I’m just going to come out and say it: the Scottish Government is doing well. It has introduced a new bill on fox hunting and it appears to show they’ve listened to campaigners and are trying to close down the loopholes in the law. Sorry to end the first paragraph on a downer though: it could still go wrong.

The problem that the new bill is trying to fix is obvious. A law to ban fox hunting was introduced 20 years ago but there was a loophole the size of a small country which said hunters could still use dogs to flush foxes out of cover to be shot. What this meant in reality was that the law was used by some people to essentially carry on with traditional fox hunting; they were “flushing out dogs to be shot” but really the foxes were being killed by dogs like they always had been.

I know this to be true because I’ve seen if for myself when I’ve been out with the men and women who work undercover to expose fox hunting. These committed and courageous campaigners have seen foxes – in a country where fox hunting is supposedly banned – being torn to pieces by dogs. They’ve seen the law in Scotland being broken brazenly and brutally and it’s still happening.

The evidence of the undercover workers was also confirmed by the Bonomy Review into fox hunting in 2016. It concluded that the flushing-foxes-from-cover exemption in the 2002 legislation was being used as a decoy for the continuation of traditional hunting practices and in response the Scottish Government said it would put a stop to it and bring forward a bill to strengthen the law and now it has.

So what are we to make of it? Well, on the face of it, it does look like a genuine attempt to address what lots of us have been saying for years which is that the law banning fox hunting is not really a ban at all. Not only will the new bill outlaw trail hunting, it means you will no longer be allowed to use a pack of dogs to “flush out” a fox with the aim of shooting it. It should – although I’ll believe it when I see it – end, at last, traditional fox hunting in Scotland.

However, it’s possible that you may be able to hear, like I can, the sound of alarm bells in the distance because this could still go wrong. First of all, the bill has to get through parliament and that’s going to take many months – end of the year at the earliest probably – and there will also be some serious lobbying and pressure from the pro-hunting groups. The bill that emerges at the end may not be the same as the one that went into the process at the start.

The other problem is that, even if the bill does survive in its current state, it currently contains potential loopholes and they will be furiously exploited by the people who want to carry on hunting with dogs. The most obvious is the fact that the bill will still allow people to apply for a licence to use two dogs to look for foxes who are spreading disease or are supposedly a threat to livestock, timber or crops. This is effectively the government’s effort to allow for “control measures” to continue but I can see how it could get out of hand.

Now, perhaps my cynicism is kicking in here and the new licences will work just fine, but I have my doubts. First of all, the licensing system for wildlife as a whole in Scotland is a mess and woefully under-resourced. But I can also see how certain people will continue to use the new licences to try to get away with traditional hunting.

The problem is that what the proposed new law says is that the licences will be reserved only for “exceptional circumstances” but it’s not clear what that actually means. In an ideal world, the issuing of licences, and animal welfare more generally, would be guided by the so-called seven principles promoted by campaigners and welfare groups. What they effectively mean is that killing an animal should genuinely be the absolute last resort. So what procedures will be in place to ensure that the new licences will conform to this?

The other concern is that, as soon as the new law is in place, hunters will start looking for ways round it because that’s what they did (successfully) with the 2002 law. For example, I can imagine hunters using friendly farmers to apply for licences on their behalf as a cover for what is effectively sport or recreation; I can also imagine many people applying for licences to use two dogs and then meeting up to create larger packs. What procedures will be in place to stop this happening?

Perhaps these kind of questions will be answered as the bill makes its way through parliament and we will have to rely I’m afraid on the Scottish Greens to make sure the new law is as tight as possible. To be honest, if I had my way, I would simply ban the use of dogs completely – even two – from being used in the control of foxes. But perhaps there’s a case to be made that a complete ban might criminalise people who aren’t hunters but whose dogs randomly kill foxes; it can happen.

For now though, I am prepared to give the Scottish Government credit where it’s due. For 20 years now, people have talked as if there is a ban on hunting with dogs in Scotland when really there isn’t and this new bill looks like an honest attempt to actually ban the practice once and for all. The polls have shown, over and over again, that a ban is what most Scots actually want.

But, as I say, welcome as this new law is, there are chinks in it and the hunters will exploit the chinks to the full. Perhaps the best way to describe what’s happening is that the law is being tightened rather than changed and my fear is that foxes may still end up being torn to bits by dogs. In other words, we’ll still be in a situation where the law says one thing and in reality something else is happening in the forests and the fields.

In the end, I also fear that what I’ve seen in the past will happen again in the future. I remember one of the undercover workers showing me video of a young fox fleeing for her life from a pack of dogs. It was obvious that, if no one had intervened, the dogs would have caught her and ripped her to pieces and this happened in a country where hunting with dogs was supposedly banned.

Let's be hopeful. The bill that’s about to make its way through parliament might change that situation. But it will have to be tight and clever and well-resourced and properly policed. I’m worried it will fail those tests.

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