Hunting Bill [back to previous text]

Mr. Mike Hall (Weaver Vale): But is it relevant? Mr. Swire: I shall leave that for Mrs. Roe to decide. Hughes continued: ''This must be one of English conservation's most impressive success stories. And yet it depends on a single fragile psychological factor—what I have called that 'mysterious thing'. The Hunt itself is helpless to protect the deer. The secret lies in that strange agreement among the farmers and country people of the entire sprawling region, a decision arrived at God knows how, to refrain from killing the deer. The effects of this unspoken contract are so real that farmers far from the Hunt's heartland now find themselves going to some trouble to protect odd groups of resident red deer. I know one farmer 30 miles from the Hunt's usual limits who was recently tolerating over 20, on less than 300 acres. Few such farmers would suppose they were preserving deer for the Hunt. Many of them will have little direct interest in it. But Staghunting touches deep tribal springs. This attitude to the red deer has a pride and sovereignty all its own. And this is one way in which these men can confirm their solidarity with the inner life of the region: they refrain from killing the deer. Even so, the agreement is precarious. This protection is granted to the herd on a condition. The moment the Hunt is banned, everything changes. The deer instantly lose all symbolic meaning, as the totems of a special way of life. Ejected from their sacred niche in the community, they suddenly belong to everybody and nobody. They have become vagrants, deprived of all status. Or rather, they have a new status—one that is dangerous to them. They now belong to a government that has just proved itself unsympathetic, even hostile, towards the Westcountry farmer's way of life. And this government, with its well-known, official faces, having taken the deer from the farmers, has straight away dumped them back on his fields as expensive squatters, to be fed and cared for by him. Meanwhile, those enterprising young locals look at the deer with new eyes. What they see now are huge, unclaimed packages of saleable meet and exciting fun just wandering about.'' 2.45 pm Mr. Tony Banks (West Ham): I gave up reading The Guardian a long time ago. I did not expect to have it read to me in Committee. I may say to the hon. Gentleman that I might have had a good lunch, but it was not that good, because I could still hear him. As regards the deer population recovering after the war—which he equated with the reintroduction of the hunt—does he not feel that the decline of the deer population prior to that might have been related to the fact that during the war, which I can remember, meat was difficult to get hold of and people might have gone out and killed them for the pot? Mr. Swire: Well, no. [Laughter.] I can only answer the hon. Gentleman by reference to another passage from the late Ted Hughes, which had he not lunched so well he would have remembered that I quoted this morning. That gives him chapter and verse as to why the deer population on Exmoor was reduced. It was reduced because people stopped hunting on Exmoor. [Interruption.] Column Number: 006 The Chairman: Order. Will hon. Members please allow the hon. Gentleman to be heard? Mr. Swire: Thank you for your protection, Mrs. Roe. I quote: ''When the North Devon Staghounds''— which was the second of the packs— ''fizzled out in 1825, their small powers of protection went, and the deer population collapsed, just as surely as before. By 1850, it had fallen to about 50—most of them said to be maimed and peppered with gunshot wounds.'' I hope that answers the hon. Gentleman's question. The symbiotic relationship between hunter and hunted continues to this day and I would suggest that anybody who wishes to question that should pay a visit to the west country—to Exmoor—and look at the Baronsdown situation. The hon. Member for West Ham extended an invitation to some of us to go there—I hope that he would include me in that, because I would welcome the opportunity—to see whether the 30-odd sanctuaries, and some of them are very odd indeed, administered by the League Against Cruel Sports, are keeping their deer in the same way as they live on the rest of Exmoor. I have read reports about how deer are looked after in some of those places and I find the accusations worrying, so I would welcome an opportunity to go along myself to verify them. I turn to the question of the best way of dispatching an animal. If one has an animal's welfare at heart one must be aware that one is dispatching an animal in the most efficient and least cruel way. I do not believe that that is so in the case of deer shooting. I have never hunted deer on horseback, but I have shot deer in the highlands of Scotland—I have wounded a deer, I regret to say, and it is one of the most horrible feelings that one can possibly have, when the stalker turns to one and says, ''You have to go after it because you've wounded it.'' In hunting with hounds, be it of foxes or red deer, there is no middle way. If one hunts animals with hounds, one either kills the animal at the end of the hunt or it escapes. There is no question of its limping off into the undergrowth to die of gangrene or from attack by a predator—that simply does not happen. That is a key argument that the Bill has repeatedly failed to recognise and to address. In conclusion, the application of the principle of utility—we have to ignore by stricture of the Chairman the application of the principle of cruelty, which I question anyway—should send out some worrying signals to all those who partake in other so-called field sports. We spoke earlier about the incumbent chief executive of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Jackie Ballard. Ms Candy Atherton (Falmouth and Camborne): Oh. Mr. Swire: On behalf, no doubt, of all Conservative Members, I echo and identify with that groaning sound. Jackie Ballard now speaks for a discredited organisation with a relatively small membership compared with that of the Countryside Alliance. Column Number: 007 None the less, as we shall show, she has influence over the Committee in different ways. She is against angling, and thinks—but is not certain—that it is just about permissible to kill fish for food. I have no doubt that if the principles of utility were a criterion for the continuation of angling or fishing, those activities would be in real trouble. Likewise, the shooting fraternity should be nervous, but we will return to that later. Peter Bradley (The Wrekin): The hon. Gentleman said ''In conclusion.'' Mr. Swire: The hon. Gentleman will allow me to conclude in my own time, I hope. It would be useful if Committee members declared what contacts they have with outside bodies that may influence them. For my part, I am happy to declare on the record that I am a member of Countryside Alliance—indeed, it would be strange if I did not say so. When time has permitted, I have been out with the Mid-Devon foxhunts on Dartmoor. I have not done that for a few years, but I hope to do so again shortly to show my solidarity with them. I have hunted on and off since I was 17 or 18 years old, and have never witnessed any cruelty. I have always regarded hunting as a perfectly fair pastime, but I fully understand that there are those who do not. Equally, I realise that some members of the Committee are genuinely unhappy with hunting, and that not all hunts have always behaved perfectly. I am perfectly happy with the self-regulatory authorities that organisations have come up with. The Independent Supervisory Authority on Hunting provides an effective regime of self-regulation, as does the Masters of Foxhounds Association and the Masters of Deerhounds Association. However, I have changed my thinking: I originally voted for the status quo, but I am happy for hunting to be regulated in some way, if that is what the majority of the people of this country want. However, the people of this country, and all those who went to the trouble of writing to the Minister, testifying in Portcullis house, or writing—as I did—to the Burns committee, want to feel that the Minister is listening to the representations that are made to him. I have no hesitation in supporting the amendments, which would broaden the definition of utility. If the Minister is genuinely willing to reach a workable compromise that will satisfy all parties, he should listen to us, too. As my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames) says, why does the Minister have it in for hare coursing and stag hunting? If he is so convinced that the criterion of utility that he came up with in his deliberations will deal fairly and effectively with other forms of hunting with dogs, why does he not have the courage of his convictions, and widen ''utility'' to include those two types of hunting, and let them take their chances with the tribunal and registrar? Gregory Barker (Bexhill and Battle): If one accepts the premise of clause 8—that hunting with hounds must have a utility purpose if it is to continue—it is Column Number: 008 quite extraordinary that the considerable impact of foxhunting on our landscape, the flora and fauna of the countryside, and the rural communities that are its guardian, should not be taken into account in considering its utility. As legislators, we must, when picking over clauses and amendments, consider carefully the unintended, as well as the direct and intended, consequences of the Bill. The unintended consequences will be colossal. All too often in recent years, such unintended consequences have been the real hallmark of bad legislation emanating from Parliament. The unintended consequences of the Bill are almost unprecedented, whether it be the vixen mother of starving cubs being shot in the flash of a lamp or the decimation of the biodiversity in hunting areas. The amendments seek to recognise the profound, symbiotic relationship between the countryside and the foxhunts that range over it. Some of our most outstanding countryside—areas of outstanding natural beauty and sites of special scientific interest—particularly in lowland areas of England is, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Mr. Swire) said, a glorious artifice produced by generations, if not centuries, of human management and activity. Hunting hedgerows and covers, woodland, fences, coppices and meadows form part of the rural Arcadia, which we all cherish and admire. A ban, which would surely follow from the application of a narrowly drawn utility test, would pose a direct threat to the managed landscape of large parts of rural England. What so many hunting people resent is the inconsistency in the application of principles that underpin this Government policy, and others, towards rural England. They are deliberately discriminating against hunting and country people. In this instance, I am not referring to the singular failure of the Minister or any other member of the Committee to bring forth, in his chosen phrase, clear and persuasive clinical, scientific or veterinary evidence that shows that hunting with hounds materially inflicts more suffering than any other form of control. People particularly object to there being no evidence that the reverse is true. If that was not enough, what about the Government's commitment to ecological good governance and biodiversity, which extends to South America but not to East Sussex or other rural parts of Britain? Indeed, the unamended utility test's failure to give proper weight to the views and needs of local communities directly contradicts principle 22 of the 1992 Rio declaration on the environment and development, which states that ''Indigenous people and their communities and other local communities have a vital role in environmental management and development because of their knowledge and traditional practices. States should recognize and duly support their identity, culture and interests and enable their effective participation in the achievement of sustainable development.'' That goes to the heart of the past day's discussion. The United Kingdom has signed up to the principles and recommendations outlined in the Column Number: 009 United Nations sustainable development programme, Agenda 21, chapter 26 of which states that ''In full partnership with indigenous peoples and their communities, Governments and where appropriate intergovernmental organisations should aim at fulfilling the following objectives . . . Recognition that the lands of indigenous people and their communities should be protected from activities that are environmentally unsound or that the indigenous people concerned consider to be socially and culturally inappropriate . . . Recognition of their values, traditional knowledge and resource management practices with a view to promoting environmentally sound and sustainable development.''

©Parliamentary copyright 2003	Prepared 21 January 2003