I am pleased to speak to the Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Bill at stage 3 on behalf of the Scottish Conservatives.

I take the opportunity to thank all stakeholders who provided evidence on what is a very complex and intricate piece of draft legislation. I also thank Marina Sinclair-Chin and Lucy Scharbert from the Scottish Parliament Bills team for their extreme patience and efficiency. Last but not least, I thank the various ministers for meeting me. In total, four ministers have presided over the bill—which is quite a churn. I noted that Gillian Martin joked on X with Jim Fairlie about how quickly she could send her bill folder off to her successor.

Scrutinising this bill has been an eye-opening experience for my colleagues and me. The extent to which the Scottish National Party-Green Government has ignored evidence and sidelined science has been, frankly, astonishing—but why should I have been surprised? After all, we have had a raft of bills and policies since the SNP has been in power that have been completely off the mark. Take gender recognition reform, the deposit return scheme, the Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Act 2023, highly protected marine areas and the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021—which, of course, comes into force on April Fool’s day. You could not make it up.

Members across the chamber will know that the catalyst for the bill was the Scottish Government’s independent review of grouse moor management, chaired by Professor Alan Werritty. Since the publication of the review’s report, ministers have been on the record saying that they are implementing the review’s recommendations. At best, that is a gross mischaracterisation. Professor Werritty’s review in 2019 was very clear that the licensing of grouse shooting—the flagship provision of this bill—should be implemented only if, within five years, the ecological favourability of grouse moors in relation to three key raptor species had not been improved.