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As I said, I am taking us down a rabbit hole.

A lot of the stuff that we have talked about has been based on hunting foxes with dogs, which is where a lot of the controversy has been centred. However, we heard this morning from Sara Shaw and William Telford that the controversy also spreads into other areas. What impact will the scheme have on the wider review of species licensing to which the Scottish Government has committed?

Okay. I have a quick question about licensing. We have had various conversations this morning about the necessity of control. I do not think that there is any dispute—we have all agreed—that foxes, in particular, can be a pest to lambs and various other things. You spoke about exceptions to the exception, but is there not an argument for people having a seasonal ability to control fox numbers, rather than their having to say, “I have a particular problem right now and I need a licence to deal with it”? Is there not an argument for seasonal control rather than the issuing of one-off licences?

Okay. Thank you.

Earlier, you talked about how we gauge whether an animal is a “nuisance”—we can use that word if it feels more comfortable for you. Please do not take that in a derogatory way; I do not mean that at all. If you were a sheep farmer, how would you gauge whether a fox is a nuisance to you? How would you gauge that that fox is causing you a problem?

Good morning, Lord Bonomy. Thank you for coming along. I really liked your description of urban foxes being the new Teddy boys—without being denigrating to Teddy boys. That was brilliant.

I am trying to piece together all the stuff that you have been talking about, but I have asked this question from day 1. Is the problem with the legislation not the number of dogs but the number of guns? At the start of your evidence, you asked how the hunters can maintain their sport and allow the fox to be chased while they stay within the law. I cannot understand how they can do that, because, from what I can see, the sport is that the fox gets flushed and then chased so that the riders can ride after it. Pest control is the fox being flushed and shot immediately on sight.

I can see a loophole in the law in that, if there is a 200m distance from the wood or whatever is being flushed, there may be a gun at one end and a gun at the other. The fox may go straight through the middle and everybody else will come in behind it. Surely the law should look at the immediate death of the fox on flushing, rather than the number of dogs that chase it.

Will the proposed SI continue to prescribe that commodities for which more than 1 per cent of the consignments are found to have harmful organisms are not eligible for a reduced frequency of checks?

Let me give you an understanding from a sheep farmer’s point of view. If you are lambing—

In that case, how can hunters maintain their sport while staying within the law?

On the determination of whether there is a nuisance, if we accept that a fox will predate lambs and chicks during a particular season, would it not be more advantageous to deal with that before it becomes a problem rather than in the event of it becoming a problem?