Hansard

In closing for the Scottish Conservatives, I express my thanks to the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee for its work on the bill. The Conservatives fully support tougher sentencing for animal cruelty and certainly think that the most serious cases of cruelty should be dealt with more severely.

I thank members for their thoughtful contributions. However, I must take this opportunity to call out the puddle-headed amendments that the Greens put forward at stage 3. Their manuscript amendments have proved neither elegant nor satisfactory for those of us who believe in proper scrutiny. For the Greens to lodge manuscript amendments at the 11th hour was counterproductive and has not done justice to the important bill that we are debating. This landmark bill was nearly derailed as a result of their ill-conceived amendments, which lacked solid scientific evidence and stakeholder contemplation.

The Scottish Conservatives received a huge amount of correspondence on Alison Johnstone’s stage 3 amendment on mountain hares. People told us that the amendment is significantly flawed and lacked scrutiny, and many pointed out that Ms Johnstone did not mention that her amendment will have unintended consequences for birds that are on the conservation list.

The Greens ploughed on regardless with their shameful virtue signalling, trying to implement bad law that does not reflect the actual situation on Scotland’s hills and mountains, and choosing to ignore scientific facts and not taking the time to consider a balanced approach.

Now the Scottish Government is ignoring its own Werritty report, the James Hutton Institute, Scottish Natural Heritage and the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, and it has been strong-armed into joining the virtue signalling. The rural heartlands will remember that. Once again, we see a city-centric Government ignoring rural communities and doing dirty backroom deals with the Greens.

From the outset, the Scottish Conservatives have worked with other parties to ensure that fines and penalties for the worst animal cruelty offences are increased. [Inaudible.] I thank Claudia Beamish for her work on that and welcome the announcement on the Scottish Government’s restorative justice programme. I hope that that work will include research to link domestic abuse and animal cruelty.

Other parts of the bill are also positive. It goes without saying that Liam Kerr should be thanked for bringing forward Finn’s law. I was pleased that Maurice Golden’s amendment to encourage the proper use of disqualification orders was agreed to with the support of all parties.

Reckless destruction of badger setts is not acceptable and the Scottish Conservatives were happy to support increasing maximum sentences and fines for offences against badgers.

Furthermore, the Scottish Conservatives are pleased that sense prevailed in relation to the vicarious liability amendments, which would have punished responsible landowners and others for crimes that they did not commit or had no knowledge of.

The Scottish Conservatives were content to support amendments introducing maximum penalties that provide courts with the necessary tools to deal with heinous offences, including the reckless destruction of wild habitats and the collection of and trade in rare bird eggs. We thank Claudia Beamish and Angus MacDonald for lodging those amendments.

I was disappointed that there were technical issues with the amendment on illegal pesticides. I ask the Scottish Government to consider calling for a further amnesty to deal with that specific issue.

Overall, the Scottish Conservatives support the bill, but were deeply disappointed by the actions of the Green Party.