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Mr. John Gummer (Suffolk, Coastal): Is it not at least conceivable that when an application is refused, the grounds on which it was refused may lead an animal welfare organisation to want the precedent to be looked into properly? Animal welfare bodies should be able to do that when they are on either side, or it will be like appeals against the procedures of the House of Commons being open only to the Labour party. Mr. Gray: My right hon. Friend makes an extremely good if delicate point. Labour Members might like to listen carefully to this. Where an application for registration is turned down on a general principle, one of the organisations that is trying to address that general principle might well want to apply to the tribunal. The same would apply where the tribunal turns down an appeal and the matter could be taken to the High Court on a point of law. Under those circumstances, the Countryside Alliance would, without question, want to take the matter to a court of law, but it would not be given the benefits provided for in the amendments of the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne. Clause 18 is entirely prejudicial and the hon. Lady's amendments are against the best interests of the applicant. Possibly—we will return to this crucial point under other groups of amendments—what the Minister said in Committee the other day gives a clue as to his thinking. He said:
Plainly, the Minister believes that there are animal welfare organisations on the one hand and that the Countryside Alliance, land managers and farmers are on the other; they are not animal welfare groups. There is a presumption in the Bill that so-called ''animal welfare groups'' will object to applications, while groups such as the Countryside Alliance, land managers and farmers will apply. The Minister has exposed the nakedness of his argument; the amendments would make the situation worse. Alun Michael: My sentence showed a much simpler distinction. On the one hand, there were organisations to which the hon. Gentleman has refused to listen; on the other, there was an indication that I was willing to Column Number: 509 listen to those that he listened to and to those that he did not. He ought to get that into his head; we have listened to everybody. He will listen only to those he chooses to listen to.Mr. Gray: The Minister makes a silly point. I am, of course, ready to listen to all sorts of people. Alun Michael: Ah, a change! Mr. Gray: It is not a change at all. Just yesterday, at my initiative—and thanks to the hon. Member for West Ham (Mr. Banks), who is no longer here—I accepted an invitation from the League Against Cruel Sports to visit the deer sanctuary. I have listened to all sorts of people. I was the only MP, aside from the Minister, who attended all of the three-day session in Portcullis house. The right hon. Gentleman has been harsh; it was an unfair accusation. The amendments would be severely prejudicial to one group of people—the applicants. They would be severely beneficial to the other group of people—the animal welfare groups that oppose hunting. If that is not the case, the Minister must tell us who the animal welfare groups are. Will they include people who are in favour of hunting? Mr. Luff: I am concerned about another issue, apart from the entirely accurate arguments of my hon. Friend. The tribunals set up a confrontational mechanism and the animal welfare bodies are there to take on the applicants. The amendment is unacceptable in those circumstances. There should be a corresponding amendment to allow the applicant to see everything that comes in writing from the animal welfare body to enable him to judge how he should conduct himself in front of the tribunal. Many people in the animal welfare world have links with the animal rights world that go beyond simple animal welfare. The documentation may contain addresses, telephone numbers or other means of identifying individuals that could put them at risk. If the Minister is minded to accept the amendment, he needs to propose suitable amendments—he might do so later, perhaps on Report—to give the tribunal the right to withhold information that it considers could put individuals at risk. Rob Marris: As is often the case in the Committee, the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) has a good point, but undercuts it by basing it on a misunderstanding. He has the kernel of a good point—representations made by animal welfare organisations, particularly if they oppose an application, should be made available to the applicants. That would, however, happen anyway under a registrar or tribunal procedure. Otherwise, the disappointed applicant would say, '' I did not get a chance to see representations that were made by an animal welfare organisation. I am going for a judicial review.'' He would be able to get that review on the Wednesbury principles. There is a kernel of truth in what the hon. Gentleman says, but he is misguided. Mr. Gray: Will the hon. Gentleman give way? Rob Marris: I will but, with respect, I do not think that the hon. Gentleman was listening. Column Number: 510 Mr. Gray: I want to be absolutely clear. The hon. Gentleman said that if the applicant were not happy, he could go to judicial review. Does he accept that the cost of judicial review will be well beyond most of the average farmers or users of dogs who will be turned down by the registrar? Rob Marris: My point was finer than that. The applicant may be disappointed, but if the registrar made a decision based on information partly from animal welfare organisations that had not been made available to the applicant, the applicant would be able to go to judicial review; the applicant would win and would get his or her costs. Mr. Luff: In law, the hon. Gentleman is probably right. However, that is a lawyer's view of the way in which the law operates and not a real-world view. In practice, most applicants would be deterred by the cost, time and expense involved. Many of those people are very poor individuals who do not have large sums of money at their disposal to conduct a judicial review and who would be intimidated by the process. Rob Marris: The hon. Gentleman talks about living in the real world, but the House of Commons is a law-making body and we are making law. What he says might be true of the first applicant in that position—for example, an applicant who did not see the documents from an animal welfare organisation, took the case to a judicial review and won. The second applicant would be unlikely to be in that position because subsequent registrars would say that the decision would be overturned on judicial review. Were that not to be the case, the second applicant would have a cast-iron case and would get their costs right away. Lembit Öpik: I hope that the hon. Gentleman is not suggesting that a small degree of injustice would be acceptable for the first applicant. Surely he recognises that small differences could make a big impact on the merits of particular cases. As my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff) pointed out, many applicants will be individuals, or representatives of small groups, who will not have the means to pay large sums. Rob Marris: I assure the hon. Gentleman that I am not suggesting small injustices are acceptable; that is why we have judicial review and the British legal system. Secondly, the hon. Member for North Wiltshire said that animal welfare organisations or bodies must oppose applications as a result of the structure of the Bill. Clause 17(2) states:
It does not in any way indicate that those representations must perforce be against that application; they may be in support of it. Mr. Gray: Which bodies does the hon. Gentleman believe these animal welfare organisations to be? Rob Marris: That is for the Minister to say later. I refer the hon. Gentleman to clause 11, which we have not got to yet. Column Number: 511 Mr. Gray: If we are talking about whether those people are in favour of hunting or are seeking to get it stopped, it is important that we have the hon. Gentleman's personal understanding of which groups these are. Rob Marris: My personal understanding may become clear during our debates on clause 11, but not during this debate. Alun Michael: The hon. Member for North Wiltshire has made a great to-do about this matter, but it is simple and straightforward. Under clause 17(2)(a), welfare bodies may make representations. There is nothing to say that those must be objections. The arrangement will ensure that the application is properly tested. The Bill is about eradicating cruelty and, clearly, the applicant will be in favour of the activity that he proposes. The mechanism that we have provided allows for representations, where appropriate. Those may be against; they may say why an application is not appropriate for registration under the terms of the Bill. Representations may state that certain conditions should apply to ensure that the principle of eradicating cruelty is observed. It may be said that the activity proposed by the applicant is preferable to the alternative, which might be poisoning or something with animal welfare implications. The point is that there is an animal welfare focus in the consideration, which fits well into our discussions about the responsibilities of mankind and the arguments of John Stuart Mill in that regard. The equivalent might be the way in which we ensure that there is a guardian ad litem to ask questions in court from the perspective of the interests of the child. We want to ensure that questions are asked and that, where appropriate, evidence is provided from the perspective of animal welfare. It is for the registrar or the tribunal to be independent, unbiased and objective in considering the evidence from the two sides.
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