Hunting Bill [back to previous text]

Alun Michael: The hon. and learned Gentleman is misinterpreting what I said, which is not unusual. Mr. Garnier: Let us not have an argument. Let us not be rude. I wish the Minister would try to assist the Committee instead of being pompous. Alun Michael: It is not possible—[Interruption.] The hon. and learned Gentleman should calm down. [Interruption.] The Chairman: Order. We are 15 minutes into the Committee. Can we all cool down and choose our language a little more carefully? Alun Michael: It is not possible to commit a clause 4 offence unwittingly. The hon. and learned Gentleman is trying to suggest that a person could accidentally commit an offence, but that is not possible under the clause as drafted. The landowner must know that the hunter intends to hunt unlawfully. If the landowner believes that hunting will be lawful, he or she is not committing an offence under the clause if the hunting is carried out unlawfully. There is a duty not to commit a crime oneself. That is the duty that the landowner is obliged to fulfil; the landowner must make sure that he does not commit the clause 4 offence. Mr. Peter Luff (Mid-Worcestershire): I hope that the Minister can give me some comfort on this point. Column Number: 911 What happens if someone is intimidated by, for example, illegal hare coursers into giving permission? Will he then be guilty of an offence? Alun Michael: One thing that is clear is that if people were undertaking intimidation, they would be committing an offence. I would expect that the intimidated person would take legal advice on their position. I am not going to give free advice at the moment because legal advice that I gave would not be worth the paper that it was written on. But clearly, in that situation, the person undertaking the intimidation would be committing the offence. I should think that the focus of police activity, in those circumstances, would be on the intimidator. Mr. Luff: Such situations are a little grey when it comes to practice. Will the Minister focus on whether the police might, in that situation, pursue a prosecution under the clause? There might be a real risk of that. Alun Michael: I do not think that there would be. Clearly, in such circumstances, the first obligation on the police would be to discover what had been going on. The offences of intimidation by illegal hare coursers that have taken place so far are a particularly unpleasant blight on the countryside. They should be tackled. Mr. Gray: In the spirit of co-operation that you have enjoined upon us, Mr. Stevenson, perhaps I can help the Minister out of his hole. The answer to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff) is that the clause refers to someone who ''knowingly permits land'' to be used. Presumably, if intimidation were used to gain access to that land, the landowner would not be knowingly permitting it. It is the word ''permits'' that is important. If I have no option, I am not permitting something. Is that not correct? Alun Michael: I think that the hon. Gentleman is correct. That is why I said that everything would depend on the circumstances and that people might be wise to obtain legal advice. Intimidation could amount to duress, which is what the hon. Gentleman is suggesting. Andrew George: Will the Minister give way? Alun Michael: In one moment. Duress may amount to a defence, depending on the facts of the case. If someone said, ''Oh, they shouted at me a bit'' and used that as an excuse for giving permission for something that was an offence, that would not be a successful defence. That is why I hesitate to give an absolute answer to the question that the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire asked. However, if there were intimidation that caused someone to feel significantly under duress, I should think that the police would focus very much on the intimidation. It would all depend on the circumstances of the case. Andrew George: Does not the Minister accept that intimidation can happen on the basis of reputation rather than because of actual intimidation? A landowner might feel intimidated even though he had not been, and think that he needs to be seen to give permission. Column Number: 912 I should like clarification on one point. Where the clause says ''land which belongs'' to someone, where does that leave tenant farmers who make separate decisions on behalf of landowners? Alun Michael: On the latter point, I believe that I am right in saying that that refers to the occupier of the land, meaning the tenant. Clause 45(3) says: ''For the purposes of this Act land belongs to a person if he— (a) owns an interest in it, (b) manages or controls it, or (c) occupies it.'' That confirms my answer to the hon. Member for St. Ives (Andrew George). Intimidation would have to be very strong to amount to duress, so there would have to be an element of testing the extent to which it had taken place. On the other hand, I am aware that intimidation occurs, as I have mentioned. We should like to see greater clarity on what can and cannot be done to make it more difficult for people to intimidate householders, farmers and landowners. The problem has proved difficult to tackle for a number of years, which is why I made great play in an earlier sitting of the fact that the Bill will, among other things, greatly clarify the law and assist the police in eradicating a particular nuisance in many parts of the countryside. I understand the points that hon. Members are making, but they are only looking at one side of the equation. 9.15 am One also must look at the other side of the equation, which concerns illegal activities being tolerated or positively encouraged. We must make sure that the law is enforceable. The clause gets the balance right and I commend it to the Committee. Lembit Öpik: I am very concerned about the matter because although the word ''expressly'' might make the law more difficult to enforce, it would also make it fairer on tenants and landowners. If a landowner knew that he would be punished for having knowledge, he could be taken to court for a sin of omission. In other words, he could be taken to court for not preventing something from occurring rather than for actively violating the Bill. The Minister's assessment that there must be heavy duress would relate to possible court cases. He said that duress would have to be severe, but I am concerned that landowners will be required to police the Bill, which is not fair. One can imagine a farmer and his family out in the sticks seeing a car with a few lads and a couple of dogs in it. He goes over and the lads say, ''We are just going to go rabbiting. What are you going to do about it?'' The farmer thinks about the property and the fact that his wife is often alone in the house. He knows that there has been a spate of break-ins and damage to property in the area. Although he is sure that the lads will go hare coursing, he concludes that it is not worth the candle of exposing his family to the danger and therefore lets the matter pass. We know that such situations happen and I do not see why the Bill will make them less likely. If clause 4 is not amended, more individuals will end up technically in breach of the law. Swapping Column Number: 913 ''expressly'' for ''knowingly'' will make it more difficult to enforce the clause, but that is simply because it will take the pressure of landowners. I have had two other thoughts. First, the occupier of the land may indeed be responsible for enforcing clause 4, but I can imagine circumstances in which a tenant sees their landlord conducting those activities. The landlord may gamble that the tenant will not do much about it because of the consequences for the tenancy. The word ''expressly'' would be more useful in that situation than ''knowingly''. Secondly, in our efforts to get the Bill right, we must always bear in mind the need to ensure that natural justice is not violated. I hope that the Minister will reconsider his position, which, although I am not a lawyer, gives me the impression that the onus for enforcement is shifting from the arm of the law to the arm of the individual who happens to own the land. Mr. Garnier: If I may say so, the hon. Gentleman is entirely right. One does not have to be a lawyer to spot unfairness. Indeed, it often helps if one is not a lawyer. If ever I have seen unfairness in a piece of legislation, it is in this one. If ever I have heard an inadequate explanation for unfairness, it was the one from the Minister. We should be very careful about what we are doing. The hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) fully appreciates the needs and difficulties of people who live in remote rural areas and come under the clause 45(3) definitions. Many people occupy land but do not have the same say over what happens on it as someone who manages, controls or owns it. For example, a landlord's agent may apply pressure on an impecunious farming tenant to allow or not allow a particular activity. It is unrealistic for the Minister and those who drafted the Bill not to bear in mind those everyday facts of life in the rural parts of our country. Lembit Öpik: Does the hon. and learned Gentleman agree that it is not realistic to think that such individuals would be able to phone up and ask for legal advice on how they might get off the hook in a court of law? Mr. Garnier: That is no more realistic than expecting someone to ring up the registrar and put in an application for a licence to hold a field trial, go mink hunting or participate in any of the activities that we have discussed. The Bill is full of unrealities. It is full of assertions and requirements that place a burden on the individual that should be placed on the state, if the Bill is to become part of criminal law. We can see precisely what will happen if clause 4 is not amended. As the hon. Gentleman said, the burden of policing this aspect of the Bill will fall upon the individual occupier of the land, because there are not enough policemen in rural areas to control such behaviour. We have heard the Minister say on many occasions that the good thing about banning hare coursing is that the lives of policemen will become much easier, in that they will be able to stop people coursing. That is pie in the sky. We all know that policemen are thin on the ground in rural areas. As I Column Number: 914 said at the beginning of our deliberations, there are often only two or three policemen covering an area of several hundred square miles in my constituency on Friday or Saturday evenings. The so-called animal welfare groups—there are many more individuals who belong to such groups than there are policemen—will be whizzing around checking up on occupiers of land, whether tenants, owners or managers, to ensure that no one is carrying out ''hunting'' that does not comply with the law. If someone is doing so, they will be on the wrong end of a private prosecution. This is perhaps the most unattractive part of the entire Bill. It wholly fails to consider what goes on outside urban Labour land or to understand that people are perfectly willing to obey an Act of Parliament that has public consent. Last autumn, 400,000-plus people came to London to demonstrate their refusal to be bullied in such a manner. Why should they be bullied to carry out the duties of the state, the police or other people when they are trying to earn a very miserable crust in extremely difficult circumstances? The Bill is reprehensible, and the clause even more so. Before the Minister accuses me of being pompous, perhaps he would like to meet some of those people. [Interruption.] Perhaps he should meet the people who may face such prosecutions. It is all very well for him to sit in his ministerial office or to look at the countryside through the back window of his limousine. There is much more happening out there than the Minister realises, and it is high time that he went out and had a look.

©Parliamentary copyright 2003	Prepared 11 February 2003