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Standing Committee F
Thursday 30 January 2003
(Afternoon)
[Mrs. Marion Roe in the Chair]
Clause 24
Standard duration of registration
Amendment proposed [this day]: No. 271, in
clause 24, page 9, line 18, leave out from 'effect' to 'as' in line 20 and insert—
'(a) unless and until such time as the licensee may be shown to the satisfaction of the registrar to have breached its terms, or
(b) for such period'.—[Mr. Gray.]
2.30 pm
Question again proposed, That the amendment be made.
The Chairman: I remind the Committee that with this we are discussing the following:
Amendment No. 177, in
clause 24, page 9, line 19, leave out 'three years' and insert 'six months'.
Amendment No. 321, in
clause 24, page 9, line 19, leave out 'years' and insert 'months'.
Government amendment No. 333.
Amendment No. 230, in
Amendment No. 322, in
clause 25, page 9, line 25, leave out 'years' and insert 'months'.
Government amendment No. 334.
Amendment No. 231, in
Before I call Mr. Pickthall to resume his speech, I should tell the Committee that I am not minded to allow a separate debate on clause stand part.
Mr. Colin Pickthall (West Lancashire): In the one sentence that I managed to get in before half-time, I referred to the speech made by the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), who has been good enough to let me know that he cannot be here for the early part of this sitting.
Mr. James Gray (North Wiltshire): The hon. Gentleman calls attention to the absence of my right hon. Friend. We are thin on the ground on this side of the Committee as my colleagues have decided that the debate in the House on humanitarian aid to Iraq is more important than a debate on hunting with hounds, but they will join us as soon as they can.
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Mr. Pickthall: I fully understand that the right hon. Gentleman has good and genuine reasons for not being here. In any case, I shall not say anything unpleasant about him. In trying to counter the arguments of my hon. Friends the Members for Worcester (Mr. Foster) and for Weaver Vale (Mr. Hall), he said more than once that they did not trust the registrar. However, I hope that he and other Committee members support the thrust of amendments Nos. 230 and 231, which would give the registrar and tribunal greater control over the duration of a registration and thus enable us to express our confidence in them. I am speaking to the amendments on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Judy Mallaber), who has been unavoidably detained in her constituency by the boundary commission.
Clause 24 gives the registrar no powers to specify duration of less than three years, as laid out in paragraph (a). The matter would be entirely in the hands of the applicant, but it is hard to imagine that many applicants for registration would apply for a period of less than the maximum. In effect, three years will become the norm if the clause is not amended. The amendments would give the registrar and the tribunal discretion to grant registration for a shorter period.
I was vastly entertained by this morning's contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale. Like him and many other Members, I do not have a dog, and I am determined never to have one following my alarming experiences of his dogs in the past, which I shall not go into. I suggest to my hon. Friend that amendments Nos. 230 and 231 would make a rational apportionment of time possible without bogging down the registrar or tribunal with repeat applications.
My hon. Friend rightly applied the test of utility to clause 24. If an applicant was seeking registration to clear up a particular infestation, for example, he might reasonably need a season or two, or perhaps a few months. We cannot say, without knowing the particular circumstances. If, however, the applicant was seeking registration, taking into account clause 8, to protect, say, growing timber or to ensure an area's biological diversity, three years might well be reasonable. The amendments would place trust in the registrar to negotiate with applicants and judge the appropriate necessary duration for each registration.
Amendment No. 271, which leads this group and stands in the name of the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray), would, in effect, extend the time scale indefinitely and keep it entirely in the discretion of the successful applicant until he
''may be shown . . . to have breached its terms''.
I am reminded of the skills deployed by experienced practitioners of the filibuster, who can keep that activity going indefinitely while staying just in order. We on this side have long been admirers of the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) in that regard. Should amendment No. 271 be agreed, he might well be able to set up as a consultant to the hunting industry on how to keep registration going indefinitely.
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Mr. Gray: That is a good point. The hon. Gentleman is right in saying that my right hon. Friend is very good at filibustering, but we are talking about a hunt carrying out the terms and details of the registration to the letter and complying with the terms of the Bill to the letter. Even if it got very close to the edge, if it stayed within the law, its activities would be lawful.
Mr. Pickthall: Indeed, and amendment No. 271 would enable such activities to continue indefinitely, provided that the hunt kept within the terms of the law.
Having made those points, I recognise that Government amendments Nos. 333 and 334 will effectively achieve the same end. Obviously, we do not want two sets of amendments doing the same thing, as that would be silly. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Minister will make that clear, so I do not want to push amendments Nos. 230 and 231 any further.
Mr. Edward Garnier (Harborough): The hon. Member for Weaver Vale, who spoke this morning, thought to disarm us by saying that amendment No. 321 is probing. It may well be that all he meant was that he would not push it to a vote, unless someone else forced that on him. That amendment is not probing in the proper sense of the word, however. It is a shot across the Government's bows to make them realise that the vast majority of Labour Members in the House of Commons disapprove of the Bill and the mechanics, of which the clause is but one example, that it provides.
Looking at amendment No. 177, which stands in the name of the hon. Member for Worcester, and amendment No. 321, we see that nine Labour Members of Parliament consider the Government's proposals in clause 24 unsatisfactory. That is because those Members are total banners who do not think that one can compromise in any way with those of us on the other side of the argument or that the status quo should be allowed to continue.
This bodged Bill is an attempt to achieve a compromise between the two extreme positions, but that attempt is clearly not satisfactory to the proposers of amendments Nos. 177 and 321. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal said this morning, we fool ourselves if we think that the motive behind those amendments is anything other than a desire to let the Government know that they are in trouble.
When we consider the Bill on Report on the Floor of the House, a proposal along the lines of a total ban will be moved. It is but the vanguard of that argument that we are now seeing. We know that, below the horizon, the massed ranks of the parliamentary Labour party are girding themselves for the tabling of an amendment far more explicit than the so-called probing amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Weaver Vale.
The hon. Gentleman at least had the decency to blush during my right hon. Friend's remarks, because he knew that he and his motives had been exposed.
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Unfortunately, the Minister could not see him, because he was facing the other way.
This is an absurd attempt to destroy the Bill. The views of the nine Members of Parliament who have put their names to amendments Nos. 177 and 321 are well known, but what causes me even more concern is the cavalier attitude that lies behind the amendments and those that are similar to them. Earlier, we discussed the administrative logjam that would be bound to occur if either amendment were agreed. If one considers how many hunting organisations there are and how many licence applications there are bound to be when the Bill becomes law, and adds on to that the problem of the registrar having to review applications every three or six months, one sees that the realistic prospect is that he would not reach a conclusion on many of the applications. Of course, that is entirely in line with the intentions of the total ban brigade. They do not want the registrar to complete his work satisfactorily; they want him to be held up with continual applications and a continual paper chase.
Rob Marris (Wolverhampton, South-West): There is a contradiction in the hon. and learned Gentleman's argument. Is he aware of clause 51(3)(b), which will allow hunting to continue while an application is being processed? His argument about clogging up the system is entirely wrong.
Mr. Garnier: I am sorry if I did not make myself clear. I am talking about not the process of hunting, but the process whereby the registrar would deal with the applications in front of him. If the licensing system becomes permanently engaged and the registrar has to consider new applications every three months, which will mean that he must consider the next decision before finalising the preceding one to achieve a consecutive period of licensed hunting, he will be fully engaged in opening letters and replying to them. He will not be reaching conclusions.
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