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Column Number: 761
Standing Committee F
Tuesday 4 February 2003
(Afternoon)
[Mr. George Stevenson in the Chair]
Clause 2
Registered hunting
2.30 pm
Mr. Tony Banks (West Ham): On a point of order, Mr. Stevenson. I was absent from the Committee last week, attending the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. My attention has been drawn to references to me made in the Committee on 28 January. Notice of the intention of the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) to make those references did not arrive in my office until after I had left for Strasbourg, despite the fact that the quoted letter from Stanley Johnson was sent to him on 17 December 2002.
I probably receive more letters on animal welfare issues than any other Member, other than Ministers. That has been the case since 1983. It is true that the International Fund for Animal Welfare provided funding for a research assistant in my office from 1991. That was declared in the Register of Members' Interests every year, and to the Inland Revenue. That support ceased when I became a Minister in 1997 and I have not sought any renewal of it. My involvement with a wide range of animal welfare organisations is one of the worst kept secrets in Parliament. I am proud of those links and have never sought to hide them.
I deeply resent any suggestion that my support for animal welfare arises from a financial consideration, or that I have failed to register any financial support. The hon. Member for North Wiltshire has now written to the Commissioner for Parliamentary Standards. I have spoken to Sir Philip and received a copy of the letter that he sent to the hon. Gentleman. I shall obviously not quote from that letter, but suffice it to say that the clear imputation is that the hon. Gentleman should put up or shut up. I endorse that, because if the hon. Gentleman thinks I will let the matter rest, he is sadly mistaken.
As for Stanley Johnson's letter, I have referred it to my solicitors, since it has been made available to the public and press and is not covered by parliamentary privilege. Johnson's letter makes allegations that I know to be untrue and believe to be damaging. The letter that the hon. Member for North Wiltshire wrote to the Commissioner, dated 27 January—the day before he raised the matter in this Committee—referred to ''undeclared donations''. He must now know that that is untrue. It is for others to judge whether Stanley Johnson or I have made the greater contribution to the cause of animal welfare. I understand that Johnson has received a salary from IFAW of between £70,000 and £80,000 a year for 15 years. That sum is not unadjacent to £1 million. I wonder how many of IFAW's members know that one of its most highly paid employees was such an
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enthusiastic supporter of hunting. I hope only that Johnson has managed to save something from that £1 million, because he is going to need it.
The Chairman: Order. I tried to be patient with the hon. Gentleman's point of order because, clearly, this is an issue in which he has been directly referred to as a Member. I think that the point of order has now been well exercised.
Mr. James Gray (North Wiltshire): Further to that point of order, Mr. Stevenson. I have two points to make. First, I wrote to the hon. Member for West Ham (Mr. Banks) before I made that point in the Committee. The fact that he had left early, or that his office did not pass his letter on to him, is not a matter for me. I took great care to ensure that he was warned in advance and I apologise for the fact that he did not get the letter.
Secondly, I am delighted to accept his vehement denials of the allegations made against him. The press and others will no doubt notice his denials. However, the point that I made in Committee was that £1 million had been donated by IFAW to the Labour party and that it was paying that back under this Bill.
The Chairman: Order. Neither of those points is a point of order. I must maintain the credibility of the Chair. Hon. Members have put what they wanted to say on the record.
Amendment proposed [this day]: No. 93, in
clause 2, page 1, line 14, at end insert 'and'.—[Mr. Gray.]
Question again proposed, That the amendment be made.
The Chairman: I remind the Committee that with this we are discussing the following:
Amendment No. 76, in
clause 2, page 1, line 18, leave out from 'place' to end of line 20.
The Minister for Rural Affairs and Urban Quality of Life (Alun Michael): The right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), who commented on the amendment, is not in his place at the moment. He explained to me that he would be unable to be here at the start of this sitting, because he had to deal with a constituency matter. I have therefore explained to him what I shall now explain to the Committee, which will, I hope, clear up some of the misapprehensions that have led to certain comments.
I draw the Committee's attention to clause 28(5), which concerns the record-keeping requirements for people hunting under the authority of group registrations. Such records must be retained by the hunters for six months beyond the duration of the registration. There is absolutely no question of the information being passed to the registrar or put in the public domain. It is clear exactly how long that information has to be retained. The records do not go to the registrar or tribunal, but the hunt may choose to rely on them when challenged, for example for failure to comply with the conditions of registration, or when a query is raised as to whether a particular individual has undertaken activity within the context of that registration or under the supervision of one of the registered hunters. The records cover only hunt
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participants—those who hunt—and not casual hunt followers, who are merely observing, not hunting.
I hope that that makes the purpose of that measure clear. It is for the protection of those involved. It makes quite clear who can rely on the protection of the law because they are hunting legitimately, under the protection of registration, and, by implication, who is not hunting legitimately. It has been suggested that someone unfriendly to those undertaking an activity might pretend to be part of the group in order to spoil that activity or imply that something was being done in breach of the registration conditions. The system here is far from being, as one hon. Member suggested, extraordinarily bureaucratic; we have a very simple, light-touch requirement, which will protect individuals and achieve certainty about what is taking place.
Amendment No. 76 would remove the requirement for a record to be made of the identity of the persons involved on each occasion that hunting is carried out in reliance of group registration. That would not make sense and would undermine the simple, straightforward system. Clause 28 sets out the automatic conditions to which group registration is subject, for example, that
''any wild mammal injured or captured is killed quickly''.
Clause 28(5) requires the maintaining of the record, as I have said. It would be nonsense to have no record of who was hunting in reliance of registration on any particular occasion. Amendment No. 93 is, of course, a consequential amendment.
I hope that, for those reasons, the hon. Member for North Wiltshire will not seek to press his amendment.
Mr. Gray: Given that the Bill is about animal welfare, as everyone keeps saying, I have no idea why a hunt keeping a record of the people hunting on a particular Saturday for six months and then destroying it improves or worsens the animal welfare aspect. It seems to me that it achieves nothing at all.
I do, however, take some comfort from the Minister's response. First, he said that it is the hunt that will keep the records. That is not all that clear in clause 28(5), even from a careful reading, but I take some comfort from it. Secondly, he has made it clear that the people who are supposed to be registered are those taking part in the hunt, namely the master of the huntsmen and the people controlling the dogs. There is no necessity at all to keep a note on the field—the followers, the observers, or the people who like to spectate as at a football match. That is a great comfort and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Mr. Gray: I beg to move amendment No. 92, in
clause 2, page 2, line 1, at end insert 'and'.
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: Amendment No. 71, in
clause 2, page 2, line 5, leave out from 'place' to end of line 7.
Mr. Gray: The amendment would remove the requirement that the number of people who hunt for someone else who is subject to an individual
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registration must not be higher than two. Under the Bill, no more than two people may go hunting with someone who is registered. If the Bill is about animal welfare, what purpose is there in saying that only two people can hunt with a registered individual rather than three, four or six? It is clear that the provision could not be extended to cover 50 or 100 people because that would be a group registration, but in terms of an individual registration there are plenty of circumstances in which one can imagine that more than three people would go out with dogs to hunt. Gamekeepers, for example, could get together with their dogs, which is a perfectly normal activity, and that would amount to more than two or three people.
The truth is that the restriction, which is designed to prevent hunting, fails to take account of the practical realities on the ground. If two people who were individually registered met up they would be all right, but if one of them met up with three of their mates, they would not be all right. There are all kinds of circumstances in which two or three people might get together and cause an offence by walking through a wood with their dogs. That would be absurd because the provision would pick up lots of people who should not be prosecuted under the Bill. I hope that the Minister will consider the amendments and drop those onerous and unnecessary restrictions.
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