Chamber and committees

You have my assurance that I will make a decision on whether there will be a complete ban on snares or a licensing scheme. You will have that information ahead of making your deliberations for your stage 1 report.

Will you take evidence from NatureScot? We have been working closely with NatureScot and other agencies, which is one reason why we are lodging this amendment. NatureScot has not given any opinion to suggest that snaring should be kept for biodiversity or conservation reasons.

That is a question for NatureScot.

It is a question of whether we have that data. I do not know how we would know how many foxes have been shot as a result of being caught in a snare—I do not know what record keeping would be involved in that.

I completely take on board the convener’s point about scrutiny, and I have said that we will lodge amendments.

Let me go back to our reasons for not putting a ban on snaring in the original draft. We did not do so because of the work that Rachael Hamilton is asking us to do; we were approached by stakeholders who were advocating for us to look at humane cable restraints. That is what we have been doing over the summer: we have been working with those stakeholders and others, we have been taking advice, and we have put out a consultation on that specific issue.

In good faith, I have not steamed ahead and said, “We are not even going to look at that—there is going to be a full ban.” From June to November, we have been doing everything associated with arriving at a final position. We had the round-table meeting and I offered to look at what stakeholders would like to see in a licensing scheme, but that information came back to me only on Monday.

Yes. I was saying they are allowed to be used only in certain—very limited—circumstances by law.

Let me go back to my initial point in my statement. Regardless of proposals that have been put to us about licensing—which we need to dig into, and which we need to take time to consider—we believe that more humane methods of wildlife control, such as shooting and trapping, are available to land managers here as they are in other countries across Europe. The Welsh Government and Parliament have also made a decision on that.

I am confident that a ban on the use of snares would not prevent anyone from undertaking necessary wildlife management. As I have mentioned, there are other landowners involved in conservation who do not believe that snaring is necessary. Snares are already used only in very limited circumstances under the current legislation; they cannot be used in situations where they might attract other species or where species that they are not intended to trap might unintentionally get caught. That still happens, regardless of the professionalism of the individual who sets the snare.

That is my starting point. Had we not had calls from SLE to consider humane cable restraints, we would have put that in the bill. That would have been our starting point, and I would have dealt with all of that in the initial evidence session. We are taking the time, however, to do all the work required in that respect.

My starting point is that I am not at all convinced that we can continue with snares in Scotland because of the animal welfare issues with any kind of snare. There are other methods that have been used successfully in other countries in Europe, and we might need to adapt and use those methods, which are effective.

The monitoring aspect, to my knowledge, also came up during the passage of the Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill, so how we are going to monitor the effectiveness of the bill is a reasonable question. Obviously, the Scottish Government will monitor the effectiveness of any legislation that it introduces. Also, committees can do post-legislative scrutiny, and it is within the gift of the committee to do its scrutiny.

The Government and the agencies will obviously monitor the effectiveness of what they are doing. We have routine tranches of work that are done on things such as the impact on biodiversity—the state of nature report, for example. NatureScot has the task of monitoring biodiversity and species management. The Scottish Government also has strong relationships with land managers, and, if the bill is passed, I will continue to have conversations with stakeholders about the effectiveness of the laws that the Parliament has put through and where there are issues that we might be able to look at.

Jim Fairlie just brought up the issue of licensing under the Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Act 2023. I will take that away. I should have said to him before he went that he is welcome to write to me about that issue. In the same way, the Government will continue to listen to people who are impacted by the legislation that we pass.

I guess that data collection will relate to biodiversity as well, but it will be about the conversations that we will have with stakeholders over the time in which that legislation is put in place.

Vicarious liability applies when a person who is working for an organisation does something. It is not just they who are liable; it is also the person who employs them. It is usually applied in situations where the person who is held liable has the power to control the actions of the person who has committed an offence. For example, if a gamekeeper is setting a trap, it might be because the person who employs that gamekeeper has asked them to do that. That is vicarious liability.

The Animals and Wildlife (Penalties, Protections and Powers) (Scotland) Act 2020, which I mentioned earlier, already extended vicarious liability to include certain snaring offences, including setting an illegal self-locking snare; positioning snares in such a way as to cause unnecessary animal suffering; and using snares to purposely trap protected animals such as badgers or otters. Given that Parliament has recently added vicarious liability to those already illegal situations and offences, it would be reasonable for it to remain in place in relation to relevant new snaring offences in the bill.

I am still considering my final position on whether the status quo is enough in that respect, and I have not arrived at a final position on vicarious liability with regard to any new offences.

Mr McArthur will know that gun control regulations in Scotland are extremely tight in terms of who can get a licence to have a shotgun and what they have to do to secure it and use it. I come back to the fact that the people who are undertaking that land management are professional people. I do not think that we will see an uptick in Joe Bloggs having a shotgun.