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I can see the value of that from your point of view, but looking at that from a farmer’s point of view, he will not have the capacity or financial capability to put those deterrents in place. Do your neighbours tell you that your keeping foxes and badgers out of the vast areas of land that you have actually puts more pressure on them?

The point that I am trying to get to is that the bill allows for a two-year licence for organisations such as yours but limits to 14 days licences for farmers, who are basically trying to make a living. Ross Macleod, do you have a view on that?

Would you be comfortable with that?

I thank the witnesses for a very interesting and informative wee session on that point. I have questions for Barrie Wade and possibly Jake Swindells.

Ferreting is generally done with nets, but I understand that, occasionally, when ferrets are used, dogs will be used to catch the rabbits above ground. Last week, we were told by officials that that probably does not happen very much. Will you clarify for us whether that is still a method of rabbit control?

Sair teeth.

Jake Swindells has clearly understood my thought process.

If we take out the use of a dog to flush rabbits, we are then limited to using either guns or nets. I will play devil’s advocate. Why do you not net whenever you are doing a warren? In that way, you would take out the use of guns and dogs, so why not net everything?

I will let Barrie Wade go with that one, because I see that he is smiling wryly.

I want to pick up on something that Ian Duncan Millar said about the community getting together to surround a piece of woodland. One of the issues that I brought up last week with officials was whether it would be better to specify a minimum number of guns as opposed to a minimum number of dogs. If we are being absolutely honest, the bill is trying to stop the situation where a hunt is set up with riders and two guns at either end of a huge plantation and a fox gets through, at which point the hunt can go after it with hounds and horses. That is what the loophole is about, and we are as well to be honest about it. Is there value in a method that specifies a number of guns for a specific area in order to close that loophole, and not limit the number of dogs?

I want to ask about people who carry out your kind of fox control who are not part of your organisation—I know that that happens in other parts of the country. Are you saying that the only people who should have licences are those working under organisations such as yours? If I am a farmer with a fox problem and there is a guy down the road with 15 hounds and we have 15 neighbours, can we flush that fox out? Should only organisations such as yours have a licence?

Sorry, will you say that again?

So, they would either net or gun, rather than do it with dogs?