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Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee 07 December 2022

07 Dec 2022 · S6 · Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee

Item of business

Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2

Mountain, Edward Con Highlands and Islands Watch on SPTV

I thank the committee for letting us participate in this debate, which is an important one. Many of my amendments in the group deal with rabbits, and I will speak to those first. I will deal with amendment 63 separately. During the committee’s evidence sessions, which I heard, I found it really difficult to follow the reasoning behind the inclusion of rabbits in the bill. I think that people who carry out legitimate activities in the countryside fully understand the difference between hares and rabbits, which are significantly different animals. People who live and work in the countryside understand that hares and rabbits live in different sorts of habitats. Hares like to flee and will flee above ground, which is why they live in open fields and are so often seen in the spring in fields of growing crops, whereas rabbits tend to live on the edges of woodlands and fields. If someone is carrying out activities to control rabbits, they can identify them quite easily from the habitats in which they are working and the different size of the animals. In my mind, it is rather lazy to include rabbits because, as I think the minister said, they might be used as an excuse to course hares. That is not the case. For someone who lives in the countryside, as I do, it is like people confusing hay and straw, or barley and wheat. They are substantially different, so there is no reason to conflate them. The only people who might do that are people who are trying to break the law, who will hide behind the fact that they are hunting for rabbits when they are clearly not. Another reason that I have heard for including rabbits is that coursing is carried out at night. I am not sure how that happens, because coursing is carried out by sight. People might go out coursing at night-time and use lights, but they would be breaking the law and they should be prosecuted. I do not believe that there is any reason to include rabbits. I have heard that they suffer more pain than other animals do, such as rats or mice, but I do not believe that that is the case. In this case, there is no evidence that rabbits suffer more than other animals. For that reason alone, I do not believe that it is necessary to include them. I therefore wish rabbits to be removed from the scope of the bill. With regard to other animals, my amendments would exclude weasels, stoats, mink, polecats and ferrets. Polecats and ferrets will be domesticated animals that have gone wild, and stoats and weasels are accepted as a problem. I believe that members of the committee will understand the problems that mustelids cause on islands and the devastation that they can cause to breeding bird populations. They are animals that we are encouraged to control. The Government encourages people to control mink. In the Cairngorms, there has been a mink eradication policy, and there was a mink officer who was responsible for encouraging landowners to kill and remove mink. Mink is a non-native species—they were introduced to this country and escaped from fur farms. It seems perfectly sensible to allow mink, polecats, ferrets, stoats and weasels to be controlled, yet that would not be allowed under the bill. Most of my other amendments in the group are technical, supporting amendments. However, amendment 63 seeks to ensure that, if somebody is hunting an animal and they flush it, they will commit an offence only if they “subsequently” course it. I do not believe that it should be an offence to flush animals from thick growth such as a bramble bush. You might have more than two dogs working to flush an animal. If you subsequently caught it, it could be argued that you have broken the law. You should not be breaking the law if you flush the animal; you should be breaking the law only if you subsequently course it. I will be interested to hear what Colin Smyth says about amendment 110 and the evidence that would be required. It is not clear from his amendment what evidence would be required, who would adjudicate on it, or who would decide whether it was satisfactory. On that basis, I struggle to understand the amendment, but I look forward to hearing more detail when my colleague speaks to it. Those are the amendments that I wish to speak to at this stage. I look forward to the opportunity to debate them. 09:15

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Rural Affairs, Islands and Natural Environment Committee 07 December 2022

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