SCOTTISH EXECUTIVE

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Economic Impacts of a Ban on Hunting with Dogs in Scotland.

Executive Summary

Background

1. In order to inform the debate surrounding the ‘Protection of Wild Mammals’ Bill in the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish Executive commissioned a study to identify the impact on the Scottish economy of a ban on hunting with dogs. Of specific interest were the expenditures associated with hunting and the impacts on Scottish employment. The remit of the study was restricted to impacts on mounted fox hunting, Scottish Hill Packs and gamekeepers employed on sporting estates.

2. Information for the study was obtained mainly through interviews with representatives of the mounted fox hunts, hunt subscribers, landowners, Scottish Hill Pack Association members, and businesses supplying the sector. Interviews were used in preference to postal surveys, which are more likely to produce biased and inaccurate responses. Where possible, indirect (knock-on) economic effects on the Scottish economy were measured using the 1996 Scottish Input-output tables.

Mounted Hunts

3. There are ten mounted hunts in Scotland, five of which are located in the Borders. On average they kill 543 foxes per year. 357 households in Scotland have members that subscribe to one or more hunts and play an active role as followers at hunt meets. The major economic impact of a ban is through changes in the expenditures of these households. The 357 subscribing households contained 633 people who hunted. They owned 1641 horses of which 56% were kept principally for hunting. If a ban were introduced, 35% of households said that they would give up riding completely; 47% said that they would adjust but not give up riding.

4. The impact of a ban was to reduce each subscriber’s expenditure in Scotland by £10,736 on average. In total this amounted to £3.23m on inputs and £0.53m on labour. Subscribers employed 264 people of which 56 were classed as full-time. There was a large number of part-time and seasonal staff. Respondents said that 222 employees would be affected by a ban, with 28 full-time staff and 152 part-time staff made redundant. In order to indicate the total employment impact, part-time employment was converted to full-time equivalent jobs (FTEs) by scaling up the hours worked to a full-time equivalent. The impact of a ban was to reduce FTE employment by 72-83 FTE jobs.

5. The direct impacts of the cut in subscriber household spending on suppliers connected with hunting was derived from a business survey. 30 FTE jobs would be lost in the short-term. These were almost entirely confined to those business closely associated with horses — farriers/blacksmiths, livery and businesses buying and selling horses. The longer-term adjustment, based on the fall in turnover of businesses, produced an FTE loss of 56 jobs.

6. Further adjustments in the Scottish economy would produce 30 more job losses. This reflects the knock-on effects of reduced spending by hunts and households, and their employees. The impact of a ban on the costs and output of farmers over whose land the hunts meet were found to be minimal.

7. Under the Bill, the activities of the ten mounted hunts would cease with the loss of 19-20 FTE jobs directly employed. Expenditures to Scottish businesses by the hunts would fall by £0.26m.

8. There would be a re-adjustment of horse riding activity and associated expenditure following a ban. Drag hunting has been proposed as the nearest substitute for fox hunting. None of the hunts considered that this would develop but 12% of hunting households said that they would consider the possibility were it available. It was perceived as a more dangerous, more competitive and a less varied activity from fox hunting. There was some doubt as to whether farmers would facilitate drag hunting on their land.

9. Subscribers indicated that of the £4.36m they spend on hunting 17% would be re-injected into the Scottish economy if hunting were banned. The rest would be saved or spent outside Scotland. This re-injection would produce 17 FTE jobs.

10. The impacts of a ban on mounted hunts for Scottish employment are summarised below:

Employment effects of a ban on hunting (Scotland)

^*full-time equivalent jobs (including part-time) (See 2.5 for method of calculation)
*This is an FTE figure-actual job losses were not calculated
^†the 95% confidence interval was ± 23%

11. The main employment effect of a ban is on those most directly connected with the hunts or the follower households. There would be significant implications (redundancy) for 46 full-time employees of hunts and followers, and a number of people employed in closely associated businesses (an additional 30 FTEs). Impacts beyond these in the Scottish economy would be small. The total longer-term adjustment would be a net loss of 160-172 FTE jobs. There may be some difficulty for specialised employees to find new jobs.

12. Five of the ten hunts and 37% of the hunt subscribers are located in three administrative districts in the Borders. The direct economic impact of the Bill is to reduce FTE employment by 55-59 FTE jobs, with a total effect on jobs of around 60-65 FTEs.

Gamekeeper employment and Scottish Hill Packs

13. The study of impacts on gamekeeper employment used 905 Scottish Landowners Federation (SLF) members as its ‘population’. There was considerable uncertainty amongst landowners as to the interpretation of the Bill and the impact of restrictions on current methods of vermin control on their sporting operations. Whilst some would increase activity and expenditure to compensate for restrictions, others were pessimistic about the long-term effects on their sport activities. Overall, their responses indicated a reduction of £1.97m in expenditure entering the Scottish economy (including labour) resulting in a loss of possibly 114 FTE jobs. We were not able to estimate the complete indirect and induced impacts of any fall in expenditure by estates. This reflected the restricted remit for this part of the study and the lack of available information on the expenditures of the participants in game sport shooting. However, comparison with the mounted hunts suggests that these additional effects would be small.

14. The SLF landowner population will understate to some extent the total Scottish sporting sector since not all landowners are SLF members. More importantly, there would be other economic impacts of a reduction in sporting activity if participants’ expenditure on suppliers is reduced. This effect was beyond the remit of the study.

15. There are five hill pack members of the Scottish Hill Packs Association. They use hounds and terriers to assist shooting of foxes and other vermin. In 1998/99 there were 182 subscribers and 873 foxes were killed. Activities would cease under the Bill. There would be a reduction in expenditure by the packs and subscribers of £46,000 per year and a loss of 10 FTE jobs.

16. In summary, we have estimated a number of specific employment impacts of the Bill. The estimates were based on views of respondents as to the impact of the Bill. They may be biased upwards due to strategic responses but such bias is expected to be small given the interview procedures used. Respondents indicated that the FTE job loss would be 160-172 FTE jobs associated with mounted fox hunting and 10 FTEs associated with the SHPA. The landowners’ estimate of 114 FTEs jobs lost due to a ban is subject to less precision given the uncertainty associated with the effect of the Bill on the dynamics of the fox population and its impacts on gamebirds. In the short-term the impact would be much lower. Since not all units employing gamekeepers were SLF members the total gamekeeper impact would be somewhat higher than that based on SLF members as above.

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