Hunting Bill [back to previous text]

Rob Marris: I do. I have been listening carefully to the hon. and learned Gentleman's argument, and I thought that there was some merit in it, but he then used the illuminating example of child pornography. Obviously, he and I abhor it, but it is a useful example. If an image is produced illegally, whether 10 people or 11 download it, it is still being produced, but the 11th person none the less contributes to encouraging that production. The same is true of an attender. Mr. Garnier: The hon. Gentleman's argument has a spurious attraction, but on careful analysis it does not work. The pornographer—the person who creates the original pornographic image—makes money by permitting his material to be accessed by third parties. As I understand it from reading the newspapers, the third parties will have submitted their credit card numbers and been charged. There is a commercial exchange between the manufacturer and the viewer of pornography. I submit that those who organise hare coursing events do so irrespective of whether people will watch. They are there not to give pleasure to the watchers, but to test their dogs. The activity is entirely internal—people and dogs being tested against each other. Owner A with dog A competes against owner B with dog B. They can compete and perform that hare coursing event irrespective of whether there are bystanders and attenders. If people are simply watching—not participating or facilitating—and are not the owners of the land on which the event is taking place, they are not active or otherwise criminal participants in that event. Rob Marris: I realise that the Committee has other things to deal with, but, to continue the analogy, let us take the example of a child pornographer who gets pleasure from creating an image, perverted though that is, and decides to put it on the net so that others can get their perverted pleasure from it. He might decide not to charge them and let them download it for free over the internet. Would the person who downloaded that image for free be committing a criminal offence, or does the hon. and learned Gentleman think that it should not be a criminal offence to download a pornographic image of a child for free? Mr. Garnier: It should be an offence, because making child pornography, or any pornography, is grossly immoral and antisocial, and it warps the fabric of society. I want to draw a distinction between the hon. Gentleman's example and mine—a person watching a hare coursing event makes no difference whatever to the continuation of that activity in public. 9.15 am As I understand it, the pornographer, whether he charges or not, commits a criminal offence under the current law if he carries out his work in the United Kingdom. By making pornography available to the world, he does not criminalise an unwilling, accidental viewer—our friend in the pillow case—or a random surfer. I am in some doubt as to whether his making it available and the third party's watching it creates the necessary evidential relationship between the two of them, which contributes to such things as aiding and Column Number: 1018 abetting, counselling and procuring. There is a special difference between voluntary accessing and the commercial relationship, which is what pornography laws attempt to deal with. I know what the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West is arguing. He thinks that the evil is hare coursing and we must stamp out anything that permits or encourages people to watch it, because by watching it, one is encouraging people to put on such events. As I see it, the evil of hare coursing in the Government's eyes is the event itself. Hare coursing is something for the benefit of the dog owner. It is not put on as a spectator sport. People may happen to watch it and derive great pleasure from it, but that is not its purpose. The purpose of hare coursing is to test one dog against another. The purpose of manufacturing pornography is to get perverted pleasure out of not only making the film, but placing it in a wider public arena; probably an international arena. Mr. Gummer: Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that the two activities are so widely disparate in terms of immorality that the parallel is perhaps not sensible? I fear that he may have made it himself in the first place. I find it incredible that anybody should ever compare the two activities because that suggests that there is some kind of moral equality between them. The issue that links them is that if the Bill becomes law, both activities will be illegal. The difference is that someone can very easily come upon an illegal activity in the countryside in circumstances in which it might take some time for them to understand the illegality of that activity. Therefore, is it not reasonable to say that the common law provides all the situations one needs to distinguish between a person who attends in order to aid and abet and a person who happens to fall among thieves? Mr. Garnier: I agree with pretty much everything my right hon. Friend says and I accept the blame for introducing the example of pornography. I was using it as a simple, if disgusting, analogy in order to get the point across. I know that my right hon. Friend is a man of rather greater intellect than me and is able to give examples that are more exact. Rob Marris: Will the hon. and learned Gentleman give way? Mr. Garnier: May I just move on? The Chairman: I was wondering whether we had had enough analogies— Rob Marris rose— The Chairman: I am not anticipating the hon. Gentleman's intervention; I am simply making an observation about analogies. The point has been made very clearly. Mr. Garnier: If the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West does not mind, I want to round off this limb of my argument by using another example. It is an offence to rob a bank and it would be entirely right for the law to say that a person commits an offence if he participates in a bank robbery or knowingly facilitates a bank robbery. I have my doubts about whether permitting land that belongs to me to be used for the purpose of a bank Column Number: 1019 robbery could be included, but that might be part of participating. Mr. Peter Luff (Mid-Worcestershire): A lock-up garage? Mr. Garnier: My hon. Friend refers to a lock-up garage, which might be used after the event. I cannot believe that the House of Commons would pass a law making it an offence if someone attended a bank robbery. Let us assume that Mrs. Jones is in the high street bank in Cardiff, South when a local bank robbery gang comes in and says, ''This is a stick up.'' No one would suggest that the people queuing to cash their cheques or pay them in were attending a bank robbery and should be arrested for attending that bank robbery. Mr. Gummer: My hon. and learned Friend would have a better case if he referred to someone who was passing the bank and decided that it would be worthwhile watching the robbery. That is exactly equivalent to the offence in the Bill. No one would be arrested for watching a bank robbery. If I saw a bank robbery take place and could do nothing about it, I might ring the police, but I do not think that I would then go away. I think I would find it worthwhile to watch it and I do not understand how I could be arrested for that. Mr. Garnier: My right hon. Friend anticipates me because I was going to move on to affray or riot. The Chairman: Order. I am a little worried that the Chair will end up in a lock-up garage in a moment. I am sure that the Committee does not want that. It is legitimate to draw comparisons, but I wonder whether the hon. and learned Gentleman has not made enough. Mr. Garnier: If you are unfortunate enough, Mr. Stevenson, to end up in a lock-up garage during our proceedings, we will let you know when the party is over. I submit that it is legitimate during any Committee stage to test the Government's ideas by ridicule or by cogent argument—I agree that they are not always the same—and, if possible, to test them to destruction. The example of attending a bank robbery is certainly destructive if not wholly destructive of the Government's case. The example given by my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) is also destructive. I want to move on to riot or affray. I am afraid that affrays take place outside many pubs in inner cities in England and Wales on most Fridays and Saturdays. Many people who are in the street or the pub when the trouble begins could be said, in the language of clause 7, to be attending that riot or affray. However, in my submission, someone must be actively engaged in the event—the riot or affray—to be caught by the criminal law. The police cannot go around with a large net and arrest everyone on a field because they are attending a hare coursing event and must be subjected to the rigour of the criminal law; a fine up to level 5, perhaps imprisonment, perhaps the confiscation of their dogs if they happen to have dogs on a lead and Column Number: 1020 perhaps the confiscation of their car that brought them to that event. You will be pleased to hear, Mr. Stevenson, that that part of the party is over and we are now moving on to amendment No. 11. We can make faster progress with that because some of the arguments relating to it have been argued on an earlier occasion. Amendment No. 11 would delete clause 7(1)(d): the offence of a person permitting his land to be used for the purposes of a hare coursing event. Clause 4(1) refers to the offence of assisting in hunting, and under that provision the permitter has to knowingly permit. In clause 7(1)(d), one does not have to knowingly permit that land to be used. I do not know whether that omission is by accident, or on purpose. I like to give the Government the benefit of the doubt from time to time, and I assume that it has been left out deliberately. I want to know why there is a difference between what is required in terms of the state of knowledge of the owner of the land in clause 4(1) and that of the owner of the land in clause 7(1)(d). In any event, we submit—as we did in relation to clause 4—that the offence is unnecessary because of the arguments I deployed in relation to common law secondary liability. We know what the definition of ''land which belongs'' means from clause 45. We may yet have further discussions on what ''belongs'' means and whether that is too widely drawn. It seems to me that existing common law already adequately deals with allowing land to be used for an offence if the owner of the land falls within the necessary constituent parts of aiding, abetting, procuring and so on. It is not clear in subsection (d) whether one has to know or intend for the offences outlined immediately above to be committed. If a landowner thinks he is letting people use his land for lawful activities but an offence is committed, is that landowner guilty? I discussed that with the Minister when we talked about a successful defence under clause 5, and the bearing that that would have on a person being prosecuted under clause 4(1). After some hesitation and with the help of his hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West, he came up with an answer; if one were acquitted under clause 5, one would also be acquitted under clause 4, because one cannot criminally assist in the performance of a non-criminal act. That may be something that we could write many essays about in due course. It is pertinent to ask what permit means. The strength of the need for that question to be answered flows from the absence of the word ''knowingly''. Does the permission have to be given actively, or will failure to prevent the act when it is within one's power to prevent it be sufficient? The Bill does not tell us. How are people to know whether they have discharged, or ought to discharge, the duty imposed by the word ''permit'' so as to avoid committing a crime? It appears that subsection (d) places responsibility on the landowner for taking steps to ensure that anyone lawfully on his land does not conduct competitive coursing. That may require the owner of the land—and I use the expression ''owner of the land'' in the wider sense of clause 45—to trail every Column Number: 1021 person he permits to enter on to his land, to ensure that he is not committing an offence. I am not sure whether you were here at the outset of our discussion, Mr. Stevenson, when I was discussing my farming friend from the Norfolk and Cambridgeshire borders. If need be, I can send you the Hansard so that you can read all about it. That farmer had been threatened by gangs of illegal coursers and decided to do a deal with an organised coursing club to allow the use of his land for hare coursing. Under the Bill, if he allows those people to come back on to his land, he will have to follow them around to ensure that they do not commit an illegal act at any stage. If he does not, he will be accused of permitting land that belongs to him to be used for a hare coursing event. 9.30 am Others may knock on his door and say, ''Hello Mr. Farmer, would you mind awfully if I took my dogs for a walk across your land?'' He may have half an inkling that the dogs are long dogs not poodles and that the sort of walk that the people are intent on having has something to do with the coursing of game. They may well be intent upon organising or participating in a hare coursing event. Of course he can say no, and they may just thank him and leave, but experience might tell him that they do not look like the sort of people who will take no for an answer. Will he then have to follow them into the fields and monitor their every activity to ensure that they do not commit a clause 7 offence that would place him in breach of clause 7(1)(d)? Subsection (1) is full of practical and evidential difficulties and will create further work for the hard-pressed farming community and the hard-pressed rural police. It will have no public benefit to counterweigh those disbenefits. I suggest, as I am sure that many in this Room and outside will agree, that it is sufficient simply to outlaw hare coursing events. In conclusion, the intention behind clause 7—we may discuss this further under clause stand part—seems to be to round up the usual suspects, clobber and antagonise the rural and field sports communities and make those people feel like pariahs in their own country. We are talking about people who have lived and worked on or near the land in question for most of their lives. Yet overnight, once clause 7 comes into law unamended, they will find themselves turned from law-abiding citizens into criminals, in danger of losing their sport, their dogs, their vehicles and huge sums of money in fines and legal costs. If the Government are to gain public acceptance of clause 7(1)(b) and (d), they have a hell of a lot of explaining to do. I look forward to hearing that.

©Parliamentary copyright 2003	Prepared 13 February 2003