Seòmar agus comataidhean

I will press the amendment.

I am always happy to come to the committee and be patronised about my knowledge of the Electricity Act 1989, which I know in quite great detail, having been a surveyor and having worked for Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks on power lines across Scotland, but what I will not take from you, cabinet secretary, is the idea that you do not have control. If you are saying that the amendment is incompetent, it is incompetent for you to say that you will not accept nuclear power in Scotland, because it is a totally reserved matter. You are doing it because you have control of the planning levers to stop it. You cannot argue one thing one way and another thing another way. Can you explain how it is possible to pick and choose, as you are doing?

You will be pleased to know, convener, that, considering the size of the group, I will try to limit my remarks to my own amendments.

Amendment 132 seeks to reinstate the stag season, or close season, for male deer in Scotland, following its removal by the Deer (Close Seasons) (Scotland) Amendment Order 2023, which came into force on 21 October 2023. The committee will remember that I spoke on the subject and drew up a large petition, which more than 2,000 people signed. It was then effectively ignored, which meant that not only could Bambi be shot with its mother, but every male deer would be shot whenever it was seen during the course of the year, if that were the decision of the landowner.

I have done a bit of research on the matter with Forestry and Land Scotland, which proves that, as a result of its use of what I call “deer mercenaries”—a subject that I will come back to—25,673 male deer have been shot out of season in Scotland since the removal of the close season, with 6,643 shot in the north region or the Highlands alone. That is a huge number.

Just to be clear, I point out that Forestry and Land Scotland spent £4.86 million on deer management control in 2023-24, and that money is being used to pay contractors, some of whom are being paid more than £100,000 a year to kill deer. On the basis of the figures used by Forestry and Land Scotland, that means that they are killing more than 800 deer per contractor, and some contractors are using subcontractors and paying them a proportion of what they get.

The figure equates to roughly 6 per cent of FLS’s total expenditure being spent on deer management control. The removal of the close season enticed people to go into contract deer killing. I made the point in relation to the previous amendment, which, sadly, was rejected, that it is important to keep people on the ground and not use travelling contractors from outwith the area to come in and kill deer.

I thank the minister for that very pertinent question. As I have said, I have been involved for more than 50 years, now, in deer management and in the selective culling of deer to ensure that deer populations are maintained at an acceptable level and that we do not just have the mass extermination of deer.

What the 2023 order said was that you could kill deer at any time. There was provision under the Deer (Scotland) Act 1996 for the killing of deer outwith the close season, but you had to apply for a licence and it could be done only in specific areas. Now, it is being done randomly across Scotland. In fact, I have seen advertisements for stag shooting at Christmas, which is the time when stags are at their lowest ebb and should not be chased around the hill, as they are probably at the limits of their reserves before they go into the spring. I think that that is wrong.

I am all for the management of deer, but I am all for doing it as carefully and kindly as possible, and in a way that ensures that we keep a balanced population. What I am suggesting is that we go back to the previous situation of people having to apply for licences, instead of their just carrying out night shooting with thermal sights, with deer being harried from dawn to dusk.

Minister, a further example is the deer management groups in the Highlands. They have been ferried around at NatureScot’s expense, with helicopters being taken to the most far-off parts of estates for deer to be shot and left there. They were culling calves only at a rate of 1 per cent, which is completely against normal deer management. We know that calving percentages are around 20 to 25 per cent, which means that 19-odd per cent of the calves were being left to starve as a result of the actions of NatureScot, which I find unacceptable.

I am making both points. The ethics of deer control should be such that there should be a close season.

I am trying to prove to you, minister, and to the members of the public who are listening to this, that this Government has lost its way and its direction on the ethics of deer control and that there is now a mass rush to kill as many deer as possible. If you do not believe me, minister, you could speak to many of the game dealers in Scotland who are already saying that they are no longer prepared to take deer in the run-up to Christmas, because there is no market, their larders are full and they cannot sell them. Deer will now either not be shot, simply because they cannot be taken in by game dealers, or, if they are shot, they might be left on the hill. Indeed, they might be put into chills, never to be used, or, in fact, destroyed.

Having pushed as hard as I can on that, convener, I will move on to amendment 133, which seeks to remove from the bill proposed new section 6ZB—or 6 Zulu Bravo, as I would say in the army—of the 1996 act. The proposed section will extend a power to NatureScot to intervene in deer management on the grounds of nature restoration—and I should say that amendments 134, 135, 138, 139 and 148 to 151 are consequential to this amendment. I believe that section 6ZB’s unchecked intervention power will destabilise the current voluntary system, which accounts for 80 per cent of Scotland’s annual cull, and will lead to job sectors being destabilised. It will effectively give NatureScot the ability to order culls and just send the bill to landowners.

We know, minister, that deer are not the only animals that cause damage on hills. Sheep, hares and even cows cause damage, too, but SNH will now concentrate purely on deer and will have no control of those other species. That approach has been questioned to such an extent that I believe that the minister’s predecessor was told that just to concentrate on deer would make for bad legislation. Just this morning, I have seen in the press that some other people are controlling other animals—Oxygen Conservation, for example, is killing goats on a whim because it does not want any goats. However, what this legislation does is allow SNH to concentrate on just deer. That is a waste of time if you are not going to take a holistic view of managing the whole catchment.

I am saying that concentrating on one species and not having a holistic approach will not achieve much. Therefore, I would rather go back to a holistic approach—as you suggested with your previous amendment, Mr Ruskell, which I supported and moved to ensure was agreed to. That kind of holistic approach is what the Deer Commission for Scotland had in the past, and it is what I am trying to achieve by removing the proposed new section 6ZB of the 1996 act from the bill.

Amendment 142 would oblige Scottish ministers to consult experts when planning objections to a control scheme. My amendment 143 would further qualify that provision by stipulating that such experts should be “recognised in the industry” as having a relevant amount of expertise, rather than people who consider themselves fit by reading books or scientific papers. I want the people who consider and make judgments on this issue to have dirt under their fingernails from managing deer, instead of just having read about it.

Amendments 145 and 146 would offer two approaches to the scrutiny of deer control agreements and control schemes. Amendment 145 would require NatureScot to conduct a full financial and socioeconomic impact assessment before exercising the relevant functions. It would also require that a move towards a control agreement be informed by robust analysis. That is surely the right way of moving forward—making sure that control plans and agreements are economically viable, instead of causing a desert and having no one there as a result.

That impact assessment would report on the

“cost of enhanced deer management”

and the burden on neighbouring landowners, and it would ensure that the impact on deer management jobs in neighbouring properties would be considered in the control order. It would be part of a holistic approach—the deer management plan approach—that considers the whole catchment, rather than one catchment in particular. Introducing statutory requirements for socioeconomic assessments would ensure that decisions were made with the full knowledge of the consequences for those who would be affected.

Amendment 146 would go further than amendment 145 by inserting two new sections—8A and 8B—after section 8 of the 1996 act. Those sections would create a statutory requirement for financial and socioeconomic impact assessments, as in amendment 145, and they would also establish independent scrutiny of control agreements and control schemes by an independent panel of experts. That has to be good, because we should be bringing in the experts. After all, they are the people who know about, and have done, deer management.

Currently, SNH has authority to implement control agreements or schemes to manage deer populations. However, the impacts of those decisions and measures on local economies and employment, and the cost to landowners and businesses, are often—symptomatically—not addressed or effectively scrutinised. The panel would do that scrutiny. I do not see why the minister would not support such a move, as it would protect him, and the Scottish Government, from any legal actions in the future, if they had not considered everything.

All of these amendments are vital in ensuring that control schemes are appropriately scrutinised and that the welfare of our deer is something that we are proud of, instead of its being a matter of simply going out to machine-gun deer at the expense of everything else, which would be wrong.

I move amendment 132.

I want to make a brief intervention. I am not trying to disrupt.

For over 40 years, now, I have been told by various people that venison will come on to the market and be a great success, and I am still hearing that every day. However, I know of game dealers across Scotland who are not taking in venison, because they have nowhere to put it. We are putting scrawny old stags on to the market in February and March, when they are in no condition for anyone to eat—the meat is probably better as dog food than human food. Surely, if we are going to make venison a quality product, those stags ought to be coming on to the market when they are in peak condition and ready for the human food chain. We should not be getting them at a time of year when they can be culled more easily, because they are so—excuse the expression—knackered that they cannot avoid the hunter’s bullet.

The issue is that sporting rights can be separated from the land. They are a legal right to which somebody is entitled.

The issue was covered by the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill, which I am sure you followed as closely as I did and which gave the tenants a right to claim against game damage, and deer were included in that. My concern, Dr Allan, is that we would be extinguishing or interfering with a property right that somebody has at law, and, in my opinion, if the Government makes this law, it will leave itself open to legal challenge.

I do not know whether it helps to say this, but I do not propose to move amendments 148 to 151. I am happy if you want to put a question on those amendments en bloc. If not, I will simply say, “Not moved.”