Regulatory Reform (Game) Order 2007

I, too, warmly welcome and support the regulation. I thank the Minister for the speed with which he replied to my Question for Written Answer and for his subsequent short correspondence with me. I think that I am right in saying, if your Lordships will excuse the most appalling pun, that I started this hare running some 14 and a half years ago, on 10 November 1992, when I berated my noble friend Lord Ferrers, then my late and much missed friend Lord Mackay of Ardbrechnish, and finally Lord Annaly. On 21 July 1994, I finally extracted from Lord Annaly the following statement: "““My right honourable friend has decided that the licensing requirements for those who stake or kill game, contained in the Game Act 1831 and the Game Licences Act 1860, should be abolished””." There was one very important sentence after that which I will come to in a minute. I was told, back in the early 1990s, that game licences for those who shoot game—I am concentrating entirely on that—were only just positive in net terms. Some 98 per cent of the cost of a licence was spent on getting the revenue in. I disputed that but, be that as it may, 12p out of £6 did not seem an awfully good return on the money. There is a point that I think is very important, which my noble friend Lady Byford raised, but in a slightly different context. The final sentence of the quote from Hansard read: "““Such abolition will also apply in Scotland””.—[Official Report, 21/7/94; col. WA 45-46.]" I fully understand why it no longer applies in Scotland, because this is a devolved matter. However, there is a very real problem—at least, I think there is, and I hope that the Minister can put me straight on this. Let me use myself as an example and suppose that I was asked to shoot in Scotland on a Saturday but was unable to leave your Lordships' House, or wherever else I happened to be, until the Friday afternoon. As the law in Scotland stands, I would require a game licence, but I cannot get one in England and by the time I get to Scotland, the post office is closed. At that stage, I am about to shoot illegally in Scotland. I imagine—again, the Minister may put me straight on this—that it is not permitted for my host to buy a game licence for me since this is a personal licence with my name on it. I simply do not understand how one could get out of this jam other than Her Majesty's Government persuading the Scottish Parliament as strongly as possible that it should follow the example of this quite excellent order.