Hunting Bill [back to previous text]

The Minister for Rural Affairs (Alun Michael): I am following the hon. Gentleman's argument carefully and with interest. He is making a valid point. The Bill deals with hunting with dogs. If dogs are to be used to hunt a quarry species, the test in clause 8 requires a comparison to be made and a question to be asked: is there a way that involves less suffering which passes the utility test? The Bill covers only what is acceptable in the case of hunting with dogs. Other legislation, going back to the Protection of Animals Act 1911, covers human activities in relation to wild animals. The Bill does not cover that. All that is required under the Bill is to ask whether options other than hunting with dogs are available to the person seeking to undertake a particular activity. Lembit Öpik: I take the point that the Minister makes and we are coming close to the point made by the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) at our previous sitting: inconsistency. I shall return to that in a moment. The Minister's argument is reasonable only if it is assumed that there will be consistency in all legislation. I do not want to reopen our useful debate on Tuesday, but I remind all hon. Members and the Minister that one of my great concerns, and that of other people too, is the application of precedence from one Bill to another circumstance. That will concern coarse fishermen and shooters. They will read the record and see what the Minister said about provisions being separate, but there is a lot of precedent in the House for examples being taken from one Act to justify Column Number: 100 changes elsewhere. That goes back to the point about universality. I am nervous, philosophically and practically, about doing something in the Bill and assuming that it is a stand-alone example for the sake of hunting with dogs and that anglers and shooters can be reassured that it will not be taken to justify changes elsewhere. Mr. James Gray (North Wiltshire): The hon. Gentleman is right in everything that he is saying. The Minister made a fundamental error in what he said a moment ago: that the Bill applies only to hunting with dogs. It was drafted that way because he chose to do so, but the fact that amendment No. 175 was found to be in order and has been selected for discussion demonstrates that it is possible for the Bill to include other methods of dispatching foxes; namely, shooting, snaring, gassing and so forth. Such methods are listed in amendment No. 175. The amendment is in order and, as such, the Bill should be amended to include such methods. Lembit Öpik: There is a difference of view. I, along with the hon. Members for North Wiltshire and for Mid-Worcestershire and others, feel that we should take a more holistic, universalising position on the matter. As I understand it, the Minister is comfortable with confining the Bill to hunting with dogs. Alun Michael: The hon. Member for North Wiltshire is wrong to make the connection that he has made. The relevance of any activity other than hunting with dogs is simply to provide a test of whether hunting with dogs is less cruel and involves less suffering than other ways of addressing a particular purpose that is shown to be necessary. We are limited to hunting with dogs. It is not my choice but Parliament's. Parliament has repeatedly said that it is necessary to deal with hunting with dogs. It was part of our manifesto commitment and the Bill has been drafted on that basis. I shall make further comments about consistency later. The Bill is about hunting. The relevance of other activities is limited to whether mechanisms are available that can achieve the same virtuous end—the same utility—without involving the degree of suffering that might be involved in hunting with dogs. Lembit Öpik: I certainly accept that the Minister has drawn the same short straw that a former Home Secretary of the same name did in being confined to talking about hunting with dogs. We are trying to show that this is not an appropriate way to legislate on the matter and have tried to highlight the issues. Mr. Luff: Frankly, the Minister is wrong. If he had animal welfare at the centre of his concerns, as the Middle Way Group has, he would not have introduced the Bill at all but would have produced a much wider-ranging Bill or embraced the Bill that the noble Lord Donoughue has introduced in the House of Lords. He introduced this Bill not because he is concerned about suffering, which is what the amendments deal with, but because the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has spent huge amounts persuading the British people of something that they no longer believe. If he listened to public opinion, he would drop the Bill completely. Column Number: 101 Lembit Öpik: If the Minister is right and what has gone before limits him to discussing only hunting with dogs, so be it. However, I do not believe that that is the case, because all the parties involved in the three days of hearings agreed that the core objective was the consideration of animal welfare. The Middle Way Group suggested also the question of civil liberties, which would be a second priority for most organisations, including us. If animal welfare is the core issue but it turns out that the Bill is not in the best interests of animal welfare, I hope that the Committee will have the good sense to propose modifications. Let me give an example: imagine that the research that the Middle Way Group is conducting shows that shooting is, on balance, more cruel than hunting with dogs. In that case, if one method is to be regulated to improve animal welfare, it should be not hunting with dogs but shooting. We cannot predict the findings of our research. However, if it shows that hunting with dogs is the cruellest method, the Middle Way Group will be honest about it. We will share the findings and alter our view accordingly. The difficulty is that one method, hunting with dogs, has been arbitrarily chosen and put at the centre of the Bill. We have tried with amendment No. 174 to alter the focus from hunting with dogs to animal welfare. I accept that the Minister has restrictions, not least the political pressures from his own party. However, I ask him to consider an important question. Is he personally committed to producing the most animal-welfare focused legislation or is he saying that, even if there is evidence to the contrary, he is bound to assume that hunting with dogs is worse than all the alternatives and legislate accordingly? If the latter is the case, the Minister is putting the Committee in a tremendously inflexible position and compromising, to some extent, its opportunities to amend the Bill. Dr. Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test): In attempting to avoid the Scylla of cruelty in relation to shooting and hunting with dogs, perhaps the hon. Gentleman has bashed into the Charybdis of allowing the invention of a more cruel method of dealing with foxes, such as repeatedly smashing a fox's head in with a brick, which would enable foxhunting to be seen as less cruel and so able to continue. Does he accept that that could be a real—although possibly unintended—consequence of amendment No. 174? Lembit Öpik: It is an unintended consequence. As my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives conceded, we could have drafted the amendment a little better and we will not push it to a vote. The hon. Gentleman's intervention relates to an issue that really concerns us. By taking one specific method, there is a danger that we will do unintended harm to animal welfare. He accurately described that. I am making assumptions about some of the words that he used because I have only a C in O-level Latin—[Hon. Members: ''Greek.''] That is even worse. I have just proved my point. Gregory Barker (Bexhill and Battle): Before we get carried away, we should remember that gratuitous cruelty to animals is already a criminal offence. We are discussing the relative cruelty of shooting and maiming Column Number: 102 a fox and hunting it to an instant death with dogs. Gratuitous cruelty is rightly already illegal under criminal law. Lembit Öpik: That does not necessarily apply to hunting wild mammals. Alun Michael: It does not apply to hunting because hunting is exempt from the requirement not to be cruel and that is precisely why hunting needs to be addressed. I take the point that there are sometimes unintended consequences of dealing with one issue and one has to deal with those consequences in the legislation or in other legislation. I point to the consultation on wider animal welfare issues, to the comments made by the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs earlier and to the intention to legislate on issues of animal welfare in the relatively near future. We are able to consider things in the round as well as considering what is in the Bill. Lembit Öpik: I am encouraged by the possibility of a joined-up approach. My worry is that by focusing in a free-standing way on one arbitrarily chosen method of killing foxes, we will miss the big picture. We have already talked about shooting. I cannot emphasise enough that if animal welfare is the core consideration, we should be thinking about it in a strategic way, rather than picking out one method, which may not even be the most cruel, and allowing others, which may be more cruel, to continue. Mr. Luff: What I am about to say has been said from a sedentary position, but it is important that it is on the record. The Donoughue Bill, when it reaches the House of Lords, would deal with the Minister's point by removing hunting's exemption and creating a level playing field for all methods of animal control across the board. The Donoughue Bill is centrally concerned with animal welfare and suffering and not with prejudice about one particular forum for controlling animals. Lembit Öpik: One of the core principles that came out of the three-day hearing is that the use of dogs to hunt animals is acceptable in certain circumstances. We have already agreed that that is the case in relation to rats and rabbits and we have also agreed that scientific opinion is tremendously divided on the degree of suffering caused by chasing an animal. No one has any real data one way or the other as to how foxes feel about being chased. Indeed, there is a danger of personifying the fox and ascribing human attributes to it, rather than accepting that the fox always escapes until the last time. There is also no consensus on wounding figures. There was some consensus, believe it or not, about the fact that inspection and regulation can work. Those are all variables that need to be taken into account if subsection (2) is to work. Even if the presentation of amendment No. 174 is flawed, surely the issue still exists. The Minister could easily take the matter up later, if, after reading the record of the debate, he is persuaded that there is a salient and serious animal welfare related-concern in focusing on a method that may not turn out to be the most cruel way of killing foxes. Column Number: 103 My second and final point is that whether we have comparative or standard tests of suffering, there must be objectivity to achieve that. The clause hinges on the ability of the courts of law, the registrar and the tribunals to define reasonableness. The registrar has been told to assess which method causes the least suffering and to register them accordingly. To make such an assessment, he or she needs to— 3 pm Sitting suspended for a Division in the House. 3.15 pm On resuming—

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