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Okay.

I am sorry, but things keep popping into my head. Is the purpose of the bill not to stop dogs chasing and killing animals? Is there any way to make a differentiation between dogs chasing and killing the animal and the number of dogs that are flushing the animal to be shot? Is there not a way of clarifying that?

To clarify that, did the Government give any consideration to the point that Mercedes Villalba brought up about what is different about people working with two dogs on a rough shoot is the fact that those two dogs will always be under the control of an individual who is walking up or flushing, and that they will not form a pack on the basis that they are controlled by one individual and are not pack-hunting dogs in the first place? Did you give any consideration to that in your thinking?

There could be eight dogs working on the same bit of ground, but one person could take a shot. You will have seen this. If a dog flushed something, whoever was handling the dog would whistle to it, the dog would stop and push the prey forward, and one person would shoot the prey. Would those dogs be deemed to be working in a pack, despite the fact that each individual who had those dogs in front of them could stop them at any given time?

Allow me to clarify what I mean. If a pack of dogs is being worked and foxes are being flushed, the whole pack has to be stopped in order to stop the hunt whereas, when people are quartering, they need only one dog, which pushes prey forward in order for someone to get a clean shot. There is a clear difference in how those dogs are worked on the ground. Can the bill, as currently drafted, allow for that differentiation?

That comes on to enforcement.

Does that come back to the point that, if you have the intent to flush, you will use a particular type of dog? I know that the bill does not specify the type of dog, but the issue comes down to intent. If someone was flushing with lurchers or foxhounds, the intent would be to flush a particular type of animal. If someone was flushing in a game-shooting situation, there would be better control, on the basis that it was a rough shoot rather than what we would recognise as a normal hunt.

We will come back to that when we deal with enforcement.

Okay. We will come on to enforcement, so I will leave it there.

For clarity, have you made a distinction between a driven shoot and a rough shoot for the purposes of the bill?

You talk about the person who is using the dog. There will be two people using the dog if there is a shooter and a picker-upper. If a person is walking with the dogs that flush the game—whatever that happens to be—and somebody else shoots the game, that means that two people are using the dog.