make sure that the provision is appropriately drafted. I therefore ask Colin Smyth not to move his amendments today so that I can consider the matter further with a view to potentially lodging at stage 3 a suitably redrafted amendment, which we can work on.

I will keep it brief. I want to reassure the committee that we are taking a balanced approach to the wildlife trap licence. The Werritty review made very clear recommendations in that respect, taking into account the complexities of the need for wildlife management to address environmental impact and to ensure that we are safeguarding animal welfare.

I say to Mr Mountain, in particular, that continuous professional development is a cornerstone of many sectors. For example, nurses, teachers, social workers and offshore workers have to undergo refresher courses in many disciplines, as do civil servants.

I want to make my point first. I refer Mr Mountain to the Scottish Gamekeepers Association’s stated view that its members are happy to undertake such courses and to evidence their considerable expertise and skills. The Scottish Government has accepted the Werritty recommendations in that respect.

On Ariane Burgess’s point about the gap between training requirements, I would say that 10 years would be a maximum. NatureScot has the ability to state in the licence conditions that training needs to be undertaken before that.

Consultation responses to the bill showed strong public support for our approach, with more than 77 per cent of respondents supporting it. I do not consider Edward Mountain’s or Colin Smyth’s amendments necessary or appropriate. I have listened to what they have said, but I cannot support them.

I am not quite sure that I understand your question, convener.

I am resisting some of the amendments that have been lodged because I do not want to tie the hands of any investigating authority by putting into statute a limit to the time of suspension, if that is what you mean. Basically, the length of the investigation is the length of the investigation. Various parties could be involved in it, and I do not want to limit its scope unnecessarily.

Can I finish my points?

No. I am summing up.

We are banning the use of snares in Scotland except in a very small number of ways, which are designed to aid public safety, animal control and wider conservation and biodiversity objectives.

I listened carefully to what Colin Smyth said, but I cannot support his amendments, because I do not think that they are necessary.

I want to mention the exceptions that I have noted. One could be the use of devices for the ringing of birds for conservation or data collection reasons, as the British Trust for Ornithology might do, for example. I also mentioned the animal welfare and animal rescue charities that might use certain devices. I want to have a belt-and-braces approach. That aspect might not have been identified in the Welsh legislation, but it is important to have exceptions in the bill, in case the ban has any unintended consequences.

I encourage members to support my amendment 54 and to outlaw, once and for all, a practice that has no place in 21st century Scotland.

I think that I have made it clear that I am sympathetic to the argument that there might be some settings where we cannot have an infestation and where pest controllers might have to use these traps as a last resort. At the moment, though, I find it difficult to see how that would work in practice, given everything that I have said about pest controllers not being an accredited title for which you need a qualification.

All I can say to Mr Mountain, then, is that I need to give this an awful lot more thought with my officials and see what levers are available to us. I am still not wholly convinced that an outright ban is not the way to go.

There are a couple of moving parts here, too. I have still not had any agreement from the United Kingdom Government on the exemption under the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020. Several letters have gone back and forth, and a meeting to discuss the matter with UK Government ministers was cancelled at the very last minute, so I have not had satisfaction there. There are a lot of balls up in the air in relation to this matter, which is why I have not lodged my proposed amendments here. If I had been able to lodge them, I could have spoken to them. That is all that I can really say on the matter.

I understand why Edward Mountain has lodged his amendments, but I do not think that his proposals are workable in practice, given the licensing scheme that he outlines. His proposals are not doable, given how the amendments are written.

I will speak first to my amendment 55. The issue of trap tampering was discussed at length during the committee’s stage 1 evidence sessions. I listened to the evidence, particularly from the Scottish Gamekeepers Association. Indeed, I met representatives of the SGA and had a constructive conversation with them. I listened to other stakeholders involved in land management, too.

I note the extent to which trap tampering happens and the impact that it has on land managers’ ability to do their job—to carry out their lawful activities. There might also be consequences for animal safety and welfare if a trap is tampered with. I understand the concerns of land managers about vexatious complaints and the fear of losing their licence or being prosecuted, but that is not what the trap licence seeks to do. I do not want responsible users to lose their licence unfairly or due to the unwarranted or irresponsible interference of others.

During the evidence sessions, Mike Flynn of the Scottish SPCA agreed that there should be a specific offence of interfering with a lawfully set trap. He stated:

“If it is lawfully set, any suffering should be minimised, but that is outwith the setter’s control if the trap is tampered with.”—[Official Report, Rural Affairs and Islands Committee, 14 June 2023; c 46.]

My amendment 55 would make it an offence to tamper with a trap to which the wildlife trap licence scheme applies so that it no longer complies with the licence requirements, or to disarm or destroy such a trap unless the person has a reasonable excuse for doing so. It also adds the offence of knowingly causing or permitting another person to tamper with, disarm or destroy such a trap. I encourage all members to vote for amendment 55.

It is fair to say that amendments 57 and 58 aim to achieve the same purpose as the offence provided for in amendment 55. Therefore, I ask Ms Hamilton not to move her amendments. If she does move them, I encourage committee members to vote against them, as amendment 55 does exactly the same thing.

Amendments 177 and 178 seek to change the wildlife trap licence scheme to apply to traps that are used for the purpose of taking a wild bird or killing or taking a wild animal. I appreciate that Edward Mountain has lodged those amendments to reflect the fact that, currently, no traps can be legally used to kill wild birds. Leaving proposed new section 12A(1) of the 1981 act as it is would have no immediate effect, as there are no traps that can be used for the purpose of killing wild birds.

The Werritty review recommended that traps that are used to take wild birds be subject to greater regulation due to the strong links between the misuse of that activity and raptor persecution. I have also made it clear that the bill should be future proofed so that we have enabling powers to amend the types of traps to which the licence applies by secondary legislation. It would stand to reason that, if any traps were ever allowed to be used to kill wild birds, they, too, should be subject to the licence scheme. Again, it is future proofing.

Edward Mountain’s amendments would mean that if, in future, a trap should be devised that could legally be used to kill wild birds, a licence would not be required to kill them, only to take them. That would have the result that there would be a higher level of oversight for using traps to take wild birds than for using traps to kill them, which would be problematic. For those reasons, I cannot support amendments 177 and 178 and I encourage committee members to vote against them.

Colin Smyth’s amendment 109 would add traps that are used for the live capture of wild animals to the trap licence scheme if the animals are trapped with the intention of their later being killed. I understand why Colin Smyth has lodged the amendment, and it seems reasonable to include in the bill. As is set out in the policy memorandum, the measure was considered when the bill was developed and drafted. However, I came to the conclusion that there was not enough evidence to justify adding such traps to the licensing scheme at this time, and the Werritty review did not recommend their licensing.

The intention of a wildlife trap licence scheme is to reduce the use of traps that illegally capture raptors. There is no evidence that people using traps for the capture of live animals have used them with that intent, nor do I think that such traps would be capable of capturing a raptor. I have had discussions with NatureScot and stakeholders who are involved in wildlife management, and it has become clear to me that those traps are used by a number of different groups for a wide range of purposes that are often unconnected with grouse moor management, including conservation and research purposes.

Therefore, I am concerned that adding such traps to the licensing scheme at this stage could give rise to unintended consequences. However, I appreciate that circumstances can change and that new evidence can come to light. I assure Colin Smyth that that is why the bill contains powers to allow other types of traps, such as the ones used for the capture of live animals, to be added to the licensing scheme through regulations following consultation. It is also worth noting that the bill does not change the fact that anyone using such a trap to take a protected animal will still require a species licence from NatureScot and would have to comply with the Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006.

I hope that what I have said satisfies Colin Smyth that sufficient safeguards exist currently. We have powers in the bill to address any issue in the future. Therefore, his amendment 109 is unnecessary and could, in fact, have unintended consequences. I ask him not to move it. However, if he does move it, I encourage committee members to vote against it.

I turn to amendment 110. The bill offers the safeguard of a defence to the offence of catching an unintended animal if the trap user has taken “all reasonable steps” to prevent the catching of any unintended animals. Amendment 110 would change the wording in that defence from “all reasonable steps” to “all practicable steps”.

The defence was included to account for a situation in which a person has complied with the requirements of the trap licence but catches an animal unintentionally, when doing so could not have been foreseen—for example, if they had lawfully set a trap to catch a weasel but unintentionally caught a badger.

In the majority of cases, what is reasonable will also be what is practicable. It would not be reasonable to ask someone to do something impracticable. I appreciate that that sounds a little convoluted, but there is a substantive amount of case law on the reasonableness test. That is why I have used the wording that I have used.

Further, the word “reasonable” was used in the bill to maintain consistency with provisions in the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. It is important to do what we can to avoid unnecessary confusion. For that reason, I ask Colin Smyth not to move amendment 110. If he does so, I encourage committee members to vote against it.

I confirm that including traps for birds is not my intention. It is about future proofing the bill should any modifications come about for future traps that might exist. I noticed that Edward Mountain had a little bit of a smile on his face when he suggested that. That is not my intention at all.