Seòmar agus comataidhean

I do not have it in front of me.

Yes, and I take on board what the Law Society of Scotland says. However, that is a pretty standard provision throughout not only wildlife legislation but legislation generally and would allow us to make amendments should that be needed without having to go through primary legislation again. Cost recovery is an example of where we might want to make such changes. Indeed, if any deficiencies arose, that provision would allow us to make changes without having to introduce another bill, in contrast to the 2002 act. It is not an overstretch; it is a standard part of drafting.

Twenty per cent is the figure that I recall, convener, but I will certainly check it.

I should probably go away and think about that, but my instinctive response is that I would not want to do anything that stopped the transplanting of animals. I would not want to say that they must be killed at the point of flushing if, on occasion, they can be netted and moved.

That is understood.

To recap, the bill contains two offences: to hunt a mammal with a dog and to knowingly permit someone to hunt a mammal with a dog. However, there are exceptions to that, as Mercedes Villalba said.

The first exception is the management of wild mammals above ground. That will require two dogs, which will have to be under control, and the person will have to take reasonable steps to ensure that the dogs do not join others. What is envisaged with those provisions is farmers, land managers and others having to undertake control to protect lambs, poultry and ground-nesting birds, for example. Basically, that refers to the use of dogs above ground.

The second exception relates to the hunting of wild mammals below ground. I know that there has been extensive discussion about that and that the committee has heard very opposing views on it. That exception provides for the use of one dog that is under control, with the permission of the landowner. That is about controlling species such as foxes and mink underground.

There is also an exception for game shooting, deer stalking and falconry, which involves using a dog to, for example, flush a wild animal to be killed by the falcon or, as I understand it, be shot and fed to the falcon.

The fourth exception is for environmental benefit. That allows for projects to tackle invasive non-native species, for example. There have been a couple of examples of that, such as the projects to tackle stoats on Orkney and hedgehogs on Uist.

There are a few circumstances in which we envisage that dogs may be used in the pursuit of different activities, and those are laid out in exceptions in the bill.

First, I highlight that the bill is not just about foxes. We have to remember that the aims that we are pursuing are about all wild mammals and not just foxes.

A number of ways to control foxes are used in Scotland. We know that lamping is used, along with the use of dogs to flush to guns or—unlawfully—to chase and kill foxes. We know that some farmers and land managers adopt the use of traps, snares and things like that.

However, the bill is not about making an assessment of the different ways in which Scotland manages foxes. It is about saying that the attempt that was made 20 years ago to not allow chasing and killing as a form of control has not worked, and that we really ought to revise the legislation so that that one specific part works as it was intended to. There will be debates about all the different types of control, but that is not what the bill looks at. It is very much about how one aspect of the 20-year-old legislation is working, and whether it is working as the public thought that it should.

On the banning of trail hunting?

That is an interesting point. As with some of the other points on definitions that we have discussed, the team, the drafters and I thought carefully about the words that are used.

I am comfortable with the word “reasonably” because the judicial system—the process from start to finish—is well acquainted with the idea of reasonableness and with making assessments based on that. The wording allows us to take the circumstances into account, which those who interpret the law must be able to do. We have therefore used the term “reasonably believed”, and the bill mentions people having to take “reasonable” measures to prevent two dogs from joining another pack to form a larger group. The wording is quite standard, and the judicial system is well acquainted with reasonableness.

That is a good question. There is always a balance to be struck. I have been talking to Mercedes Villalba and Karen Adam about the risks of having a definition and then finding that we are outwith it. There is also the risk of having so many terms that the definition could become broader than we anticipated. I do not think that that is the case with what we have set out, and I think that “searching for”, “stalking” and “flushing” are terms that people readily understand and will understand as being part of the intentional act of hunting.

I do not think that it is “woolly”; I think that it is deliberately not closing off what could constitute hunting. That all comes back to the fact that we found ourselves, with the 2002 act, with interpretations being taken outside the bill and prosecution and behaviour not following what was expected under the bill. The definition is deliberately non-exhaustive.