The case of the convicted, and now imprisoned, gamekeeper, George Mutch has got many people wondering who was his boss, as Scotland, in their greater wisdom than England, has vicarious liability for wildlife crimes.
Following the first successful case leading to a landowner being fined for his role in his gamekeeper’s misdemeanours (the Ninian Robert Hathorn Johnston Stewart case) one wonders who was George Mutch’s boss.
Read Andy Wightman’s brilliant blog to see how difficult it might be to find out who to target in a vicarious liability case, and how the ‘untouchables’ might try to retain their untouchable status when vicarious liability is introduced in England (as surely it will be eventually).
Makes you think that the best way to sort this out for the very worst example of the shooting industry would simply be to ban it altogether doesn’t it? If so, sign here.
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I still think, as I hinted at on Andy’s blog, that someone is telling Mr Mutch say, how many guns to prepare for, how many lunches are needed etc. Someone is directing him – they must be in line for VL even if it is an admin person in Jersey.
With the caveat that it surely can’t be that simple!
But then nothing ever changes, if we do nothing. I don’t want to live in a world like the world to-day. Its gets worse by the day. The cruelty and abuse is horrendous, wicked and we are supposed to be human 🙁
I cant recommend highly enough Andy Wightman’s splendid book “The Poor Had No Lawyers”..if you want to know how these “directors of crime” got their hands on all these shooting estates in the first place..and how they continue to wreck our uplands and destroy our wildlife in anonymity. Quite the best [and possibly the only!] account of something that should be taught to every history scholar in the UK.
Dave is quite right. Scotland is changing, and that is opening up opportunities to deal with long standing fundamental problems like landownership. Real progress with persecution and other issues is only going to happen in the context of that wider political change, which is proceeding in spite of the Referendum result, and which has land reform high on the agenda. Current legislative progress re persecution in Scotland has only happened because there is a Scottish Government. It would never have happened under a Tory Secretary of State (remember Sir Hector Monro?). The raptor lobby needs to be aware of what is happening in land reform and placing persecution in that context as well as the current focus on law enforcement.
Dave is quite right. Scotland is changing, and that is opening up opportunities to deal with long standing fundamental problems like landownership. Real progress with persecution and other issues is only going to happen in the context of that wider political change, which is proceeding in spite of the Referendum result, and which has land reform high on the agenda. Current legislative progress re persecution in Scotland has only happened because there is a Scottish Government. It would never have happened under a Tory Secretary of State (remember Sir Hector Monro?). The raptor lobby needs to be aware of what is happening in land reform and placing persecution in that context as well as the current focus on law enforcement.
You know I don’t like VL standing on its own and I won’t go into that one here, but Vicarious Liability is the strongest argument I can think of for Licensing and an answer to Andy Wightman’s conundrum. If you had to hold a licence before you could own or manage a grouse shoot (other licensable activities are available) then the end result of a breach of that licence would be its removal and that is true and proper Vicarious Liability at its best.
The sentencing of this gamekeeper to prison is a significant step forward towards stopping the relentless and illegal murder of birds of prey and other wildlife on our uplands.
In most cases with new laws do not work perfectly first time around and vicarious liability may be no exception, but that does not mean it is not a good thing to have in the absence of the banning of driven grouse moors.
We need the law to have real teeth to prevent this desecration of our upland wildlife. Perhaps inch by inch we are moving towards that goal at least in Scotland.