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You are correct that the work to develop that is early doors. The commissioning of the work from the James Hutton Institute was a good first step, and the round-table event the other week was a good preliminary step in understanding which research areas are important and how we want stakeholders to engage.

I am not aware that, as yet, there is a plan to take that forward, but I am happy to go away, get that information and provide it to you, convener.

To put that in context, all of those stakeholders had been engaged in the conversation since 2020 and prior to that—it was not new information to them. When the independent deer working group published the recommendations, back in 2020, it did so on the basis of evidence that it had gathered for many months. It has been a very long process to get to where we are today, and it is on-going. The recommendations were published back in 2020. The Scottish Government then engaged with the stakeholders to develop our response in 2021. We had those conversations and, when our consultation came out, most stakeholders had already submitted to us what they wished to say, although a few—a dozen—wrote back to us with additional information. They did not contribute any new information but largely covered the same ground. The issues have been thoroughly discussed with stakeholders.

I am not sure that your assumption that an authorisation to go lamping automatically allows someone to use different technology is correct, but I am happy to get the information on that to you. I do not know whether the authorisation specifies which technology is to be used—I do not have that level of detail with me—but I am happy to clarify the position for you.

I absolutely support what the member says. Have we drifted into discussing the close season?

We absolutely need to make sure that venison can go into the venison industry and that we remove lead ammunition and increase the options there. I think that we can all work towards ensuring that we have a thriving venison industry. Does Hugh Dignon want to come in on that?

The Scottish Animal Welfare Commission and OneKind were among the stakeholders that were consulted on the proposals, and no welfare concerns were raised by those organisations, which prioritise animal welfare—that is their reason for being—in relation to the legislative proposals. That has been looked at.

Edward Mountain briefly mentioned the use of dogs for night shooting. It is, of course, part of the good practice guidelines to have a dog to make sure that any animal can be tracked.

Every night-shooting project gets its own authorisation. Authorisations are for a fixed period of time, under fixed circumstances, and they specify which practitioners are doing the work, so—

I do not have that information with me, but I am happy to write to the committee with it.

We are bringing forward all these proposals by the deer management group to help manage the numbers of deer in Scotland, which have doubled in the past 30 years. We know that that is not sustainable; we need to be able to cull deer. The fact is that deer, including male deer, nibble at shoots and trees and trample the peat year round. We need to be able to manage their numbers.

Male deer close seasons were traditionally in place not for animal welfare reasons but to ensure that male deer were able to grow suitable antlers for use in the sporting season. As there is no animal welfare reason for male close seasons, removing the close season does not affect welfare.

However, it does mean that practitioners are able to shoot deer year round without that administrative burden. Some 48 per cent—so, nearly half—of male deer culled in Scotland are already culled out of season. However, to do so, operators have to submit quite a lot of paperwork, so it is an administrative burden. The legislation will change that to allow people to do what they are already doing, but without the paperwork.

The 15 per cent includes female deer—the 48 per cent relates to male deer.