 Welcome to the first meeting of 2017 of the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee. Before we move to the first item on the agenda, I remind everyone present to switch off mobile phones as they may affect the broadcasting system. The first item on the agenda is for the committee to consider whether to take items 3 and 4 in private. Are we agreed? We are agreed. Thank you very much. Let's move to agenda item 2, which is to take evidence on the Scottish Government's wildlife crime in Scotland annual report 2015. We have been joined today by two panels. In the first instance, I welcome Gary Aitken, who is the head of wildlife and environmental crime at the Crown Office in Perrocuta Fiscal Service, Steve Johnson, Assistant Chief Constable and Sean Scott, Detective Chief Superintendent of Police Scotland. Welcome, gentlemen. We'll move straight to questions. The first questions are from Kate Forbes. Thank you very much and good morning. In terms of this report, in previous years, there's been some criticism of the way that the data has been presented, and so it's good to see the data this year presented by financial years. Can you identify what are the key difficulties in comparing the wildlife crime statistics and how perhaps in future years the data could be further enhanced? Good morning. Perhaps an overview. Statistics, damlies and statistics, I suppose, is probably a good start. One of the problems I think that we have in Police Scotland is moving from the legacy force arrangements into one whole Police Scotland. We still don't have a whole Police Scotland crime recording system from which we can extrapolate the data, so if you like, we're still evaluating old data sets with an incoherent, an inconsistent data set that we still have in Police Scotland until we get that system. Where it's strong, though, is it does give a general indication of either direction of travel or the amount of activity that is taking place. In this particular area, in terms of wildlife crime, one of the problems with statistics is low number and actually the fragility of that low number. When you spread the data across the whole of Scotland, you start to get into a single case. For me, that's really important to note because I think the move that I want to bring as the lead for Police Scotland is that the numbers are important and certainly we want to see some positive correlations around the activity of partners and the police in terms of protecting wildlife and wild species, but actually I want to get into the qualitative. I want to start to understand the metrics of the data right from a member of the public call on us to say they've got some concerns about something right the way through to colleagues in the crowd and what's the attrition from there's something suspicious or there's a crime potentially happened there to a non-criminal justice outcome, but also I think there's something about the statistics of there's nothing in the report and certainly I would welcome and offer to provide some support in providing data around what's the health of the species that we're trying to protect. So there's no comment there in terms of raptor persecution. We've got a lot of statistics around wildlife crime in relation to raptors and we can compare that to 2012, 2010, 2011 and that's fantastic. We have an idea of the activity but what's the outcome? What's it for? What is the current health in Scotland of the raptor flock and is that better than 2010 or worse and if it's worse what are we going to do about it? How are we going to move into that preventative space? How are we going to move into that enforcement space and what are we doing about the intelligence gaps that we have to make that assertion as to whether it's a good thing or a bad thing and I would say that in relation to all the six priority areas highlighted in the report really welcome some context of where does this sit along the overall performance or the outcomes in relation to what we're seeking to achieve. So I certainly welcome the clarity that it provides year on year but I think there's probably a bit more work that we can do to say well is that having a positive outcome or is it just statistics for the safest statistics? You're back to your opening comments. Given what you said there about the lack of an overall Scotland picture, how robust is this report? How much stores are we put by it? Well I think you can say that it's robust in so far as the integrity of the data is the data that we've been provided and that we've pulled in all the information across different systems as best we possibly can. The ideal for me would be that we have a crime recording system that's linked to an incident recording system so right from somebody making the first call about a suspicion of an area of scientific importance that call and following the attrition right the way through if you like police systems or partner systems to the point in which we can do that and we don't have that integrated system we would do have a capital bid in to try and improve part of our ICT infrastructure to enable that to happen and I'm sure over time that will happen but the data is good data based on the information that we hold at the moment. Could it be better? Yes because technology would allow us to go down to different layers of granularity because we could record it at the point of origin with different layers of granularity i.e. right from the call handler we could geocode the data, we could code the issue and we can follow that code all the way through an integrated system. Okay Kate Forbeson. In terms of recording and reporting the data and where you'd like to move towards what changes have to be made to get to that position? I think thank you for the opportunity as well. One of the other hats I wear in my current portfolio is leading the national crime managers forum which is recorded crime management so there is work on going to design and create this single crime recording system which will be absolutely a benefit to everyone. I mean this report shows improvement in the fact that obviously we've disaggregated the reporting into the crime priority areas which wasn't there previously so that's an encouraging improvement and I think when we do get to a single crime recording system nationally then we'll be able to get far more detailed and informative data for the committee and the government to assess so that work is on going just now. Don't ask me for a data completion because I can't give you that. There's a number of factors that will influence that but we're making steps in that regard. One last question. There were three recommendations from the previous RACI committee which weren't included in this year's report. Those were presenting data on a quarterly basis, a breakdown of COPFS resources applied to wildlife crime and then lastly the impact of land reform legislation in wildlife crime. What steps are being taken to include or to work on those three recommendations for next year? In terms of crime office, Gary? Well, so far as our resources are concerned I think there's a parliamentary question in relation to that at the moment. The resources are reasonably steady across the piece. We have four core lawyers involved in the wildlife and environmental crime unit over the period that the report covers and beyond that I'm not sure that there's much more that can be usually said about our resourcing. What I would say is that as a proportion of our total workload that's actually quite a positive proportion of staff devoted to the area and that's as it should be. It recognises the importance of this for us as an organisation and for Scotland as a whole. So far as the other aspects are concerned I'm not really in a position to comment so much on that. I wonder if you could just give some more clarity on the difference between an incident and a crime and the definition of it, another dictionary definition of where an offence is committed, but I think you've sort of correctly gone and explained a little. There's a difference between a member of a public calling to report concerns which he would lodge as an incident and then there's an attrition rate on that all the way through something being reported to the Procurator Fiscal to a conviction, but a number of organisations seem to be reporting incidents as crimes as they're starting off level. Is that correct or do you think the definition should be, well could you maybe clarify that? Yeah, absolutely right. There is attrition, the public perception of what may be a wildlife crime is based on obviously their knowledge of what they see at the time, they report it and then we investigate it. For example, a wildlife incident can be recorded, a swan on the road creating a vulnerability to traffic. That is occasionally recorded as a wildlife crime incident, but then when we investigate it, it isn't actually a wildlife crime. So there are a number of instances where the public perceives, for example in terms of badgers there might be a couple of men walking a dog into the woods and that might be recorded as potentially a wildlife crime in relation to badgers, but then when you investigate it, there's no disturbance to set, then it's not a wildlife crime. So there's two instances where a wildlife incident may be recorded as such, but it doesn't then extrapolate into a recorded wildlife crime and it'll be closed off that incident on our storm incident recording system as non-crime, if you like. Do you think that's a flaw in the way statistics are currently being presented that's going to be cleared up by your new definition? I don't know if it's a flaw. At the end of the day, the public, when they phone in, we want them to phone in whenever they think something might be at a foot. So their perception, as I say, is based on their knowledge, so we welcome that, we encourage it and then we'll investigate it and if it transpires it's not actually a crime then it's a false alarm with good intent effectively, so we'd welcome that and we encourage it greatly. It's an opportunity as well, missed if we don't go back and explain what we've done and whether it was or wasn't a crime. I think people will report it to the police and they will expect some sort of activity that follows and I think the way that the statistics are currently reported, the activity that people are seeking to see is something around a criminal justice disposer at the end of it. I think on conversations with colleagues, there's an awful lot of activity goes on in the local policing areas where they'll follow those inquiries up, they'll meet with the people, they'll do an awful lot of work to either engage with the person to ascertain whether a crime has been committed or not and then they'll investigate it appropriately, but if one hasn't then they can use that opportunity to move into that preventative space where we're informing people, we're actually telling people what it is that we're doing or what we're seeking to achieve in a broader preventative agenda. So sometimes I think we just need to understand that and we need to follow the journey, technology will enable us to do that better and move into that qualitative space where I can sit down with Sean and say well okay just take me through then because we've had all series of these and what are we doing at the back end of it? Are we making sure that we're sharing that information with partners so that we're not taking undue or adverse criticism unnecessarily or are we identifying learning opportunities where we and partners can do something differently? So it could be viewed negatively, but at the moment I'm trying to view it as an opportunity for us to improve on our practice. That is something that happens right across the criminal justice sphere, the public and others report all sorts of incidents to the police which are correctly recorded as incidents and investigated, some will turn out to be crimes, some will turn out not to be. We're focused on wildlife crime here but there's quite an overlap with the way the whole of the rest of the system works. Okay, let's start to look at some of the stats accepting that there are difficulties in comparing stats across reporting years because some prosecutions will occur outwith the year in which the crime was committed. But if we look at the fact that there's an 11% increase in recorded wildlife crime in 2014-15 compared to 2013-14, is that because there's been an improvement in reporting or a genuine increase in wildlife crime in certain areas? I can cover it from a police perspective if you'd like. I think for me candid answer is, I don't think we know the answer to that. I think what I can say is looking through the statistics that we have available is in the background ages where we have full-time wildlife crime officers. We see an increase in reporting. We have six full-time wildlife crime officers in the different divisions and we have a number of part-time wildlife crime officers. The increase is that year on increase. It's still lower than the previous years and previous reporting. I think credit must go to my previous ACC Malcolm Graham in the period up to me taking post and taking on this portfolio. An awful lot of the work has been about building the infrastructure and the resources and certainly the number of full-time resources that we have in Police Scotland put towards this has increased and it's now stable. There's over 100 police officers that have been trained in relation to wildlife crime and certainly we're moving towards training more special constables of having that knowledge. Now the greater knowledge that we have out there and the greater access to police officers with that knowledge from the public, I think we will see an increase in reporting. I go back to an earlier point is as to whether there's more wildlife crime taking place or people are more confident in coming to us with that report or we're more readily accessible because we have the structures and infrastructure in place, I wouldn't say I have the maturity of the data to provide an absolute view on that but what I will say is it's something where we can track that and I think where the evidence to suggest full-time wildlife crime officers has that benefiting people having direct access they can report offences to those people and the confidence that comes from that. That's clearly something I can learn from and certainly talk about in terms of the resources that we have and if we can't afford for it to be full-time how we make that knowledge of those officers with the skills available to the local community. Something that perhaps one of you could answer then is why has there been a 14-point drop in the number of crimes referred to the Crown Office this year, 35 per cent in comparison to 49 per cent? It could be any number of reasons. In terms of the crimes reported as we all know there are significant or there can be significant evidence gathering challenges with wildlife crime in terms of where they are committed, the isolation, the remote parts of the country where they transpire, the evidence gathering elements in terms of lack of CCTV, lack of witnesses, lack of social media, open source, there's a huge amount of difficulties there in investigating wildlife crime but that could be part of it. As you're aware and as a report says you know we're making significant strides in terms of use of forensics and specialist support in investigating wildlife crime so every case has its own idiosyncrasies and own challenges and we'll pursue every evidential opportunity that we can in order to try and achieve an outcome. Yes but let's look at the trend here. It's acknowledged that there have been additional resources made available by Police Scotland to tackle wildlife crime. The Crown Office has specialist lawyers dealing with this and yet we're still seeing a nine-point drop in conviction rates this year. Why? Do we put all this together? Why are we where we are this year? With the numbers of cases going through a percentage drop in conviction rate can be quite a blunt tool for looking at these cases it's not necessarily a great number, or a different number of cases being dealt with. From my point of view the important thing is to have enough evidence to take a case to court. We can't guarantee a conviction once a case is in court nor should we try to do so. The court is there to determine the truth of the situation so I wouldn't be overly concerned about a percentage difference in conviction rates for numbers of these kinds. If we're putting all these resources to it you have forensic resources now available to look at some of these crimes surely we should be seeing an upturn in these figures? For example we delivered through investigations and reports of potential wildlife crime 70 raptors to SASA during a period but only 10 per cent of them transpired to have any illegal substance if you like within the bird. So there's a huge amount of effort goes to try and get that evidence but sometimes it's not there because the birds may have died because of natural causes or other reasons. So there is significant effort put into trying to get that evidence where within limited, evidential gathering opportunities. We use what to get some of this detail into the report in future to better explain some of these stats. Let's look at the issue about how we deter wildlife crime Emma. Thank you convener. Good morning. I am wondering what work has been done to deter wildlife crime. I know locally in Castle Douglas our wildlife crime officer had 30 people in a room teaching them about raptors and persecution so I'm just wondering what we do to deter wildlife crime and whether the lack of any custodial sentence or lack of action in 23 per cent of the cases contributes to a lack of deterrence. Just explain a wee bit about that. Certainly in terms of prevention activity you'll see by the report there was a significant investment in a wildlife crime prevention campaign during that reporting period which was national and again going back to your original point to your about why is there an increased public awareness during that period has definitely been raised. In terms of activity around the deterring and prevention we've got a significant effort from the wildlife crime officers going into schools, doing talks, community groups to raise awareness again and some of the issues are wildlife crime coordinator Andy Maven. He's done these delivered speeches to academia as well around this whole issue. We have other prevention review as well that's on going with the Scottish Government, working with them to look how we can take that forward as well. So that we have our specialist Twitter weeks as well around some of the areas around bats and badgers and freshwater pebble mussels so there have been a number of areas where we've made some significant effort to try and raise awareness and try to deter and make the public more conscious of what may or may not be a wildlife crime and then encourage that reporting. We have also had some good results in court and we have had some custodial sentences in wildlife crime cases. The Prousty report has looked at sentencing more generally and made some recommendations and I'm pleased to see that the Scottish Sentencing Council have advised that one of the first black letter areas of law that they're going to look at is wildlife crime sentencing guidelines and I think that's a positive step as well so we'll see what sort of message that provides to sheriffs and justices in relation to this area. We've also had the point of a can about, I know that sometimes we can fixate on the structure in terms of dedicated wildlife crime officers but we have the whole of Police Scotland available to us and as Mr Johnson said there's been training awareness days for vastly more officers in some of the issues but also although it's an issue that's been debated in terms of stop and search for officers but you know they are now schooled in some of the powers around wildlife crime that give them the power to stop and search people in certain instances so again our front line officer not just the dedicated wildlife crime officers but also our front line officers who are delivering on the street and day by day they are more aware of their powers as well around stop and search for wildlife crimes. Looking at the issue about the level of conviction rates I think we've already touched upon the fact that some of these activities occur in very remote areas and it's therefore difficult to gather the evidence. We have organisations like the SGA in Scottish Wand and Estates who have openly condemned raptor persecution for example but do you get sufficient co-operation from these organisations and their members when it comes to investigating incidents? Through the raptor priority group and through Paul we have a really positive relationship with all our partners and so you know personally I have nothing but positive things to say about partners in that regard. I have interacted with them in my capacity as do my officers as well so we have no issue with that at all. I mean the organisations SLE and SGA work hard to try and foster that or develop that relationship with their own members as well and so you know I've no issue at all with that relationship and how we can take it forward. I don't mean so much with the organisations but I mean on the ground with individual incidents because I think it's suggested in evidence that the committee has had that perhaps in some of these settings there is still a reluctance to speak out against things like raptor crime for fear of threats to jobs etc. You know being ostracised in these communities if you did that. What I'm trying to get to here is what is the police's experience in these circumstances? Are you getting the co-operation on an individual basis that you would hope to get? I mean one or two occasions where there has been a eruptence by certain individuals because and really their personal circumstances and that's why that is unclear. Obviously you know in terms of our powers and in terms of our ability to enter land to search it has to be based on suspicion, has to be based on intelligence and unless we have that power unless we have the evidence and intelligence to progress an investigation and do that then you know but we do have also voluntary you know in certain individuals we do volunteer to help us when they don't have to so they're kind of a mixed bag I mean in personal circumstances as to why someone might be resistant it might be one or two occasions but it really is very very seldom. The other thing maybe just to finish up this section is you've mentioned Paul. Can I just explore the Paul protocols and how well they are currently working because there has been some comment made in relation to some more recent incidents that perhaps the Paul protocols aren't being followed in the way they were meant to be and what could you comment on that? I mean I think certainly around the raptor priority group which is the eye chair and each of the individual organisations that sit within that group have their own agendas, have their own priorities, you know over a whole work very well together. I can really comment about the individual motives for perhaps not adhering to a voluntary protocol it's been a subject that we've addressed if you like and you know we're speaking candidly together to make sure that we do adhere to protocols everyone for example within the media protocol has the opportunity to comment on anything that wants to be submitted to the press or out to the wider public before it does go out so everyone has a chance to comment and perhaps amend the language but in general yes it's positive but there are one or two instances which have been rehearsed in the press where it hasn't quite met what it should do and therefore we're encouraging and working with partners to try and make sure it doesn't happen. Yeah because as a layman it strikes me as a little bit or if I came across an incident of wildlife crime the first thing I would do is to contact Police Scotland but it seems to be that that doesn't happen in every instance and what I'm trying to get to is to what extent is that hinder you in trying to solve some of these incidents? I don't think it's any doubt that you know one or two of our partner agencies who can for example report directly to the Crown Office the crimes aren't recorded through Police Scotland so effect of that that sort of recorded data that's on the report doesn't actually reflect potentially actual wildlife crime because some of our partner agencies don't come through Police Scotland we encourage them to do that we would far prefer that you know we are notified and we work with them on every occasion to investigate a wildlife crime however you're absolutely right in pointing out the fact that doesn't happen all the time and I would encourage those agencies to work with us on every occasion to try and maximise the opportunities for evidence gathering because we have the powers obviously to progress evidence gathering opportunities that sometimes they don't and we would encourage that wholeheartedly. I think that's important on a case by case basis but when you start to aggregate the data up and you look at what the statistics tell us over the period of a year or a number of years strategically it enables us to commit the right level of resources to the issues and problems that we have now clearly if it's not reported to us and it doesn't form part of our metrics and our data bank quite rightly managers who were challenged about whether they commit resource aid to this issue or that issue will be making a decision based on what the demand profile looks like if we haven't got that information in relation to wildlife crime there is always the potential that we put a resource in in the right places as far as we're concerned but it turns out to be the wrong place because somebody hasn't shared that so I'd echo what Sean says you know if there are partner agencies out there that have that mechanism directed to the crown or don't report things and pick up the phone and report it to the police actively encourage them to do that because what we want is the right information and I go back to that point right from the first point of call we can follow it all the way through so as to whether it ends up as a criminal justice outcome whether it ends up as an opportunity you know not just the criminal justice as a deterrent but actually also we want to change behaviours here and and yes criminal justice outcomes will start to change some of the behaviours and does act as a deterrents but in my experience and working in wildlife crime where I've worked previously actually getting into that preventative space and getting people to engage in looking after their environment rather than trying to scare them about the criminality it's far more positive and far more long term and certainly that's an area activity that I'm looking at with Police Scotland is to say all of those six areas at the moment you know there aren't three to five year strategies around the prevention intelligence enforcement for each of those six priority areas we seem to be committed to an annual reporting process and an annual this and annual that many of these problems are generational and my certain drive is to say well yes we can report on an annual basis but we do need longer term strategic objectives probably linked to the cycle of schools where we can get into schools at primary age and we can start to track the outcomes in 15 years time when they're young adults and potentially want to engage in hair coursing want to engage in potential wrapped persecution or other sorts of criminality so at the moment that's one of the areas that I'm going to be looking at addressing is around that prevention intelligence enforcement and that longer term piece that would also include why people should report stuff to us what benefit will the having the new wildlife crime unit that's proposed for Scotland what will that do for your ability to to improve the situation well the specifics of obviously that's part of the programme for government and the specifics of what that investment may may be we haven't quite got to the end we're still obviously speaking to scots government about that but you know any enhancement of resource is clearly going to be an opportunity to improve the service we can provide whether it be support to divisions or support to specialist officers so the very nature of that we're not quite there at the granular detail yet but absolutely we'll welcome any investment be clear do you have an opportunity to try and shape what that might look like yes very much so yeah we've been in dialogue both with government officials we had a meeting myself and mr Graham prior to mr johnson's taken on the portfolio met with the cabinet secretary about that back in september I think it was to discuss some of the options so but we're not quite at the end game yet but that's what I'm going that useful okay Mark Ruskell wants to come in thanks convener I just wanted to go back to your point about evidence and obviously you know we've discussed about the hard evidence and evidence being presented to you members of the public phoning up what about the wider scientific evidence though I mean particularly around raptor species I think the last time ACC Graham was in front of the committee he indicated that the police scott would be doing a lot more work looking at population modelling looking at areas where you would expect to have high raptor species population numbers but actually you know they're not there and that forming part of the context for you focusing your work looking at areas where persecution may well be happening and you mentioned earlier on Steve johnson about health of populations so what kind of work are you doing to look at that sort of wider population work because clearly that's part of the evidence isn't it I'm just picking up the portfolio certainly the direction of travel I will be taking it and history of me in my I've led wildlife crime in other force areas and in other parts of the UK that academic piece is absolutely essential because wildlife evolves you know I would never have thought that actually one of the most healthy flocks of peregrine falcons would be found in in London it evolves and it changes and I need to understand that my officers need to understand that because it helps us inform our strategic objectives around that prevention intelligence enforcement so certainly you know one of the commitments I can make here is that during my tenure now I will look at what the academic research says where wildlife crime is evolving and certainly make sure that we feed that into the narrative of the report because it's really really important where we're having positive impact I would like that to be backed up by the academic evidence to to support that assertion where there is a lack of activity or where there is an academic statement that says we're not quite getting it right that's not part of an evolutionary process it's actually linked to criminality I want to understand that I want to be able to commit the resources to it I want to engage with partners so in the first instance the most cost-effective way for me and Police Scotland is to prevent it from happening in the first place so across all of the sort of six priority areas I see the evidence from academia and those bodies that do monitor the health of the species within those areas is absolutely essential to me it is common parlance about being intelligence led and a lot of that evidence will sit within academia so I certainly would welcome any support from academia in that I can't commit financial resource to doing that but certainly can engage on a partnership basis of trying to improve the position that as a strong part of the evidence oh absolutely it is isn't it I can sit here and anecdotally people will say to me the numbers of golden eagles in Scotland that has never been healthier and it's growing and it's growing every day fact or fiction is that right where's the evidence to suggest that is right we're certainly seeing less cases and certainly we're anecdotally hearing communities talking more positively about the flora and fauna of scotland people talk about it in economic terms but they also talk in moral terms they use a language around it's right that we protect these sort of things where is the academic evidence that I can put my hand on and say there's a piece of research by x university or x body that says the health of the golden eagle population in Scotland has gone from this at this point to this at this point and that's a positive correlation or negative and I'd certainly welcome any any work with any academic bodies or interest groups that can actually provide that sound evidential basis but it has to be sound this cannot be somebody going out and purporting to have some academic rigor around research for it to be for me to be intelligence led the actual research itself has to have academic rigor it has to stand scrutiny and certainly I would want that then to drive operational activity from a policing perspective but more importantly a multi agency perspective so actually wildlife crime isn't just spoken about in criminal justice terms it's talked about in education environment it's talked about in terms of health you know getting out and enjoying the flora and fauna actually that's an opportunity to put eyes and ears out there etc etc it's much more strategic and we need to play our role in that but we are but one small part appreciate that point I think the challenge though is that that commitment was given in this parliament last year by your predecessor and what I'm asking you is about what actions taken over the last year it's clearly not reported in the report it's clearly you've admitted yourself as one of its important parts of the evidence base and you've made another commitment one year on on behalf of Police Scotland that once again you'll be working with the evidence so once again sorry sorry to talk across you that I think you know through for example the raptor priority group we have our partners there that are doing a lot of scientific research a lot of academic research as well and to for example the work around the heads up for harriers there's the golden eagle relocation project which is going to start in the borders very soon which I think our partners might talk about in later submissions today and that's a hugely positive piece of work that we're working to prevent then or raise awareness of that project the annual bird of prey crime maps as well which is obviously providing the hot spots of activity around potential raptor crime that's a positive step because it allows us to analyse allows us to work with our partners to take that forward to say well do we need to what kind of resource do we need to commit to doing the right work around that particular area so it's incremental you're right saying that if there's been a specific piece of work that has led to a specific outcome no not at the moment but it is incremental and we are working hard to try and use academic academia and use scientific research and our analysis of raptor incidents for example to then take ourselves forward with with our partners okay let's move us on to Claudia Beamish right thank you convener good morning to you all could we turn to the persecution of badgers which as some everyone knows but just for the record are protected as a species by law in Scotland and I'd like to dig a bit deeper into the reasons for badger crime not being reported to the crown office and how this might be improved upon and written evidence from Scottish badgers highlights what they see as weaknesses in both your your services in the approach to badger crime and I wonder if you're able to comment on those just very briefly one one or two of them are that police call centres don't necessarily recognise badger crime as a crime and that there can be delays in investigations which would obviously mean that evidence deteriorated and also it's not necessarily progressed after lengthy delays and there might be because of that a lack of transparency and there is actually a table but I don't know if you've had sight of but Scottish badgers in there in evidence have highlighted that for instance in 2014-15 badger crime reported by Police Scotland was was some five cases badger crime reported to the crown prosecution service was four and badger crime identified by Scottish badgers was 42 now that's an enormous difference so having listened carefully to the evidence you've already given this morning about the difficulties of finding evidence and taking that point on board I think I would still appreciate comment on what you can do to improve on that or indeed whether those criticisms are valid well thank you for the opportunity to do that I think there's a couple of things I can highlight to you firstly a really positive step do you now have a secure intelligence provision mechanism between Scottish badgers and ourselves for providing us with intelligence to help us in the investigation of badger crime that's been recently set up so a secure email line for that which is which will be really positive in terms of understanding of badger crime our call handlers in our call centres have specific training around all the wildlife crime priorities so they're aware of some of the key aspects if you like a badger crime so and remember the public phones in to report what they believe to be suspicious activity around badgers then there's that information available to call handlers there's all the the material and training material for first responders that's available both online in terms of hard copy booklets around badger crime when they they do attendies incidents I made the point earlier on about the fact that you know we can receive a report that people are walking dogs in the area of woods where there's believed to be a badger set that can then end up not being a crime because there is no disturbance of a set once we investigate and you know in terms of the actual criteria for proving a crime and presenting the evidence to the crown office there needs to be that evidence of the live set disturbance you know fairly contemporaneously so there are a number of challenges there but we do have the mechanisms for informing our call handlers informing our first responders and that sharing of information now directly between Scottish Badgers and herself which will will help us take things forward so I mean I would really seek reassurance on this point in view of the fact that there are 42 as the information that I highlighted 42 crimes identified by Scottish Badgers and I I would say with respect that I would doubt that those would be two people going to walk their dog and and and then walking out of the woods again so I would like some sort of response on that the evidence around so the crimes that are reported by Scottish Badgers are you talking about that they've reported directly to the crown office or to Police Scotland they've been identified as identified so so whether it is a crime or not that needs to be assessed by the investigators and obviously then that evidence provided to the crown office so in terms of breaking that down I would give you that reassurance and every single one will be assessed on its own merits and will be reported accordingly based on the evidence and based on the the material we have at our disposal I don't know if Gary wants to make any comment about you know the reports or invaders but well the only the police and occasionally the SSPCA report Badger offences to the crown we will look at every case individually and where there's sufficient evidence some form of prosecutorial action is very very likely because this is a high priority area but we need the reports to come to us that figure of 42 there weren't 42 cases sent to us by anybody we can only assess what comes to us and the identification of an incident as a crime doesn't necessarily mean that there would be sufficient evidence to prosecute that case in court it may be clear that a crime has occurred but the identity of the perpetrator may not be known there may not necessarily be sufficient corroborated evidence to prove it we work with what comes in to us and it also comes back to the difficulties that we have we all have in interpreting the statistics because our systems were set up as case management systems not statistical gathering systems so a case involving a badger may not necessarily be defined as a badger case we'd have to be under the protection of badgers if it's snaring it'll come under a different category I'm pleased that it was mentioned earlier that the figures in the report are becoming more usable year on year I think there is still work we can all do to improve that clarity and transparency and it may well be that in the fullness of time technology and other matters overtake that the Lord president is looking at modernisation of the whole criminal justice system and one of his main wishes is for what's described as an evidence vault which in effect would be a single computer system for the whole criminal justice service if we ever get to that point we'll finally be in opposition for wildlife crime and everything else of being able to compare apples and apples and track exactly the same thing all the way through without this constant difficulty that we count cases other people count individuals some agencies count charges so it's not as clear as I would like to be I hope we're moving in the direct direction and breaking things down and we'll learn for the future and I think the reports as they build up year on year will be a more useful comparison against each other if I could just as an additional part of that you know we through our very positive relationship with Gary's unit you know we'll discuss individual cases you know what we got evidentially and we'll discuss whether or not there's a sufficient to report as Gary said doesn't necessarily mean that ultimately that will go to trial and a conviction but you know in an individual case basis we'll discuss that and if there's not enough to report then obviously we can't report it but you know have that assurance that you know each is assessed in its own merit and moving forward as well we have a training programme coming up next you know this coming year with Scottish Badgers for ourselves and our crime office colleagues to again enhance understanding of the whole issues and so across each of our agencies so that's coming up in the near future too but before of the issue that you raise about if a crime is recorded in for not necessarily in relation to wildlife crime but for another reason such as the use of a gun or without a license or whatever it may be this has come up rural affairs committee and I think that currently if I'm wrong convener but I think it was like not only last year but the year before as well and we're being it's being suggested there are going to be improvements in this and it's encouraging to hear you say that that is going to happen but can you give us any sort of sense of because that can't be that difficult in terms of data to say well the person was only prosecuted for this but it was all or is it indeed also a wildlife crime can you just explain a little bit more about that before you do that can I just pick up on something the Scottish Badger submission states and I quote badgers are also regularly subjected to deliberate persecution such as poisoning, gassing, drowning, slurry, suffocation where sets are blocked and crushing when sets are destroyed if they're not exaggerating that the scale of that then you must have evidence in some of these cases truly but I have to have the cases we've had four reported to us the volume that they're talking about is not what is reaching our desks anything that does come to us we will look at very carefully and badgers are a key priority and are certainly subject to grossly inhuman treatment by some individuals both through their idiotic idea of sport and for other reasons and that is something that we would like to be able to take seriously we need the building blocks to do it if I may come back to your point the it does sound as though it should be very simple to extrapolate this information but we received tens of thousands of cases a year our computer system was designed and built to manage the throughput of those cases not to be able to identify them in particularly great detail we're getting better as time goes on but to extract the sort of information that would be useful would in fact probably require a complete new system which has significant capital costs for a statistical purpose which is very useful but not the core thing that we are there to do our system is perfectly fit for purpose for prosecuting crime it's just not always quite as helpful as we might like it to be in some of the other areas that are interesting to us the timescale for modernising the entire system I'm not in a position to comment on I know there's work being done led by Scottish Court service and I think that's a very positive thing we'll see where that takes us that bit of huge benefits right across the criminal justice service and just lastly sorry through the convener yeah it's attractive clearly there's some work to do isn't it you know the reality is if Scottish Badgers believe that in that year there were 42 offences committed and we've only primed four there's a lot of work to do certainly the commitment will be you know Scottish Badgers as Sean has already said there's there's a developing relationship involved in training involved in that but there's clearly a piece of work to do on deconfliction and understanding a terminology because is that 42 incidents were those 42 incidents reported to Police Scotland could I track that from the incident through to us not crime in it because we didn't believe it was a crime are we defining a crime in exactly the same way that would be recognised by the crown and recognised by the investigators on the ground and certainly my commitment is to work with Scottish Badgers and any other agency out there that believes we need to deconflict the data to make sure that when we appear in front of you if Scottish Badgers put something in front of it at least we as a partnership can recognise that we have a compelling narrative around why there would be a difference because there might well be between an agency that records to a nationally agreed standard and an organisation which is if you like a single interest around a particular species there will always be some difference there but certainly not in the magnitude of four recorded crimes to 42 as purported in this report so there's a there's a commitment there to start to deconflict that working partnership with Scottish Badgers to understand you know do we have a recording mechanism where on a regular basis we can deconflict that data to say you have reported it to us and you've done nothing or we did report it to you and we were satisfied with the outcome because at the moment I have nothing to suggest that that takes place but certainly I know from speaking to Andy we have a commitment to making sure that we can work with Scottish Badgers to deconflict that information for the future. I mean while that's reassuring Mr Johnson I think that I'm what chief superintendent should I say that it's it's still concerning that around clarity of definitions which you've hinted at that are people in the organisations and the public and yourselves and you know really understanding each other in terms of the definitions obviously poor is going to help with that but I don't want to spend far you know too long on badges but when the organisation comes before us in the second panel there are also some discrepancies in relation to a Scottish Government figures that were given to me in a parliamentary question and and what is said in this report as well so I think anything if you're able to stay or to look at the official report rather than ask those questions now I think it'd be helpful if Scottish Badgers could put forward that evidence and then perhaps you could comment to the committee in writing on it because in terms of transparency these things are really really important to reassure everybody in Scotland. I think that's a very good point because we have you in front of us annually to look at the content of the report but there is nothing to stop you and I would encourage you to write to the committee in between time with updates on how you're progressing your relationships with organisations like Scottish Badgers etc because I think this is a really important issue. Finlay Carson. I think most of the points have been covered actually since I indicated a question I'm just concerned we seem to be getting tied up in the lack of IT. You know we're talking about five Badger crimes recorded by the police in 42 by Badger Scotland I don't think we need a computer system to actually dig into that but I think Mr Johnson actually suggested that you're looking at other reasons why there's a discrepancy I don't think we should be getting tied up in failures or lack of IT systems with the numbers we're talking about regarding Badgers. It's an additional reassurance to the committee I mean you know through the through the wildlife crime liaison officer structure through our single points of contact as well within criminal investigation I'll manage all the detector supers and the 13 policing divisions they are acutely aware of the requirement for rigorous investigation into all wildlife crime you know they very often take specific intervention and investigations appointing detective officers opposed to wildlife crime or or PC so every single crime I have confidence that we give it as much rigor as possible based on the circumstances presented to us and their understanding of what's been presented and then we have that engagement in the crown so I mean there are some technicalities around Badgers about live sets whether they're active and which you know the experts will tell you about probably later on but we are more than welcome we've been more than welcome additional knowledge or additional ways that we can progress you know and even prove service around that particular criminality so okay right thank you what's moved from Badgers to bats one is golden thank you convener bat persecution is considered to be a wildlife crime priority we had three offences recorded in 2013 14 and none in 14 15 and proceedings in relation to those offences are categorised or appears in the other wildlife offences i wonder if you could update the committee on what work is being done to improve reporting as well as conviction rates in this area and what if any you perceive as the key barriers to this yeah I mean it's seldom reported bad disturbance unfortunately or fortunately I mean you know whether it's a you know how how wide scale the problem is it's obviously unclear just now and you know sometimes reports we get around bats are okay let me have an instance is where you know people are upset about tree cutting nearby and they'll say that there's a bat and they've actually go along there's not a bat colony there you know that that does happen and quite often you know the tree cutting that's done by local authorities is subject to ecological survey and but it is seldom reported so we do have difficulties around that and we would obviously welcome further further reporting on that and again moving forward we have bat training coming up in the early in this year to again to enhance our relationship with those experts in bat understanding and our own our own people as well as the crown officer are coming along to that as well so it is an unclear environment I have to say me developers you know private developers and local authority are aware of their requirements legal requirements around bat colonies and we do it was part of the crime prevention during this reporting period as well to enhance that awareness and we'll keep pursuing that but again you're right we don't get a lot of reports about bats and we would welcome more in terms of the the three offences I don't know if you'll know now happy to take and write in later obviously they've been reported do you know where they are in the system at all okay adding writing to the committee in due course that would help what sort of penalties are imposed for the sort of crime the same general penalties you would get for for any sort of wildlife crime bat crime is quite rarely prosecuted it would depend I suspect very much on the nature of what the disturbance had been if there was an indication that it was for commercial gain for instance in the course of some form of development I would hope and anticipate that a court would take a fairly dim view of that but it's not something I can comment on categorically the other thing I would say is that as has already been mentioned it's very rarely reported and that comes back to the issues that we've spoken about elsewhere about encouraging members of the public to report what they perceive as wildlife crime whether it turns out to be or not but the more information that's provided to police Scotland the better picture we can get and the more chance of picking up offences that have occurred and that comes back to areas well out with my sphere of competence it is about education and early engagement I've certainly been on a batwalk in my locality and it is amazing to see them flying about at night and to understand that there are these species living almost literally next door to you but it's to get that message out and it's schools and youth clubs and so on that are the place for engaging there but I think it's we need to encourage reporting and then we can start looking at the mechanisms I forgot to mention we had our twitter week for bat awareness in back in October so again we're trying to use the social media tools to get that awareness out there as well so we're trying our best you think I'll let you come in assistant chief constable but how key do you think public awareness is I mean just from your own reflections and I'll ask the subsequent panel as well you know my take would be that perhaps people don't recognise it as an incident to report in relation to bats and you know how do you think that would help in terms of the reporting aspect I think I think it can help massively I think you know going as much public information out there you know I think we've already answered the question around that preventative piece getting the knowledge out there around the types and scale of the offences and it's probably not for police Scotland to answer this one but certainly perhaps point the panel in the direction of local authorities and planning they will actually need to keep records where they've developed a site where they've looked at infrastructure development where they've looked at new build or land management proposals and there are colonies present they will cease and they will pause and they will record that that that's an interesting contextual basis because in the past I can certainly say crimes that would have been reported to the police around somebody developing a new site would be where there were bats there with nine times out of 10 we would get caught at the end once the persecution has taken place and the colony ceases to exist I think local authorities and the planning are very very good at this now around getting people in to do the early surveys around that impact on wildlife once they spot whether there are colonies there they do the appropriate measures and put the appropriate measures in place to manage that so certainly it goes back to the point around the contextual information that's out there police Scotland won't hold that data but certainly I would imagine the local authorities would and that would be a really interesting backdrop because I would imagine those numbers will increase certainly as people look to develop in those spaces inhabited by colonies and I certainly would find that beneficial to know that actually we are getting the message out there people do understand the issues in relation to bat colonies particularly those who are developers and those that would seek to develop but the local authorities I think have good systems and mechanisms in place now I say that I think the evidence should come from the local authorities as to whether they do have those mechanisms in place and that they take their duties and responsibilities around protection of wildlife seriously the Government's prevention review which is obviously part of the programme for government you know one of the six priorities this will be included in that how we we develop that going forward and that's part of our on-going dialogue so this is a the lazer bat champion for the parliament but which doesn't tend to roost in houses so that's that's a relief but how you know you've talked about local authorities but do the local authorities police any of it you know when they go in to look at barn conversions or whatever do they go back to check that if there have been bat populations that do they tend to police it or do they engage with the police when they think there's been any contravening in the planning laws on them specifically aware of a local authority coming to us and telling us about a bat colony disturbance personally but I can certainly find out but they know that that's their obligation if you like but I don't specifically I can find out for you it certainly it would appear more realistic that it would be the local authorities that would come forward rather than general public because it'll be barn conversions and things like that that actually more likely to disturb the populations thanks okay let's move on alexander burnett thank you as species champion for the freshwater pole muscle i'm very glad to see that it's a priority area for it and and yeah i think whilst the size of it and you have the smallest of the areas covered yeah it's completely disproportionate to the serious threat it is under and you know it's rarity and scarcity is part of its problem i know with the statistics reported and some of the detail reported there's a lot of issues around that and you have to redact a lot of information because of its rarity and its locations and that might encourage more crime in those areas i just want to could you speak a little bit around what is a very very niche subject and where we're going with detecting crime and prosecutions but also in this particular case in this particular area it's in some of the other areas it's easier to see the motivation whilst wildlife crime happens with a pearl muscle could you maybe speak a bit about the motivation when i'm not haven't learned of any secondary market in in these pearls and you know where is this where is it all coming from perhaps start and then i'll hand over to Sean whether it's of benefit to the panel i came from a place in england where they had probably the only other colony of freshwater pearl muscles and certainly worked with industry one of the issues there and one of the main threats to freshwater pearl muscles as far as i understand there's a lay person is around depth of water and the quality of the water and certainly working with those companies that extract water from the rivers and places where those species exist is a persistent challenge about making sure that the depth of the water is absolutely right for the species to survive certainly i think protecting those sites is really really important the mechanism for reporting the activity though i think should be clear and that there should be mechanisms of reporting to the panel in confidence around that in terms of making sure that you have the confidence that it's not just on the list and we're hiding behind a veil of we can't share that with you we can't share that with you so i'll certainly be pushing from my perspective in the relationship i've had with previous sort of panellys that we can give those assurances we do that in a confidential manner not necessarily a public manner as you rightly point out i mean sometimes the discoveries of disturbance can be many months after it actually happened and you know we've got one joint investigation with sepa on going in the Tayside area at the moment and we obviously continue to work closely with them wherever they can we had our again using twitter or awareness week back in november and again it's about trying to identify through the retail trade where these pearls might be going so that is work on we're working that's currently on going but there are challenges around it we've published the heat maps as well as you're probably aware and we'll continue to work closely as much as we can with our partners but it's quite any success with tracking where it is going the market not at the moment but i can certainly find out and report back but it's working on some you can turn to that okay thanks what's move on jenny go ruth thank you convener and good morning to the panel i appreciate their issues in terms of comparing prosecution rates as the prosecution might occur in a different year from which the crime happened in itself and there's also clearly issues with regards to recording and reporting between police scotland as he alluded to and the procurator fiscal when partners go to different agencies which may obviously affect the level of recording and what we see in front of us today but i'd just like to ask can an estimation be made about the numbers of wildlife crime not recorded by police scotland do you think and secondly why has there been a 12 percent increase in relevant crime reported to the procurator fiscal but a 29 drop in terms of those prosecuted right so just to just to clarify could you just repeat that that last part then the second question or the first question ah yeah so the first question was can you make an estimation with regards to the estimated number of crimes not recorded by police scotland no to be quite frank i suppose the unknown quantity of crime out there it's a bit like any any particular crime area the dark figure of crime as we sometimes call it i mean people refer to reported crime as a tip of the iceberg it may well be the case but you know so we can only investigate what we know about and but in terms of an estimation of what might be out there that we don't know about or the unknowns no i don't have a figure for you i'm afraid to say and maybe that's not the answer you're looking for but and in terms of getting a higher recorded or reporting rate what kind of things do you think i think i'm actually asked about this previously um but do you think that there are more things that could be done in terms of public outreach or i'm steve donton you spoke about education which i think is really important and what do you see is key in terms of increasing the reporting of wildlife crime more generally candidly you know i kind of put an estimate on an actual figure no kind of make a broad sweeping statement that is somebody more likely to report a crime against themselves a colleague or theft yeah i think they probably are then then they are likely to report a wildlife crime some of that will be lack of knowledge that actually what they're seeing as a crime that's the education piece some of it complete ambivalence as to whether something is persecuted in that and that just exists within society as a boron as we would find that and there'll be those that do commit those crimes that just wouldn't report them anyway so i think there's that broad gambit so you know i couldn't pin my colours to a mass that there's a specific number there but i would certainly suggest that i'd be a fool if i sat here and said that all wildlife crime is reported to police carmen it certainly isn't the case as it isn't with many other types of crime so what we've got to do is make sure that we do get in that space want to inform those people that do want to protect the flora and fauna and use the legislation appropriately to create an environment where they want to live and want to prosper we have absolutely have to do that so we do need to engage in that space and part of that is about making people step forward and report those crimes that see them and it probably goes hand in glove with what i've said before about that academia in so far as there's a presumption around that that actually the crime is taking place and things haven't moved on we need to understand that Is that because the evidential base that you're getting is more robust than it is in some other areas of wildlife crime? The reality is that fish-boatring cages are often more straightforward they are likely to fall into a more traditional evidential set if you're lucky two people will have seen the crime being committed or seen enough evidence to prove that the crime has been committed and that's just the reality of it you're much less likely to have that simple straightforward evidential set for raptor persecution or sometimes you get it for badger set disturbance but fish-boatring is much more likely that you catch somebody red-handed Okay that's fine I know on the subject of raptor persecution let's move on to that Mark Ruskell You've spoken quite a bit this morning about public confidence public awareness and obviously the report is very useful in terms of identifying where persecution has happened in the past where it's likely possibly to happen in the future as well on the overall trend but I'm given that context why are there five incidents of raptor persecution where information has been withheld and therefore don't form part of the official statistics Information's been withheld in the report about individual raptor persecution incidents The reason for that withholding of information from Police Scotland from the Government in terms of why it's not in the report why it's not detailed in the report I'll be honest with you I don't know when I can find out for you Right okay I mean let me give you an example I mean there's four particular incidents for example that are detailed in the RSPB's report legal killing of birds of prey in Scotland 2014 review they identify for example four incidents that took place on an estate near Harriet there's quite a lot of evidence in here and yet that information is not in the 2014 report these were crimes that took place in 2014 recording the RSPB data but aren't then recorded in the wildlife crime report so they don't form part of your data now I don't know why there's a mismatch between one set of information that's in the public domain and yet it's not recorded in your official wildlife crime report for that year so it's five instances recorded by RSPB that don't form our recorded statistics that's what you're referring to no I'm saying there are four incidences that RSPB reports right which do not form part of your wildlife crime report you're withholding the data on that I'm trying to try to understand why you're withholding the data about the location of these crimes I mean the only thing I can offer is that if it's not if it's deemed to be a crime by a partner agency and it's maybe not a crime in terms of the the classic recording requirements but I can I'll need to find out for you I don't know the the answer to that when I'm not in those particular instances I do want to push you on this because you know that these four incidences were involved baited traps and there's even a picture here you know that's a baited trap with a pigeon the spring traps here that's illegal isn't it I can't see from this distance but if it's an illegal trap it's illegal it is illegal so what I'm trying to get to is why that clear illegality is not reported in the wildlife crime report in terms of the location of it and also the fact that this took place because if you're trying to build public confidence that you're tackling wildlife crime when you're trying to give a true picture of wildlife crime to the general public and also alert people to the fact that this crime's taken place near Harriet then you know if you want the public on your side you need to disclose all the data unless there's some other reason for why you're withholding that in terms of it being an ongoing investigation or something so I'm trying to understand that and those have definitely been reported to the police well in one case I think it was the ratio estate where SNH withdrew the general licence they put a restriction order on the estate so I'm amazed that the police didn't know that well the withdrawing of a general licence can be based on intelligence only so it's not necessarily a recorded crime that's been reported you know the restrictions on licences and that that piece of work can sometimes be based on just intelligence only over a period of time which is enough for SNH to obviously suspend that general licence so it doesn't necessarily mean it's a crime so need a bit of clarity around that so that that could explain that part of it so it's not necessarily a recorded crime I think it would be useful convener if we could get some more background to that I mean this is a report from the RSPB that is in the public domain you know I just picked one up off a stall at a fair you know I'm a member of the public I'm interested oh yeah I'm going for a walk near Harriet oh gosh there's some you know wildlife crime taking place I've got that information I know that from this report that's in a public domain yet it's not reported in your in your annual reports if we're a little bit careful whether it's crime or alleged crime can I just suggest that just in case uh Steve Johnson you know we'd certainly uh take up the offer I think of meeting out with this committee meeting and then uh to perhaps fully understand the questions being asked of us and then we'll provide a written response to you yourself and the whole committee I think I'll use just more of Scotland wants to come in I just uh just a clarification perhaps more generally but following up from Mark Ruskell's point can I just um I think it'd be helpful for the committee to get on the record uh presumably if you get an incident reported to you then you investigate to decide whether it's been a crime then if appropriate refer it at which point then if there's enough evidence then you would decide to prosecute or not as appropriate with any other crime and therefore if another agency produces a report whether it's in the public domain or not then unless that has been reported to you and gone through an official channel in some way then you're not in a position to deal with it other than through your rigorous processes I mean the the ethical recording of crime an incident's reported has a closure code it's either a no crime or it's a crime and every single one is assessed and it will be closed off otherwise and that then leads to an investigation a crime report and that that rigour that so unless we're told about it if we're told about it it will be recorded as a crime if it meets a crime criteria and if a member of the public thinks it's a crime and we invest in it and looks like it it will be recorded as a crime it can then be no crime once investigation takes place and the evidence doesn't meet that criteria but ethically it will be recorded a crime until it's no crime so and HMICS's recent audit of us the biannual audit of our crime recording had us as good and that the ethical recording of crime is is improving all the time so Mark Ruskell come back to a further question I mean what percentage of raptor persecution crimes are referred to the procurator fiscal and then what is the conviction rate on the back of that how many are referred to the fiscal what percentage of raptor persecution crimes are referred to the procurator fiscal award is the conviction rate well okay the actual start if it's not in the report there I haven't I'm not going to the the specific tables there if a raptor crime is recorded as a crime and it's investigated it will be reported and it'll be in the if it's not a crime or there's not enough to report it it won't be reported so I'm not quite I'm not quite getting where you're you're coming from in that sense what's the what's the percentage of crimes that are then referred to the procurator fiscal yeah no no you don't have that no you can you can you can play that to you yeah why has there been a 19% increase in offences this year in terms of raptor persecution a point I made earlier on where we've seen increases of where we have the full-time wildlife crime officers particularly in the north of the country so the six officers predominantly there it comes back to understanding the data and being able to follow the story I think there is something in where we do have those full-time members that people have access to I think it's referred to in one of the reports that the ability and proximate to the reporting to the resource being deployed is a positive correlation in terms of conviction and certainly in relation to progression of the matter I think that that is key so so it's certainly one of the areas I've looked at and certainly will pick up on in terms of whether there is a positive correlation because it does it does look that way statistically but actually we'd need to work with partners to see whether that is the case but I do think it's statistically there is a correlation between where we have full-time wildlife crime officers and positive outcomes and certainly the increase in the reporting I think it's because if you've got somebody there that you know when you can report stuff too when it's a relationship that's built quite evidently that's going to be more is going to happen through that route that's that's the very nature of it do you think persecution is going up or down statistically I can't give you a note of that the statistics would say yes it is but actually it goes back to the point of are there more or are there being more reported statistically it would say there is more being reported you could make that parallel assumption but is there also a potential here that there's a changing behaviour behind raptor persecution that in the past perhaps naive way people were poisoning raptors and weaving the evidence for you to find is it now the case that birds are disappearing not being found one might explain some of that to an extent at least beyond satellite tag failing that may be part of it but are we seeing a change in the nature of raptor persecution where the evidence is being disposed of difficult to say I mean you know there's there could be any number of reasons for the disappearance of birds you know the current state of health of you know certain birds of prey as Mr Johnson said earlier on it's it'd be good that it's a quality of outcome of our partners work around that would be good to know and you know we do know in certain areas that there are a conservation wise improvements in for example golden eagle pairs nesting but in terms of the the change in persecution and you made that you made you alluded to the satellite tagging element and the recent review of satellite tagging that the cabinet secretary has ordered that will be a useful piece of work as well when we get to the end of that about you know informing us about certain aspects of raptor persecution but that's difficult to say just now but when an area of the country a part of the country is devoid of raptors it does make one wonder why that's the case I must make police Scotland wonder why that's the case it was reported to us and I think we've got reports that actually there was a flock or there were nesting pairs in a certain location and they're no longer there that's the point of having the wildlife crime liaison officers that actually we can we can start to get to the bottom of that I think the point around whether I think the point that you made was that somebody would be removing the evidence before we got there that that is a negative outlook I would also say that there's some positive relationships coming in terms of they've been developed over the years in terms of people looking at alternative ways of managing and certainly you've got a report there from the Gamekeepers Association and I think that is an evolving process it is about informing it is about taking positive action against their own members where they see people carrying on practices that are from history and not not for the future so that I wouldn't want to just focus on the negative I can't if the evidence has been taken away before I've even become unaware of it it's a bit like you know I couldn't possibly I'm not casting this person I'm not saying that this is going on I'm asking you if in Police Scotland's view we may be seeing a change in behaviour that's potentially masking the scale of the problem if evidence is being disposed of I think you could make an assertion both ways couldn't you there will always be some that would seek to get around the law and try and mask that activity and there will also be some positive correlations in relation to people taking the right activity about protecting the colonies protecting the birds and it may well be I don't understand the ecological effects but it may well be that birds move on away from areas into other areas I don't understand that well enough in terms of the science but where if somebody came it goes back to the point if somebody came with the science that actually there should be nesting pairs here we have to try and get to the bottom of that and that's certainly where one of the challenges for us is is where you get that absence you get the absence of a crime or you get the absence of a species the amount of time and effort that Police Scotland can commit a resource to that full time to try and find out whether something has or hasn't been committed in comparison with investigating other sorts of criminality that takes place in the community I would suggest that we're probably very busy over here and we wouldn't be able to commit a resource to that in most cases it's an absolute choice where crimes are reported to us or where incidents are reported to us I would suggest right from the point of call handling could we get better absolutely yes but actually where we take that we do record it we're subject to scrutiny on our incident recording and our management of incidents where we do think there's a crime we do crime it and we do investigate and as has been said by the crown you know many of these things go on in places that are unwitness the forensic evidence is unsubstantiated and the case from the off is very weak what we can do is try and commit resources earlier on in the process to try and secure the best evidence and present the best case we possibly can but that that story that I've just told you there is the story of attrition and it is the story from the first point of origin to the last and understanding it and doing something about it in terms of the skills and knowledge and the whole prevention of intelligence and enforcement arena okay so gary I can just want to just to pick up on that point if there was good evidence that someone had taken steps to conceal the wildlife crime that they had committed and that's quite a big if because getting that evidence would be tricky but that's the sort of thing that we would view very seriously I mean it is in effect akin to for instance the disposal of a body following a murder and that could be looked at as a common law offence attempting to provide the course of justice or to feed the ends of justice which has significant consequences and we're always keen in appropriate circumstances to take proceedings in cases like that because it is a warning to anybody else who might think about doing the same thing that there are consequences to that it would be pure speculation for me to say whether or not those who are engaged in wildlife crime are learning to cover their tracks better or not I've absolutely no idea but what I can say is that unfortunately criminals learn absolutely and our forensic techniques become public knowledge in this area just as they are in everything else mobile phones are very very useful tools for the police but criminals are learning to be more covert about how they deal with them I'm sure there are those who are sufficiently forensically aware when they're committing wildlife crime to take steps to deal with that if we had evidence to back that up in a particular case I would be very interested in that it's not something that we see coming through but again as you're saying on a speculative basis it may be happening I simply don't know. Logic suggests it may be happening because the more success you have and people see that individuals are being jailed for raptor persecution one would expect that might drive a change in behaviour positively perhaps but also negatively in terms of disguising their activities. Absolutely that's the challenge isn't it you know criminals who conduct criminal activity will always try and stop one step ahead of the police service the challenge to us is to try and get ahead of them and break that cycle and we will commit resource where we possibly can to do that and certainly you know we'll give you the assurances if we if we had evidence or intelligence to suggest that somebody was doing that we would follow that up with a significant investigation. Okay, thanks. Claudia Beamish wants to come in on a slightly different subject. Right, thank you convener. Could I turn our focus to international trade in endangered species of wild flora and fauna and I understand there's an international convention on that and I note for the public record that there was only one incident recorded in 2014-15 but it was in relation to 10 offences in Fife about endangered species so it would be helpful either now in writing to know how that case or the cases is progressing but also you say in the report on page 30 that Police Scotland expect the numbers of recorded offences to increase in the future years due to increased public awareness and reporting of illegal wildlife trading particularly online and I wonder if what measures you're putting in place to reflect that concern. On to the site, there's absolutely no doubt it's like probably many other areas of criminality the upsurge and online activity and online criminal activity is clearly there and is going to increase and it's certainly part of our work as an organisation looking to our three, five, ten year strategy looking at our operating model and how we deal with online criminality and this will be part of it. We've got a number of cases on going just now reporting of illegal activity on sites, we've had recent cases and five retire clause auction houses are selling obviously illegal material so all positive work going on and we have training coming up this year with our UK border force colleagues both for ourselves and Crown Office around the whole issue of the trading endangered species so there's a lot of positive work on going in relation to that. In terms of the case it's currently sitting with you Gary I don't know. I'll provide a separate update as part of the written update in relation to the bad cases as well if that's acceptable. That's great. We'll be on Dave Stewart. I'd like to find out your views on your assessments of increasing the SSPCA's power to investigate wildlife crime. Well obviously this subject was discussed at last year's committee meeting and you know we made a written submission to the review by the government about our thoughts around the additional powers to the SSPCA which are part of records so we're still awaiting the outcome of the government's decision on that. There are a number of organisational, justical and legal challenges I think to investing additional powers in the SSPCA again which is public record of our submission around that so really we want to work with all our partner agencies very closely and we would encourage in any incident the SSPCA deals with and you know that we do work with them in certain occasions but there are potentially opportunities to develop that relationship further and you know their current remit is about animal welfare, neglect, we investigate crime, we want to investigate with them wherever possible. I think going back to one of the previous topics where there are occasions where we're not told about some of the instances that they do investigate, they report directly into the Crown Office, it might be helpful if we were involved in some of them but again that's down a case by case basis and we would encourage that interaction as widely as possible. Thank you Mr Scott for those that haven't the benefit of remembering your evidence last year. Is it fair to summarise the two main criticisms you had? It was first of all that you saw the SSPCA having a conflict as an animal welfare charity and secondly whether effectively we're up to the detailed regulatory requirements that the police have to follow. Is that a fair summary of the two main points that you raised last time? Pretty much, yes. That's absolutely it. It's a kind of an investigative accountability where we are scrutinised obviously by Parliament, by HMICS in terms of all our activity, that legal obligation we have around that. You know that access to specialist services that we have that they don't have as well, that statutory responsibility, the primacy that we have as well for investigating crime too and you know resources and oversight so yeah there's a number of issues that we highlighted and you know we'll wait that government out. I'll bring you back Mr Johnston as well on that issue. I mean since you gave that evidence I mean have you had discussions with government or the SSPCA about some of your criticisms? With the Government on that I mean we've submitted no we haven't had recent discussions about that. We've had discussion the fact that you know with the Cabinet Secretary that she's still to you know make a decision or or or has to announce the result of the government's review and so therefore in terms of detailed discussion I recently know we haven't. Thank you. My question to Mr Johnston is I think Mr Johnston earlier you talk rightly about intelligence-led investigation being crucial and I don't think anyone is suggesting that your prime role as on Police Scotland for investigate wildlife crime has changed. What we're talking about is the argument that your team is enhanced by having more investigative powers to a partner agency who have a lot of expertise. I mean from the outside perspective and maybe simplistic perspective what is the problem with that? I mean generally with a low prosecution and detection rate for wildlife crime you're enhancing your team what's the problem? I think there's the submission in the two areas that I think were the objection I think probably remain. I think what we did say was we would seek changes in the legislation to enable alongside their charitable function where they found evidence of wildlife crime being committed it was our submission that they should be able to to seize and retain the evidence of that and then inform the police that have the statutory obligation to do that. That doesn't conflict with their charitable status it is work that we can do alongside a partner agency that plays to both strengths in the eyes of the public that we serve and the charity status that has there. So I think that was a very reasonable compromise and that changing the legislation I think would meet the needs of the public and it would certainly meet the needs of better informing us around wildlife crime where that is taking place and the ability to prosecute it and investigate it appropriately. You know the detectives that I have go through rigorous training selection and accreditation in terms of their ability to do that. I think there is a conflict there in terms of the charitable status but again the suggested amendment in relation to the power to seize, retain and inform the police plays to both partners strengths. It seems a very sensible compromise. So in fact in summers like this you have no objection to enhancing your team but there needs to be some regulatory and legal changes in terms of charitable status and other issues in order for that to work for you. Absolutely. Strengthening the, you know we sit here as accountable bodies and you're going to hear from other agencies. The reality against the fight against wildlife crime is it's a significant team of which you know I like to think of my lot as the strikers. We still need to defend as the goalkeepers and everybody else. Part of my role strategically is to make sure that we've got that co-ordination there that we can actually play to each other's strengths whether some of those sit with statutory powers and regulatory powers or whether they sit there in just terms of a general interest and a desire to have a positive impact. I'll work with anybody that wants to work towards those goals. I might increase your strike rate as well if I can keep the football analysis you like. Mr Akin, can perhaps give me your views on the point that I made earlier? The issue sounds superficially quite simple just to give extra powers. That's fine as long as the legislation is framed in an appropriate way that it will be free from challenge further down the line. There may well be a need for an increased accountability or regulatory framework to ensure that those powers can be properly exercised in accordance with the Human Rights Act and so on so that the end product that we're getting is something that we can use. I'm happy to get good cases with enough evidence from any authorized reporting agency and SSPCA have great expertise in a lot of matters and report very many cases to us from their welfare main hat, but we don't want them to be put in a position of having enhanced powers that aren't fully properly set out and cause them or us difficulties further down the line. From my perspective, convener, I think that that's been very positive feedback from the panel. I'm sure that the Government will be hearing that. We hope that we need to clean tidy legislation with good draftsmanship of the legislation that's compliant with human rights, and I certainly would welcome that. To get a point at clarity, Claudia Beamish has a question. Just a point for yourself, Gary, just in relation to how could you clarify, while I understand the importance of legislation being clean and effective, as my colleague has said, how would human rights be relevant in this case? In general, the Human Rights Act and the European Convention of Human Rights runs through everything that the criminal justice system does. Any power of the state and in this context, SSPCA, who have a slightly odd constitutional position, would become ever more part of the state mechanism in those circumstances. Those powers must be proportionate and exercised proportionately and must be capable of complying with the Human Rights Act. Although we are focusing on wildlife here, the accused will be subject to the Human Rights Act, because even companies, although they are not human, have rights under ECHR. We want to be sure that anything that we get works. The parliamentary draftsmen are very good at dealing with that, but that's my main concern. There's no point in getting something if it's not actually going to do what you want it to do in the first place. Dave Stewart wants to move things on. I just move on to Pelties for wildlife crime, which has been mentioned in some of the evidence earlier. A number of members of the panel mentioned Professor Putsdie's report at South Clyde University into Pelties. Governments are considering that. The previous minister, Dr Eileen McLeod, accepted the recommendation and, clearly, we are awaiting further legislation from Government. Obviously, I appreciate that this is an issue for the Scottish Government, but just for the record, the recommendation would be, under summary, a £40,000 fine maximum and 12 months imprisonment and under indictment up to five years imprisonment. That would require not necessarily fresh legislation, the sense of standalone legislation, but it could be on the back of the existing legislation that is going through Parliament. Has there been a recent discussion with the Crown Officers or Police Scotland about the issues of Pelties? I think that it was Mr Akin who mentioned the Scottish sentencing guidelines on that. Perhaps Mr Akin, if I can start with you, could you say a little bit more about that? There's only a naive level of increasing Pelties that would deter criminals taking part in the criminal process. That's a whole psychological and social discussion that I'm not in a position to get into at all. From my point of view, we will work with whatever penalties we are given, but in other similar regulatory fields, the penalties on summary complaint are higher. For instance, health and safety matters, which is another part of my remit, the maximum penalty on summary complaint is £20,000, which is considerably higher than the standard. I certainly haven't been involved in any discussions with the Government about the implementation of the review. In many respects, that's really neutral as far as that's concerned. We will work with what we're given, but it certainly provides a degree more flexibility of how cases can be dealt with. A case that's going to attract a penalty of less than £40,000 could then be on summary complaint. Summary complaint is generally more efficient and effective and speedier than an indictment process, although not always. To come on to the second part that you are discussing, the Scottish Sentencing Council is again an entirely standalone agency from the Crown, but I certainly welcome the fact that one of its first priorities is to look at wildlife crime. I think that, again, just speculatively in my own head, I think that that is something very important about how society and how the criminal justice system view the importance of wildlife crime. Mr Johnson? I think that I have not been involved in any conversations in relation to the implementation of it. I think that I'd echo the point that sentencing does tend to echo society's acceptance of certain levels of criminality, and an increase in that could only probably benefit in terms of its effect on deterring others from taking up those crimes. Unfortunately, it would be retrospective, i.e. somebody's got to commit the offence and be sentenced for that. Again, I would want to use that as part of a suite. It's not for me to determine these things, but I'll hold the law, but certainly I can't see that it would cause us any harm. It could only be of benefiting the message that we're sending to the whole of society about the importance of the matter. Mr Scott? Other than our involvement in Professor Poust's original review, we've not had any recent dialogue around that. Obviously, Deputy Chief Constable Desire Nick Livingston has been appointed on to the Scottish Sentencing Council. Obviously, we'll do everything we can to help them in whatever the work they want to take forward in relation to wildlife crime, so. Thank you. Or two in your armory. Absolutely. If somebody is engaged in a criminal activity and they see a headline where somebody else has just been sentenced to five years, hopefully, it would make them stop and think in their tracks. So, from that perspective, it would be. But also, going into schools, again, I would want to be talking about the carrot type approach with those, but alluding to the fact that there are quite stiff penalties, that's not for the police. That's for us to deliver the message, but that's for society to say these things are wrong and the level of sentence. If it's a lot lower than that, people will think, well, I'll risk that. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks. Angus MacDonald. Thanks, convener. If we could turn to vicarious liability and the Land Reform Act that came through Parliament last year, we've recently seen some cases brought forward under the vicarious liability provisions in the first case, concluding in December 2014. Of course, the Land Reform Act from last year provides for the creation of a public register of persons who have controlling interests in land. So, I'm curious to hear what your experiences of using the vicarious liability provisions, and do you think that the public register of controlling interests will allow for more convictions and will the possibility of a prosecution against the person with a controlling interest and the subsequent sentence act as a deterrent? I mean, any investigation will take every opportunity to can to utilise that piece of legislation. It's still few and far between just now, to be quite honest, in terms of those opportunities, but both in terms of vicarious liability and opportunities to seize assets where we will do that. I mean, in terms of the legislation, we explained last year that identifying, as you rightly point out, the landowner can be very problematic, especially when they're sitting abroad, perhaps in some tax haven or wherever else, and there's a chain of responsibility which ends up in some local manager looking after the estate. So, to prosecute that individual is probably a subject that Gary will have a firm view on, so I'm going to pass over to you for that, Gary. It is a difficult process sometimes to identify the ownership of the land, but, in addition, for this matter, we also need to be looking at who has the beneficial right as far as sporting or game control on land is concerned, and that can also be very tricky to establish. The criminal killing of a wildlife species on land has sometimes been described to me as a murder investigation with a serious fraud investigation tacked on to the end of it, and that, although it may sound a bit glib, is not actually that far away from the reality. As we've already discussed, there can be significant hurdles in proving the crime. There's then the area of expertise that detective officers are generally very good at, but it takes a lot of time and effort to unpick all the paperwork to get you back to where you want to be and where that takes you isn't always helpful if it is some offshore corporation that turns out to be the owner, but any clarity or anything that makes it simpler for us to drive away through that paperwork is always welcome. Okay, thanks. The issue of tracing the owners is clearly an issue, and I think that we're all aware of a specific case where it wasn't possible to bring a vicarious liability case following the conviction of Gamekeeper George Mutch because the employer couldn't be identified. What efforts specifically on that case were made to identify Mr Mutch's employer? To be quite frank, and again it goes back to that, so I hope that layering over ownership and trying to establish international inquiries who exactly the owner was and we had a number of experts working on that to assist in the investigation. I'm afraid we couldn't quite get there, so it is a challenge. Those investigations that are on-going just now around vicarious are providing a challenge as well, so that clarity about land ownership and who we can pursue is obviously welcome. Huge way important point, and this Parliament will be coming to looking at the nature of transparency in the next few months, certainly in the course of this year. It might be helpful for us to get on the record today from yourselves as being at the front line of this. What degree of transparency would you require in order to deal with cases like these? Who's the owner and who's responsible for running that estate? If that ties in with the legislation in terms of the ability of the Crown Office to prosecute, then that specific identification of an individual that is liable for any activity on that estate, that's that clarity that we're looking for. Company, what we need to know is who benefits from the ownership. So the accountability mechanism within Police Scotland sits, my DCS reports to me as an ACC, I report to my dep as a DCC and the chief constable is the accountable and responsible body. Why doesn't that exist in other areas, particularly where in terms of land ownership, land management, written down here, willful ignorance of criminality is not a defence? These people know that an awful lot of activity has taken place on these estates, and if they don't know, they should know, because they need to take more than a passive role in the management of the asset that they have, particularly where criminality could take place. Anything that can be bought in that would provide that clarity to us in terms of who is the accountable and responsible person, because in the very least, in the preventative space, it gives us someone to engage in around doing things right in the first place. That's what every good citizen, whether they're a citizen of Scotland or a citizen of the world, that's what we would seek to engage them for, but where they fall foul of the law or they are willfully ignorant of the law, we need to make sure that we can pursue that and present the evidence to the Crown. Thanks, I'm just following on from that. What impact will general licensing, which we've discussed earlier, have on helping to concentrate mines, for example? The withdrawal of a general licence for anyone with a controlling interest who has been convicted through a curious liability? Yeah, so I didn't pick up on part of what you said there, just the actual core of the question? Well, the withdrawal of a general licence following conviction by someone through a curious liability would clearly help to concentrate mines. We welcome that every occasion, that's what we've said. Thank you. What's move on to our final theme, Jenny Gilruth? In 2014-15, there were only two offences recorded in relation to fox hunting with dogs, but I understand that neither of those cases were referred on to the Procurator Fiscal. And only one prosecution ever involving fox hunting has ever led to an actual prosecution in 2010-11. I wonder if you can account for why that might be the case. Again, it's evidence, the quality and the quantity of evidence that supports the criminal activity and that we can present to the Crown to then prosecute. I know that there was much made of video footage previously in some of those instances where there's a particular frame and that suggests that there is criminal activity. The whole issue here was about flushing to guns. Just because an image doesn't show the guns and the footage doesn't necessarily mean that they're not there. There are a number of cases where we've scoured hours of footage to see if we can get information or evidence that would support a legal fox hunting, but it's been very difficult. There's a huge amount of effort that goes into these investigations to try and gain the evidence. Obviously, we welcome Lord Bonamy's recent review into the protection of wild mammals act because he's made a number of recommendations interesting in the subject of vicarious liability that perhaps the landowner then becomes responsible for any activity on the land that may be illegal. Obviously, we need to establish it as illegal. Again, his recommendations are going to improve our ability and we were a big part of the consultation process on that, our ability to gather evidence and to simplify definitions for those that are taking part in legal activities and allowing us to identify activity that is illegal because of—hopefully the Government is assessing that just now, but we welcome the recommendations and are keen to work closely with the Government to take forward them. One of the recommendations that Lord Bonamy made was that there should be an appointment of an independent monitor who would oversee what happened in terms of fox hunting and monitor it on a random basis, the report recommended. How do you think that might work in practice? I don't see why it shouldn't work personally. I was very encouraged by the attitude of the Foxhound mounted pack leaders. We had a meeting with them during last year, which was organised by Jamie Stewart, the Scottish countryside alliance. We met all the leaders and they were happy to engage and produce a voluntary protocol, our code of practice, around their activity, be more transparent, engage with the police before the hunt, tell us who the guns are, inform us of the start and finish so that we could effectively be part of that public confidence building and that activity is illegal. We welcome that. An independent monitor, I don't see why it couldn't work. Obviously, it's a paid role, it's a non-paid role. I don't know, but I don't see why it shouldn't work. I think that you were quoted in a recent countryside alliance press release from 1 January. I'm not even sure if you're aware of this, but you apparently said that there's no evidence to suggest that the mounted foxhound packs that exist are acting out with the legislation that is in place at the moment. I think that that quote was taken from January last year. Is that still your view? Yes. At the moment, in terms of the packs' activities, I have nothing to suggest concrete that they're operating out with the law. I'm more than willing to again, myself and my colleagues, work further with them to try and enhance a voluntary protocol and engage with us prior to events and afterwards to make sure that the activity is legal. We will obviously respond to any intelligence or information that suggests that it is not, but, in the absence of that, we will work with it to make sure that it is above board. Isn't that at odds with your submissions to the Bonnami review? In what sense, sorry? Isn't that at odds with Police Scotland's submissions to the Bonnami review? No, I think that it's not at odds in the sense that if you're talking about specific intelligence to me, but that perception that there may be the activity that is part of the sun that could potentially be illegal, yes, of course it could be. We're not there to monitor them, we're not there to observe it, so there may be. All we were doing was submitting on the basis that it would be far, far easier if there was more clarity of definition, more clarity of roles and responsibilities to allow us then to investigate and to present a case where otherwise it is challenging at the moment. Emma Harper. Just a follow-up question supplementary. It's regarding mounted hunts and if you're talking to a pack leader and they're telling you about how many guns and who has the guns and all of that, there's about nine hunts, I think, in Scotland right now. Do they all practice locally in a good way, as you're describing, that they'll tell you when the hunt is? Is it a week ahead of time? Is it the day off? Is it the morning off? Who are the guns? Do they all actually practice in a good way like that? At the moment, it's a bit of a mix economy. Some are doing that. I haven't gone into specific activities of each hunt just now personally, but I know that there is a willingness to do that and I know that some of them are engaging, whether or not all are engaging specifically based on the protocol just now. I couldn't say that with any absolute assurance just now, but my impression is that another part of that is that the hunts are welcoming local officers to come and observe and understand a bit about the dynamics of the hunts. Again, Jamie Stewart through the Scottish countryside alliance is facilitating our engagement with the hunts to observe activities, see how they start, see how they finish, see how they're conducted, so that local officers are more aware of the dynamics. If information comes in for the public that suggests that there is something illegal happening here, it might not be because the local officers are aware of where the hunts are taking place and, therefore, they can reassure the public that way. There is not a positive work going on in terms of prevention and understanding of the dynamics of pest control effectively. Gentlemen, can I thank you for your time this morning? I think that it's been extremely useful. You've undertaken to write to the committee with further information, but I also encourage you, as I did earlier, to bear in mind that the committee's interest in wildlife crime extends way beyond simply looking at the annual report. Pieces of work that you've undertaken to do, perhaps with Scottish Badgers, for example, I think that we would welcome updates on anything going forward that you think is relevant to our area of interest. I'm going to suspend for five minutes until we change the panel. Thank you. Welcome back to this meeting of the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee. We continue our discussions of the Scottish Government's wildlife crime in Scotland annual report 2015. We're now joined by a different panel of stakeholders. Those are namely Eddie Palmer, the chair of Scottish Badgers and the Smith, who's a committee member of the Scottish Gamekeepers Association. Ian Thompson, head of investigations at the RSPB, and Peter Charles in the conservation wildlife crime officer for the BAT conservation trust. Good morning, gentlemen. We'll move swiftly on to questions and Kate Forbes. Great. Thank you. Good morning. The previous committee, the Iraqi committee, was critical of the way that information was presented in the wildlife crime report, because it made it difficult to see trends and to scrutinise the information. I'd like to know what your own thoughts are on the improvements in this year's report, such as presenting the data by financial year, and what suggestions of improvements could be made to future years? Ian Thompson. Many thanks to the opportunity to speak to the committee this morning. I think that, certainly from RSPB's perspective, we have seen year-on-year improvements in the Scottish Government's annual report. It contains a greater level of information, and there is definitely more clarity. Obviously, it was raised earlier our concerns that a handful of incidents perhaps weren't presented in the report for whatever reasons. The only other comment that I would make is that it might be clearer specifically if the number of victims of crime for each incident were listed. For example, if it was a poisoning case, whether there were two or three victims, that was specified in each incident. Other than that, I think that the report continues to go from strength to strength. If the scientific basis for some of the concerns was also highlighted and the fact that what we are dealing with is only a proportion of what is actually going on, i.e. the tip of the iceberg that was referred to in the previous session, I think that that's important. It's certainly a good report. Why, on what basis, do you say that it's just the tip of the iceberg? I think that it's very clear that, with wildlife crime, we are only detecting a proportion of offences. There have certainly been a number of cases, for example, when I think highlighted in our submission where an individual was observed shooting two buzzards. When the police did a follow-up search on that particular case, I think that further 11 buzzards were found hidden down adjacent rabbit holes. There are numerous other cases where evidence is found concealed or partially concealed. We're dealing with cases now in the report where the number of birds that are shot that has been found is actually quite surprising. The reason I say that is if I was to shoot a protected bird of prey, the last thing I would do is leave it lying around for somebody to pick up. In most cases, you would imagine if a bird was shot and dropped in front of the perpetrator, they would do everything they could to conceal that evidence. The fact that X number of birds has been found shot makes you wonder, are those wounded birds that are maybe managing to move away a little bit and then succumbing to their wounds, that surely is just a proportion of what has actually been killed? That's the plan that I'm trying to get to for clarity. There's a difference between it being a proportion of and the tip of the iceberg. The tip of the iceberg suggests that there is a colossal problem there that we're not identifying. Is that what you're saying? Absolutely. Work done on the North of Scotland red kite population, there was an award-winning paper published I think back in about 2008. What it showed was that 41 red kites had been found illegally poisoned in the North of Scotland, but using population modelling, and that was rigorous, regularly used scientific modelling, that represented about a quarter of what the actual number of poisoned birds would have been. That's the sort of numbers that we're dealing with in that particular instance. It was important to get clarity on that. Can we go back to the original question that Kate Forbes posed and allow you gentlemen to come in on that? I'd agree with much of what Ian says. I really haven't got any other comments about the report as it is. Moving towards what was being talked about by the police earlier, which is that journey from the public reporting something to becoming an incident, an investigated one, and then maybe a crime, having that clear would be a tremendous improvement. Does that cover something else that I was going to say anyway about badges? As regards the tip of the iceberg, one of the difficulties is that both doing anything to badges by way of killing, injuring or taking away plus damaging their sets is legal, full stop. That's it. We find relatively few dead badges. People might dispose of them if they did certain things to them, but we find an awful lot of dug sets. There's a whole thing there about historical things. The ones that we're saying or might report as crimes would be ones where it's been very recent—I'm talking about it within days—especially the work of our project in South Lanarkshire at the moment. The public are going out surveying and finding new sets and monitoring old sets. The rates of them having been historically disturbed are about 50 per cent, which nobody knew about before, so there has been or there is a lot of crime about. Anyone else? Just coming back to the format of the report, in previous years, BTT have contributed some statistics to those reports. We should be published in relation to incidents rather than crimes. This year has seen the move to report crimes and back persecution comes back as no crimes in Scotland for the period in question. At BTT, we are aware of a number of investigations undertaken by Police Scotland, none of which resulted in crimes being recorded. We have no difficulty with that. The problem, as far as we are concerned about reporting on crimes rather than incidents, is that, for back persecution or back crime, there are many opportunities to prevent crime, probably more so than in most areas of wildlife crime. We had a number of incidents where people contacted BTT or Police Scotland directly, raising concerns about developments impacting on bat roost. That resulted in a visit from local wildlife crime officer with developers or owners being informed of the law and made aware that I was being kept on what was going on there. Compliance with the law was both sought and achieved. Of course, no crimes were committed, so it was quite right for Police Scotland to make a nil report, but there was some excellent preventative work undertaken on a number of those incidents and the extent of that work does not feature in the annual wildlife crime report. I suppose that is inevitable because it is a report on wildlife crime, but it is a good point to make. Andy Smith, do you have anything to say? I think that the report shows generally the way that we see it anyway. It is a downward thing. We always admit that there is going to be a lot of work in progress, a lot of work that has got to be done. It is disappointing when you sit in the back and listen to the earlier evidence that has been given to discover that there are incidents of wildlife crime, in particular raptor persecution, that have not been reported to the police that should have been in that evidence. I do not know if that is necessarily a failure in the police, but it is important that everybody has that evidence. If that evidence is there, it should be up to the individuals that I would suggest to make sure that the police know about it so that it can be reported. Everything should be reported to the police so that we know where we are with things. As far as the tip of the iceberg goes, I do not necessarily know if we go with that totally. I think that it is perhaps—from what I see on the ground, if you like—I definitely see a massive, massive change from what we had 20, 30 years ago in the industry, massive change in both what is happening on the ground and attitudes as well. I think that that is important from our point of view. Moving on perhaps to the next theme, in terms of changing attitude, when I raised earlier on the point of whether you as an organisation have been welcomeably critical of raptor persecution, but can you put your hand in the heart and say that all of your members are cooperating with investigations on the ground? The point that the RSPB made in the written evidence was that, perhaps in those rural settings, people still felt intimidated about breaking ranks and spilling the beans about things that they were aware of. Do you think that cultural changes has happened amongst your members? What I think about that is that I cannot speak for individual members at the end of the day. What I can say is that, as I read the RSPB report, it classifies some of the culture of silence. It is every individual's right to remain silent if they want, and it is a very difficult thing that you are trying to break into there. If the person is accused of something, they have that absolute right, as every citizen does, to remain silent. I do not see it as a culture of silence. I think that attitudes are changing slowly, but they are changing. In terms of the general picture, I cannot completely bog down and raptor persecution to date, because there are other subjects to cover, but in terms of the situation there, there may well be an improvement nationally or there may not be, but there was a report recently that showed the complete absence of a particular species from a sizable area of our country, which does lend itself to leaving you wondering why. The assistant chief constable said earlier on there about academia and how that can be quite important. I am a bird geek, I like my birds. I am not a scientist by any stretch of imagination, but it goes back to that there are places in this country that should have birds of prey, in particular raptors, that do not have them. That includes some RSPB reserves that have the perfect Abernethy, as an example. I do not think that there is very much on Abernethy. That is a breeding raptor's Abernethy. We can all differ here. I think that there are all sorts of reasons why they may not be there, but it is easy to point the finger unless you perhaps have academia behind you that will perhaps suggest that there may be other reasons for what other reasons. Disturbance, whatever it could be, birds of prey are not going to go back to a particular area, they are going to go back to an area, whatever. An 11 per cent increase in recorded wildlife crime during the period in question, and that does leave you wondering whether there is enough of a deterrent against wildlife crime. This is a general question to the panel. When you look at the fact that 23 per cent of the cases no action is taken, and we have already discussed earlier this morning about the scale of the penalties that are available, do we have enough in place to deter individuals who would carry out all of these kinds of actions? I suspect, and not specifically related to raptors, but when an individual undertakes a wildlife crime, he has got to make a judgment call. That is what are the benefits of me committing the crime, what are the chances of me being caught, and if I am caught, what support will I get, or what is the penalty that I may potentially face? Up until the Professor Taustee-led review, we had significant concerns about penalties that were being given by the courts in relation to, for example, possession of pesticides that have been banned for 10 or 15 years. More often than not, there was a fairly minimal level of financial penalty. In some cases, where there were multiple offences, there was potentially a community disposal awarded, but certainly there was very little in our perception of deterrents. Particularly for raptor persecution, when you contrast that with egg collecting cases, for example, where egg collectors were regularly given custodial penalties and arguably the impact of stealing a clutch of golden eagle eggs is significantly less than that of killing an adult golden eagle. There were a lot of inconsistencies across the board. I think that the Paustee review has really addressed that and recognised those concerns. Certainly, from RSPB's perspective, we look forward to his recommendations being implemented. What about the wider issue of deterrents across the wildlife crime spectrum? Probably getting it right, and it does send a message out. There is no doubt about that. Another thing to consider when it comes to certain individuals, and if you are specifically looking at wildlife crime where perhaps shooting has been involved or whatever, then someone is going to lose perhaps their job, their house, their family house, their firearms and shotgun certificate, which is extremely difficult to get a hold of in the first place in Scotland, and rightly so. Although there might not be specific penalties for individuals, there are also the knock-on effects to an individual's actions. We hear developers who have bat roost to deal with making inquiries and finding out what average fines are for bat crimes and suggesting that such fines would be paid out of their petty cash funds. That is something that we have struggled with for many years and where we have had cases of developers being fined £30 for destroying a bat roost, you can understand that. There was, however, an interesting case last year in Derbyshire, where actually a developer was hit with a proceeds of crime confiscation order, so he lost all the profit he made from cutting corners, and I think that is a very dissuasive measure, and I think it's something we would look at for future cases across the UK. Certainly that case was very widely reported in the industry, and I think it's going to do much to improve the situation. I can mention just carrying on about developers, because half of budget crime is by people for development, agricultural, forestry purposes, damaging budget sets, and doing that without a licence to be working near them as well. We had an historic case that was a few years ago of a house builder who built a house within the permitted distance to a budget set, and they were fine for that, and my memory was that it was either £2,000 or £3,000, but the house was selling for £350,000, so that gives you an answer about that. If I can just switch to the other bit, which is about budget abating, budget digging, abating is almost entirely by the dogfighting gangs, and the intelligence about that is very strong. We learned some of that from SSPCA. We pick it up from local people, and that does go into what we feed into intelligence, which is going straight to Police Scotland now. It's very difficult that the public think that if you give a name and address, then go and knock on the door of the guy and take the dogs off them, which of course is not the case at all. People do not have the front doors knocked down in this country unless there's enough evidence for warrants, and that's what the law is about. Certainly, there are some individuals who have been found guilty of budget digging or abating, and they received fines and community service, and they are not underrating saying that the court got it wrong at that point. In some cases, the people back out doing the same thing with dogs almost the next day. Just to wrap up this section, we talked earlier in the previous session about the paw protocols and allegations that they are not always being followed by all of the partners, which is leading to some concerns within the partnership, but also perhaps undermining the police's ability to catch the perpetrators. Are you aware of any instances where the paw protocols have been broken, and is that a concern to you, Andy Smith? I've got one that was raised last year, and it highlights perhaps the whole issue of things, and it needs to be looked at in my view, and our view needs to be looked at. Last year, just about a week before the ground shooting season was due to start, there was a sensational headline, if you like, that eight golden eagles had gone missing over the past five years. This is right at the time, just if you're looking as an ante, it's a perfect time to do it. Nobody had known about these eight eagles that had been over about the last five years prior to the act. Last night, I actually went on to the Government website and the Paw website, and I looked back at all the executive meeting minutes, and there was no mention at all, all the way back to, I think, a look to 2012, and then I had to go into bed, and then I thought, no, there is no mention at all about these eagles going missing. If eight eagles have gone missing over a five-year period, somebody should have known about that two years ago. If we're all working as partners, and we're all equal partners in this organisation, then perhaps at the very outset of that, if that had been highlighted after year one, there's a bit of a question mark, year two, we've got now two eagles, let's just do something about it, we're not very happy about it. That may have prevented the disappearance or the missing eagles, and I think it's things like that that go, I think that we've got, there's conflict within the group, and that conflict, I think, has to get ironed out some way. I think we've got to move on, I think 25, 30 years ago things were completely different what they are. Where we are just now is progressing, but it's progressing slowly, but I think we all need to move on. In that particular case, Paul, they certainly, it wasn't working, as we suggest. Okay, Ian Brown. To respond to that. Andy said nobody knew, well that's actually incorrect, because the police were aware, but all those satellite tag birds disappear as and when they disappeared. As to when the press release went out, I think the feeling was in order to have a significant impact, given that those birds all disappeared in areas where there was significant, where grouse shooting management was the significant land use. I think it's entirely appropriate that at the start of the grouse shooting season, that is the time to went to put out that information. There have been a number of investigations where satellite tag eagles have been found. For example, there was a poison bird found in the Angus Glens back in, I think, it was 2009. That has not stopped further birds disappearing. That was all over the media at the time. It was subject to a significant police operation at the time. Two further satellite tag eagles are known to have been illegally killed as a result of activities in the Angus Glens subsequent to that. I think what you're doing is really pulling the wool over people's eyes. In actual fact, there's usually attempts to shoot the messenger rather than to deal with the actual problem. Just to be quick about what you said, knowing to be, that's different from proven to be. We're dealing with a wildlife crime report that's based upon convictions or the belief that there's a crime. I don't want to get into the politics of this issue, because we all know how fraught that is. I want to particularly look at the paw protocols. There's a dispute over whether they worked effectively in that instance. In general, is there a problem that they're not working sufficiently well, or do they represent progress in that area? Certainly, the satellite tagging protocol that was written in 2013, the Paw Scotland raptor group, is now undertaking a review of that protocol to make it more fit for purpose. I think that certainly that's working. In terms of the media protocol, I think that the chair of the Paw's media group is probably the best person to advise on whether they think that one is working or not. Let's move on and look at Bajos, Claudia Beamish. Thank you, convener. Good morning to the panel. I'd like to ask you, Eddie, some questions, but of course, if others have comments, they'd be most welcome to contribute them. You will have heard the evidence in the first panel, I think, and it would be helpful if you could highlight how the concerns that were highlighted in your written evidence could be improved upon and tell us a bit more about those in opening, in relation to crime, both for those who regard quite wrongly Bajos as a pest and also those who might be tempted into using them for baiting. Yes, okay, thanks. I'll just pre-empt that by saying that if I go back a bit during the end of last year because of my concern about our figures, which for the first nine months of this year, those last March, December are running at about the same, and I've got the actual details with me. I've been in contact with Sergeant Andy Maven, who's in contact with Police Scotland, and we've been talking about presentation of figures. Just very recently, what's been suggested is that we maybe start sharing on-going issues and figures on a monthly basis so that we pin down exactly and immediately we think there's a case, if we put it this way, a crime being committed. It starts off in the process through the police and someone on the other end knows that it's somewhere through the process. Almost all the, if you like, disparity in the figures, I think, applies to damaged Bajosets because that's the main thing that we see and we find out. Our sort of core figures like that 40 odd a year, those are situations where there's been a known Bajoset. It was known it was not disturbed at some point. Soon after it's been disturbed, sometimes grossly, it's been seen by one of our members. Most of those will have been seen by a police officer as well and then we go into, is this going to be an offence to be prosecuted? All I can say is that, although given extremely conscientious work by police officers, and this is from divisions all over Scotland, though I mainly deal with the east of Scotland because it's just where I live, things disappear is all I can say. So someone decides at some point that this is either an historic crime, there isn't enough evidence but they haven't come back to me or there's something else. Often what I get, I'm not blaming individuals for this, is maybe it's usually a phone call, it's not anything in writing, someone's afterwards when I've been inquiring and pushing to say no it's been dropped or it's not proceeding or there's not enough evidence. That doesn't mean to say there's anything sinister about that but I don't think that the system is good enough and the sorts of things we were hearing this morning in the first panel are extremely good news, you know that there's a willingness to look at that. So it's the, this procession as I think the ACC was saying, you know from a member of the public makes a complaint, so that could be a member of the public, it could be one of us, one of our members, same status anyway obviously and tracking what happens is extremely difficult at the moment, getting hold of a police officer who's one's been with on an investigation can be very difficult. It's not because people are being difficult or obstructive, it's because they're extremely busy at their out all the time. If there's one WCO in an area or even if there's two or three, they're busy, somebody else can't answer for them, people can't really take messages for them, so there are large communication difficulties and that's where most of this lies at. But I would say at the base of this, the badges act was improved after the first state it was in by just protecting badges, so people wanted to do harm, found, well we'll just destroy the set and there won't be any more badges and they did in the 70s and 80s, so protection of badges sets was brought in, so it's really quite very clear this, for badges sets being disturbed and some of this can be minor to the thing that baiters do, which is digging a crowning downhole, I've seen holes of 12 feet deep dug in a night as they put dogs down to get badges out, that is a gross crime, it's not anything else. The issue then is how and when and with how much energy if you like that it's investigated and again I'm not being critical of police at all individually, I've had police in the last year where I've dealt with more cases individually, I've spent an enormous amount of time and trouble on this and I have as well as the volunteer who turns out you know to try and help them, so I think that's something you're going to see improving in the future, I really do. So we cut this gap between what we perceive as crimes but could use our SPB, sort of the main culture, could be possible or probable crimes so that we're clear what the definite crimes are and there'll be some crimes where finding a perpetrator is extremely difficult you know that they've gone, that's it. So no, of course the police won't put forward something for prosecution if there's nobody to prosecute but it doesn't mean to say that crime hasn't been committed in the first place. Right, so in terms of the figures as you've bought up figures at the moment, could you just clarify for the record as I raised this in the first session about the concerns that you've highlighted in relation to the question that I asked on Wednesday the 18th of March 2015 and the concerns about what the Scottish Government reported and what is in the wildlife crime report? I think I can't answer that, I don't know, I know what we discover and what we put forward. Some things we do hear about, I think more than we used to, they used to just disappear I think, this is almost before Police Scotland now, we're going back to obviously. I think, I would say getting hold of information is a bit easier but I don't think it's of the standard that we could have certainly and what you're referring to, I know the figures you're referring to and I can't explain that, I just don't know. As I was concerning that in 2013-14 Scottish Government reports in their written answer to me that there were no crimes proceeded against and no finding of a guilty verdict and that your your your comment your figures are different to that so by certainly by seven we're recorded by the police and so I think that's something that if it's now on the record that it's important that we as a committee ask the Police Scotland to respond to that and the Scottish Government as well. Yes, I mean often in what I just said just before a few minutes ago, we also don't know whether the police have had for example a conversation with the fiscal, we don't know about that and it could be for good reason and I'm totally accepting this they say we're not going to proceed with the case, I mean they've got to have enough evidence, it's got to be worthwhile, it's got to be in the public interest, they need you know they need to be able to get a conviction and along with what Pete said about but we can we can totally accept that absolutely agree but we're we're somewhere down in the pile you know about this sort of pyramid of crimes the public think have happened to somebody appearing in court and being punished for it that there's accreditation in every sort of crime obviously some are easier to investigate than others and we come back to the fact we're talking about with delay in investigation then evidence deteriorates in the countryside that's really difficult issue please try and get out as soon as they can but even if there's something reported one day I talked to a policeman that day we two three days later when we do go out if we're lucky to do things like take photographs and if they're called off on another job and we have to you know make another arrangement for the next week we have deterioration and that makes any idea again a conviction very difficult I'd suggest okay let's move on and look at bat smaller school thank you convener these questions are primarily for you peter but by all means if there's any other pertinent points please please drop in for the rest of the panel I think it was it was pleasing to hear in some of your opening remarks about some of the preventative work going on but likewise earlier the committee heard that there's only been three offences recorded in 2013 14 and none 14 15 and I was wondering from your perspective do these figures accurate accurately portray bat persecution levels I think they're in line with the national average across police forces we are making referrals to the police across the UK between 120 and 150 annually so to make nine referrals to police Scotland last year would show that actually that force are dealing with more bat crimes than most in terms of the number of crimes against statistically we we think some recent research carried out only over the last couple of years would suggest that of referrals to the police one in six or seven cases result in confirmed crimes so I think the police Scotland crime recording is pretty much in line with you know what we would statistically expect and do you think that more could be done in terms of raising public awareness around what is perceived to be an incident or a crime in relation to bats I think certainly raising public awareness is an issue but I think raising awareness amongst the industry because the vast majority of bat crime relates to development so we think that working with industry is the key we do lots of work on on raising awareness but I think as much as we try we also have to be able to relate to cases and be able to say if you choose not to comply with the law these are the sort of sanctions you will face and I think some recent cases are sending that message out loud and clear that there is a need to comply with the law I mean I think I've picked up the gist of what you've said but just to get on the record if you're like and using you know your UK wide knowledge with respect to this are you content in the way that Police Scotland and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service are are operating given that obviously bat persecution is a wildlife crime priority yes we are there is not one case from last year that I referred to Police Scotland that I anticipated would go forward to prosecution thanks thank you for that let's move on and look at the Kate Forbes has a series of questions brilliant thank you I'd quite like to ask a series of questions now on poaching and coursing the first question being are you content with the way that poaching is currently recorded by Police Scotland and reported to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and do you think the figures in the report reflect poaching levels in Scotland yes probably the answer to that one I've not had any I've had my own issues with poachers I'm a keeper a full-time keeper on the state within Edinburgh south Queensferry and we have big problems with poachers that also goes on probably to the badger side as well because a lot of these poachers are involved in all sorts of things to do with dogs we actively as the association we actively want our members to report any incidents to police vehicle numbers all the rest of it and that adds up to the picture that eventually will be recorded hopefully in the report as well the undoubtedly deer coursing and hare coursing is a major problem especially near the with dogs especially near the the major towns in the central belt fish poaching as well the biggest crime that we now have as well that's a massive thing going on just now our members that are stalkers guillies bigoparn guillies on the rivers they report to the police and work very closely with the police as well so I think from our point of view I think the recording is reasonably very robust yeah James Yrth like to come in on that point can I ask Andy Smith does the involvement of your membership in this issue place them in danger at times because you know around hare coursing for example I'm aware of farmers who've had their property vandalised here's a personal example that happened to me which actually resulted in me being charged by the police it wasn't a very nice situation my background just to let people know is I was a I was a police officer for 30 years involved in keeping all my life through my family and now full-time keeper three years ago I received a phone call from one of the farmers this is due to the police were looking at specific they were looking specifically for this individual who was not a nice person at all the I asked the local farmers could you tell me if you see this car about I got a phone call yes the car's there so I went along with another retired officer who's 82 that we went along and we found them in the field they were just coming out the field our protocol now is we don't approach these individuals we stay well away we phone the police and we'll let the police deal with them we phone 999 as a crime that's actually happening a phone 999 unfortunately timing was bad they just came out the field as I was on the phone fortunately my police training was such as I kept the phone open I asked the operator to make sure that line was open recorded the conversation between the poacher and myself and I can assure you that had it not been for the fact that I had my 30 years of police training behind me that I would have undoubtedly reacted differently to that person to that individual it resulted in him putting a counterclaim in and I was charged with a breach of peace that charge went to the crown office and it was basically put a pen right through it when the the transcript of the of the conversation was was read I was lucky because I know the system if you like but a lot of guys don't know the system and they are out there on their own and there is conflict that is why we we say to people you don't approach these people watch them from afar phone the police and let the police do their job it's important to get this on the record because there's some fairly unsavory individuals involved in some of these there were not nice people this individual in particular in my 30 years I would say he's he was one of the not nice people at all not a nice person okay thank you for that let's we've got return to raptor persecution um mark broskell thanks divina um I mean I think I caught both RSPB and SGA earlier on both saying that it's useful to have greater transparency over cases could you sort of expand a bit a bit more on that in terms of the withheld data from our point of view I would suggest that that we're trying to move forward everybody's trying to move forward that's what we're trying to do I've gone as I said if you go back 25 30 years ago it was not in a nice place when the poisonings for example were at the 32 it was a way back in the day it's it's going it's on a downward trend which is great but then when we get things which I'm not saying there there's almost perceived to be withheld we should be working together trying to trying to move on that's what that's what we're trying to do we're trying to educate our members as best we can we don't police our organisation we we react if anything's happened which has resulted in five of our members being put out of the organisation and these members as I said earlier would like very likely lose their their firearms their shotguns and very likely their their occupier their jobs and probably their houses as well so it's got a big knock on effect to us and we really do want to get the message across and we need all the tools available to do that when things as I said earlier about the eagles that were held back these eight eagles that were held back from us that should have been in in everybody's interest so that we can try and use that positively the difficulty is that when cases have been publicised in actual fact two or three years ago there was a case where we before it was publicised and the police investigations was finished um we shared the information with the scottish gamekeepers association and they carried out their their own investigation and they used that term loosely and what they came up with what had happened was a satellite tag golden eagle was found under a tree with two smashed legs and the satellite tag data showed that that bird had been held in one place for 15 hours high up on a grouse moor 15 miles away then after dark the bird mysteriously moved these 15 miles to be found under a tree on D side about 30 meters from a road it was fairly clear from the post mortem report said that the injuries on that bird were consistent with it being caught in a legal trap we asked the sg to assist to see if they could find out what on earth had happened and basically they then produced a sort of fairy tale of a series of unfortunate events that apparently happened to this bird that were so far away from being supported by the evidence to being laughable to be perfectly honest and we've done this on several occasions tried to work with sg before cases go into the public domain and frankly have you know it has not been productive that's the bottom line with regard to withholding information and accusations we're not following protocols there's a suggestion that perhaps if a satellite tag golden eagle goes missing suspiciously that we go and chap on the door of the big hoose and say do you mind if we go and look for this golden eagle that we suspect may have been illegally killed thereby giving the perpetrators every opportunity to go and clear up before we found it we're not going to do that that's the reality but in terms of the report and the withheld data in the report you know I referenced your own report in Thompson earlier on and you know the picture of the set trap and everything else why isn't that information in the report and would you both welcome those kind of incidents coming into this report because otherwise I can't see how we're getting an accurate picture of what wildlife crime is I don't understand why that incident isn't in the report because that picture was taken on an operation that was being led by the police there were three police officers present as well as Scottish SPCA officials and RSPB staff at which we uncovered a pretty appalling number of scenes on the middle of this estate that were confirmed illegal crimes I can't answer why they aren't in the report they should be I mean could you speculate whether there's a valid reason why it wouldn't be in their an ongoing investigation and I just didn't feel there was much of an answer if the RSPB saying that they were there where the police then it should be in the report I would suggest okay and can also just ask you about this I suspect I'll know what the answer is going to be but the 19% increase in the fences that's taken place is that largely down to reporting or is that an increase in in persecution I think it's very dangerous to become fixated on a body count because the finding particularly of raptor persecution of fences is largely dependent on luck there's a very ad hoc search effort and it actually means comparing statistics from one year to another is actually quite invalid in many many ways we never know from one year to the next whether we're finding 5% of offences or 50% or 95% all we can say is it's continuing and I think what the assistant chief constable said earlier on about using the sort of open source information the scientific studies that have been carried the population censuses are much more valid in allowing us to identify where raptor persecution continues to be an issue for example areas where hen harriers ought to be doing very very well but have declined steadily for 30 years as was published at the start of this year. Perrigan falcons in north east Scotland were now at a situation where the Cairngorms national park in the Aberdeenshire bit had a quarter of the number of breeding perrigans that had in 1991 these are the sort of things that show you where persecution is occurring as opposed to whether somebody luckily walked the right side of a wood or a clump of rocks and stumbled across a body. Smith, what's your view on that? Well I think firstly I think we should just remember that the Cairngorms national park has got the highest density of eagles in the world let's not let's not am I not right in thinking that certainly in the UK harrass has got the highest density of eagles so we have it so which is a good enemy so I think that where we I've gained a lot to try this. The increase, the 19% increase in offences, what you put that down to is that? I think it's probably down to increase reporting and people being more aware of what's happening in the countryside that's what I think I believe in that people are much more aware of what's going on now which is due to media really says we all do our best as I said to try and to try and reduce that but I think it's down to people being more aware. And are you happy with the way that birds and raptor persecutions are detailed or recorded actually in the report are broken down or could that be improved in some way? There is a degree of confusion about bird crime which I presume is all birds and raptor crime I think the actual birds wider birds if we're focusing on the national wildlife crime priorities it should focus on raptors whereas birds more widely could mean somebody shot a black bird with an ear gun which unpleasant though that is it isn't one of the word life crime priority so I think actually focusing on raptors rather than all birds would be clearer in the report. I would agree with that I think you probably need both in there as well specifically for raptors if you're going down if you want to have raptor as a as a key issue then it has to be reported that way and I would agree with it that bird defences can cover all sorts of things. Could I go back very briefly to the poaching issue because there was actually a supplementary question I wanted to ask you Andy Smith in relation to the Scottish Game Keep Association's written submission and it's noted in the report that fish poaching remains the only type of recorded wildlife crime where there is a measurable increase in both 2015 up by 12 per cent and over a five-year data period up 19 per cent and you highlight the concerns about some public perception and whether the focus is on other maybe on other priority species and obviously salmon is a protected species as a sea trout and I wonder if you could make any further comments on that and where you see the emphasis and if you'd like to see any changes. I think it's for itself I know the gillies in the certainly down in the river not just the gillies but the the bailiffs as well they're doing a fantastic job down on the rivers through Scotland I would say that it's just let's keep going and try and try and catch them that's the bottom line and I would suggest and there's not much more I can add to that one. Can I just wrap up this session on raptor persecution? Andy Smith you referenced earlier the fact that you weren't an organisation that could police its membership as such you can do the things you do and you've been quite unequivocal as an organisation about your view of raptor persecution I accept that but on the ground you may well have individual gamekeepers who are subject to pressures localized pressures to act in a way I speculate that might be abhorrent to the SGA and to all of us do you accept that that may be happening and it may be the cause of these hot spots that we still have concerning raptor persecution? Individuals are going to be responsible for their own actions no matter what that is I would like to speculate that that's why we have hot spots or we have perceived hot spots or whatever we have I think that each individual has their own responsibility and as I've said earlier it goes on with the job that you do if you if you have if you're a keeper up on a hill somewhere before you pull that trigger you've got a lot going through your head it's very similar to a drunk driver going into a car you've got the keys in your hand you've got the gun in your hand you've had a drink what did I do drink driving continues and let's just hope it's reducing all the time as is raptor crime as well a likelihood of being caught for drunk driving is statistically higher I think there was 19 000 vehicles stopped over the festive season wildlife crime that occurs of all types in remote areas you're much white less likely to be caught so perhaps that's you know the route of this the up-teach individual at the end of the day we as an organization certainly don't condone it and we certainly don't want it in our organization and we try our best to try and say don't do it but individuals will be individuals and of course there's a number of gamekeepers in nothing to do with the sga for example we only have we have somewhere in the region of 1200 actual for membership it's about 5000 and we have 1200 that are actual gamekeepers that's not you know not every teacher a member of the nut so you know I can't speak for every gamekeeper okay let's move on then Dave Stewart thank you good afternoon and what assessment have you made on the case for increasing the powers of sspca to investigate wildlife crime mr thompson an interesting example recently in a couple of walkers stumbled across a common gull that was was flapping about in a trap on a moor and the walkers contacted us and because there was this bird was severely injured we contacted the scottish spc to send an inspector up there because of the animal welfare concerns and the the inspector we also reported the the incident to the police but the police weren't able to get back to us very quickly the sspc attended within an hour the gull was euthanised and the illegal trap was seized and they're then followed us at a joint investigation with the police sspc and and rspb involved it was a week before a follow-up search was able to take place because the sspc officers powers did not give him the right to search more widely to see if there was other similar traps set in that location but when we returned a week later with the police it was very clear that a further four sets of traps had been deployed in a line across that and we were baited with dead rabbits to attract birds of prey or whatever but all that was left was the holes where the traps had been staked into the ground and you could see the indentation in the moss and everything like that i would argue very strongly that that case was a very good example why the sspc powers should at least allow them to enter land if there is suspicion that wildlife crime offences under the wildlife and countryside act are taking place now i know they're not looking for powers of entry to search buildings or vehicles under the wildlife and countryside act they just want the ability to enter land i certainly strongly support it that's a very powerful point mr smith i think like everything else i think that the sspc firstly are a charitable organisation which was which was suggested earlier by the police as well my my own experience of that was quite recently actually when i was actually very surprised about what i found out and i was asked to go down to orage college in broxburn where we took part in a careers convention and we were there on behalf of the the scolish gamekeepers we met the two chief inspector from the sspca that were there and why we're talking to them found out that the the i don't think it was the chief executive he's away but the chief superintendent had actually was down in london in a house of commons to listen to the driven grouse debate and that's where i've caught a kind of issue on it that whilst i understand that you know you can listen to we all would probably listen to it but we'll listen to it on the telly but this particular individual went down to london to listen to the driven grouse debate it's a charitable organisation that we see has got perhaps an agenda where shooting is on their agenda and that he was certainly at that event by the information that was given to me by the two chief inspectors that were there and i just find that quite strange i have to say. Mr Palmer. Yeah i refer back to your point earlier about this might be an added workforce and certainly one of our difficulties is that sspca deal with some budget cases and they can take them forward we don't sometimes they tell us about them sometimes they don't so their figures are really on the top of ours i think but i've seen their speed of response in scotland to instance so they can have a couple of people up you know in the north of scotland within hours because there's some live case happening so i think i have you is that there'd be an added workforce basically leaving out some of the other issues that have been mentioned thank you. Thank you. Your response to the consultation we raised some concerns about the sspca having additional powers and we we asked some clarities to whether powers would be under wildlife and countryside acts or whether they would be more general powers to address wildlife crime such as powers under protection badges or powers under the habitat regulations and the reason our concern is is we want clarity as to who is to investigate wildlife crime in scotland is it the police are they the ultimate authority we need to be able to go to somebody to say this is your responsibility we want you to enforce it we fear that by giving sspca powers we may then get into a tussle between police scotland and the sspca with one saying no we don't do that report it to the other providing there is clarity as to who has ultimate responsibility we would welcome those additional powers being given. I'm sure you'd have picked up the questions i'm made at the earlier session when certainly my from my perspective is no one's arguing about taking away the primacy of police scotland it's about enhancing the team and clearly we also heard that it's important to get the legal drafting correct that's a mark for the government and clearly there's human rights issues as well. Can I move on to pelties for wildlife crime you're all be familiar with the puster report which made recommendation for increasing pelties which i outlined earlier can i ask each of the panel members their assessment of these increased pelties these recommendation for increased pelties mr charlson i think an increase in penalty is to be welcomed we know that if you have a bat roost on your development as a commercial developer it is going to cost you at least five thousand pound to deal with that roost lawfully now clearly if if penalties of less than five thousand pound are imposed there is a danger of the message going out that crime can pay so i think having the ability to impose increased penalties is going to help there but as i mentioned earlier i think probably more importantly for us is the ability to seek process crime confiscation orders which are of course not penalties but nevertheless will be seen as much by many thank you mr panel no i i agreed what uh pete's just said i think um increased penalties will be welcomed um the public public vent their frustration on us when there are budget crimes either nobody's found for it or somebody appears in court and gets what appears to be a very light sentence you know and i think that sometimes i forget i think the average fine in a sheriff court is 250 pounds actually so you know when we have some people have been fined 700 a thousand pounds that may be not bad going but um i think they need to be ramped up yeah mr olig smith yeah i agree i think anything's going to act as a deterrent it's going to be good as i said earlier on about i think you've also got the add-on of loss of jobs earnings on the rest of it as well yeah mr domson um i agree i mean we we were able to make both a written and available submission to the the penalties review panel which we were very pleased to to take part in and as i said earlier on we agreed wholeheartedly with the recommendations made um the one thing i would add that is there are certain aggravating features with some wildlife crimes where people are doing it as part of their role and there is a and there is a an element of of premeditation which obviously should be included as an aggravating feature as well so can i ask what you mean by your the role people are doing it as part of their employment as part of their job in what respect killing birds of prey that's not part of my job no no it's not part there's not part of my job or any keeper's job that's very very that's passion there i'm sorry but that's no too fast perhaps if it does finish it can be a thank you i think the other point worth stressing which came from the crown office is speed speed of delivery in the sense of getting the convictions important so obviously under summary which tends to be much quicker that's certainly worth looking at because the maximum offence of that goes ahead would be 40 000 maximum pelsi would be 40 000 pounds and a year imprisonment but under solemn procedure you're talking about an increase of five years imprisonment so it's obviously getting these things balanced out but certainly it's useful to get your feedback and clearly we need to wait for government and have you got an opportunity convener if you have the cabinet secretary and i'm sure we can speak specifically about the timescale the government intends to take this legislation back to us but thank you convener okay thank you moving on angus mcdonald thanks convener um you'll have heard my question to the previous panel regarding vicarious liability and the response from john scott in which he indicated he'd be keen to see more convictions through vicarious liability provisions so do you think with the advent of the public register of controlling interests that that will allow for more vicarious liability convictions and prosecutions and sentences through through that act will they become would you regard these as a deterrent a successful deterrent yes in short i think the vicarious liability provisions have whether that is coincident with the reduction in poisoning that has clearly happened in scotland over the last five years is is up for debate obviously there's been increased increased use of things like satellite transmitters as well but i think vicarious liability has had a marked deterrent effect and i think having a land register which will help the police to identify those responsible for managing shooting on an area of ground is very very important okay yes i would agree as well no i think it's all been said before i think it's everything everything helps at the end of the day yes the same by me as well um sometimes we are asked to go and look at a badger set and we have no idea who owns the land and finding out who it is very difficult and a land owner absentee or not can just wash their hands and say oh you know people came on my land i think to do with me at all yes i agree we've never had cause to investigate that issue most prosecutions for back crime actually involve corporate responsibilities and liability including legislation to those okay okay thank you um finlay castan that's convenient i think we've covered a lot of this already during the questioning but you know we've been very aware over the last five years that of satellite tracking and in some cases a lot of it's not been treated as criminal incidents by the police what i would like to know is what steps of rspb and other organisations who own the satellite tags taken to liaise with owners and managers of the land i know you've already said you're not going to bang in the door of the big house so what actually do you do when satellite signals disappear and and compliance with it the protocol what how do you actually make an effort to understand better what's actually happened when birds there are two things that can happen or three things that can happen with a satellite tagged bird it can either carry on flying around quite happily and you will obviously be able to follow its its track when it transmits its signal or perhaps you will see that there is potentially a concern about that that bird may be that dead in which case the signal will stop moving in which case what you will do is look at the satellite tagged data and try and establish if the bird has stopped moving and is still transmitting because if a bird is lying dead then the transmitter is still going to function and you will continue to get data and that will allow you to go and recover the recover the body in those circumstances what we will do is we'll contact the local divisional police we'll have a discussion with regard to this is what this data is showing us and we'll we'll see to them do you wish to come with us to look for the body or are you happy for us to collect it in those cases it is often impossible to tell whether the bird has died naturally or whether it's been a victim of an illegal crime or not however you have to go on to that ground on the basis that that has been a potential wildlife crime victim because often these birds are going down in areas that have a history of confirmed raptor persecution incidents for example previous poisonings trapping shootings whatever so you have to go there on that basis that doesn't necessarily mean that individual bird will be a victim or not however there are other cases where a tag that is functioning very very well suddenly stops transmitting these tags are incredibly reliable something like six percent of them fail so in other words 94 percent of them are are going to continue working so for a tag to suddenly stop transmitting that means something fairly catastrophic has happened to that tag now what we will do is again liez with the police in exactly the same way we'll see this bird was in this last known position when it stopped transmitting do you want to come and have a look around that area with us or are you happy for us to go and do it yourselves but we are concerned that this is suspicious and they will say there is no evidence of a crime we're happy for you to go so that's basically why we act in terms of when one of these birds disappears or stops moving there's obviously the cabinet secretary who's asked and she's undertaking a review at the moment of satellite tracking data whatever and the reports expected in 2017 did you make a submission to that review and what's your initial thoughts what it might come out and tell us we obviously RSPB monitors a number of satellite tagged species notably golden eagles red kites white tailed eagles and hen harriers and the people undertaking the review have asked us to contribute all our data so we are in the process of pulling that together I wouldn't like to preempt the findings of the review before it was published but I think it'll be very interesting reading can I ask for a point of information genuine clarity for myself here because cutting through the claim and counter claim about the whole issue of raptor persecution is very challenging I'd just like some clarity from those of you who understand birds far better than I do to what extent nest disturbance can be detrimental at the point where you're trying to apply the satellite tags and I asked the question because I saw a series of pictures on the internet a few weeks ago where they purport to show the process of tagging eagle chicks too with people sitting around having their lunch in the vicinity of the nest a dog being present it appears to have taken a sustained period to do this was one point where the eagle chick was being petted and people were taking photographs now just for clarity would that have any detrimental impact would the nest be abandoned by the adult eagles what there was a study carried out in forgive me if I can't be specific about the dates but I think it was in the early 90s where adult golden eagles were trapped on their nests and that was to be fitted with with satellite tags and that was found to be having a negative impact on whether the birds would return to those nest sites to breed in subsequent years and because of that the whole system of tagging was basically changed now obviously satellite tags are a fairly new piece of technology and there is a learning process with them there was another study carried out that showed a couple of red kites in England had been found to the tag had been fitted incorrectly and the birds had suffered lesions but again that was identified I think to just one or two individuals satellite tagging involves a person to have a license b for them to undergo a rigorous training regime c for them to submit a license return and d obviously it's very clear what happens to a tagged bird after it's been fitted with the tag now all that information certainly that the success of the tag bird will be feed into the tagging review I'm quite sure because obviously it's one of the birds that can contribute to this there were a number of allegations made in relation to those photographs which I also did see that frankly were false that's the bottom line the people involved were carrying out operations that were entirely permissible within standard practice and had been permitted by the british trust for ornithology but some of the other spurious allegations related to them were frankly a bid as far as I'm concerned to try and undermine the satellite tagging review before it's published by suggesting birds come to harm by satellite tags I would suggest we wait to see what the review publishes and then we'll see what harm is coming to tag birds yeah I'm still looking for the background because as a wayman when you look at these pictures you do wonder why people will be sitting having their lunch around about an eagle's nest and I'm interested in as to whether that would be standard practice or behaviour when you were going through a process that you say requires training and licensing as you know a eagle's nest from cliffs by and larger up trees and if there happen to be four or five people attending on the day they're not not all four or five of them are going to go up the tree or up the cliff they'll wait for the person who's either retrieving the check to do the tagging or taking the check back up to the nest and if they happen to sit and have their lunch there so be it they're not there for three four hours as was alleged by some people in all terms the process of of satellite tagging young birds is not detrimental to their their survival no no not at all okay andy smith I don't know how long it takes to tag an eagle because I've never done it and I don't know how long we take so and I really I saw the pictures like everyone else and just from a layman's term as well layman's view as well I think to have a dog anywhere near there is not right and I'm glad to hear that there were a false picture so that's quite good that you said there were false okay thank you for that information because it's just useful to get some clarity around that issue and these are hugely important matters we've discussed today and we'll continue as a committee to take an interest in it within and out with the process of looking at the annual report so thank you very much for your time today gentlemen it's been most useful I what I'm going to do now I'm going to suspend the next meeting on the 17th of January the committee will take evidence from various academics and experts on deer management in Scotland and also consider subordinate legislation as agreed earlier we now move into private session I ask the public gallery to be cleared as the public part of the meeting is closed thank you