The Scottish Parliament’s Stage 1 debate of the Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill will take place in the Chamber this Thursday, 30 November 2023, from 2.30pm.
This debate provides all MSPs with the opportunity to discuss the general principles of the Bill and vote to either throw it out or allow it to proceed to Stage 2, which is when the finer details would be debated and amended.
The Stage 1 debate follows the publication last week of the Stage 1 scrutiny report written by the Rural Affairs & Islands Committee which has been taking evidence for the last six months.
Lobbying of MSPs continues apace, from both conservationists and from the grouse-shooting industry. I read the other day a quote from BASC Scotland Director Peter Clark, who wrote that BASC was urging MSPs, “…to work with us to make the enormous yet vital changes to the Bill to avert the decimation of the rural economy, biodiversity and conservation“.
Quite how a licensing scheme designed to regulate a supposedly lawful industry will ‘decimate the rural economy, biodiversity and conservation’ is anyone’s guess. It’s almost as if Peter thinks the industry is so reliant on criminality that it can’t possibly function under a licensing framework and will thus collapse.
This level of hysterical fearmongering is nothing new. Here’s an excerpt from a blog I wrote three years ago when a similar outcry was heard from the grouse-shooting sector in response to the announcement that the Scottish Government intended to introduce a grouse shooting licence scheme:
This hysterical scaremongering about so-called threats to the rural economy from the introduction of a grouse moor licensing scheme is nothing new from this lot (e.g. see here, here, here and here for previous histrionics).
Nor is it the first time we’ve heard the claim that any sort of enforced regulation will ‘threaten’ or ‘damage’ the rural economy.
When the Land Reform Bill was being debated [in 2003] the Scottish Landowners Federation (which later re-branded to call itself the Scottish Rural Property & Business Association (SRPBA) and then re-branded again to its current name of Scottish Land & Estates) warned that the legislation would do irreversible damage to rural economies and they threatened to block the legislation at the European Court of Human Rights (see here).
Scottish Land & Estates also bleated about further land reform measures [in 2015] when the Scottish Government proposed removing the two-decades-old exemption from business rates enjoyed by shooting estates. SLE claimed that, “We believe that there would be a negative impact on rural jobs, tourism and land management” (see here).
And then there was more bleating when the Scottish Government brought in vicarious liability to tackle the continued illegal persecution of birds of prey. David Johnstone, the then Chair of Scottish Land & Estates claimed this would introduce another layer of bureaucracy “When the Government should be doing what it can to help landowners and the rural economy” (see here).
Has the rural economy fallen flat on its arse as a result of these measures? Not according to the grouse shooting industry, which is still declaring itself indispensable to the Scottish economy (a claim strongly contested by others, e.g. see here).
As has been said before on this blog, the grouse shooting industry should be thanking its lucky stars that a licensing scheme is all it’s getting. The case for a ban on driven grouse shooting has been made many times over.
There are those of us who don’t believe for one second that a licensing scheme will be effectively enforced, although we’ll do our bloody level best to ensure it is enforced when breaches have been detected and are fully evidenced. And if/when the licensing scheme is shown to be failing, there’s only one place left to go.
It seems to me that the grouse shooting industry should be welcoming a licensing scheme, which should protect those who are complying with the law and remove those who are not. Gosh, a world where there are consequences for criminality. Imagine that! Is that really what this backlash is all about?
Meanwhile, lobbyists from the conservation sector will this week be reminding MSPs that even in the midst of all this political scrutiny and threat, there are still some in the grouse-shooting industry that simply refuse to stop killing birds of prey, as evidenced in last week’s RSPB Birdcrime report where we learned that as recently as July this year yet another satellite-tagged golden eagle ‘vanished’ in suspicious circumstances on a grouse moor in the Monadhliaths and as recently as September this year yet another satellite-tagged hen harrier ‘vanished’ on a grouse moor in the Angus Glens.
These are in addition to the suspicious disappearances of a further 35 satellite-tagged birds of prey on Scotland’s grouse moors between 2017-2022, including including 8 golden eagles, 21 hen harriers and 5 white-tailed eagles (here).
The time for pretending that this is all ‘historical’ and no longer an issue is well and truly over and I hope that the Scottish Parliament finally makes a stand on Thursday.
Proceedings in the main Chamber can be watched live on Scottish Parliament TV from 2.30pm on Thursday, here.
Raptor Persecution UK 
Well said, Ruth.
During the passage of the Bill in it’s various stages taken note of who votes for what as it is helpful to know, regardless of what they might say, who votes for what which at least presents the opportunity of asking them why they took that decision.
In areas like this where we have a small but powerful minority trying to have their will dominate the social concensus then it is helpful to keep as much light on the topic as possible. Due to the large majority on the side of ending wildlife crime this is the last thing they want. Keep their feet to the fire.
I agree with everything in the above blog. I am also interested to see any signs of the larger (Scottish only, obviously) Estates changing the way they own the land. Let us say that a large “3 day” grouse moor with perhaps 3 to 6 beats and 20 plus rows of butts has its licence revoked under the proposals, for wildlife crime(s) – such as a Golden Eagle found dead with evidence of wrongdoing above the civil case threshold. The Owner/ Sporting Tenant would then perhaps lose the ability to shoot grouse across the whole Estate, and be prevented from a licence to kill the “legal vermin” too. Truly a big problem to their long term economic viability. So I think we may see (if the proposed legislation makes it into enforced law) these big estates being sly in advance, by splitting themselves up (on paper anyway) into smaller entities of unfathomable limited companies and management companies, perhaps down to the size of one or two beats. Then when someone gets caught, at least the licence is only lost on one constituent part of the whole – so they can still carry on shooting grouse on the other parts – and they can still keep a lid on the predatory birds and mammals (that would otherwise be drawn into the very large vacuum of a big estate and be difficult work to get rid off once the licence was re-obtained) accepting as a sacrificial damage limitation that (only) the smaller penalised part will be lost during a penalty period.