Hunting Bill [back to previous text]

Andrew George (St. Ives): I shall be as brief as I can in speaking to amendment No. 316. I listened carefully to the various analogies, distasteful or otherwise, that the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) used in support of amendment No. 10. I look forward to the Minister's response to clarify that. We should agree on the need to ascertain that those who attended an event, whether or not they were just passing by, had not been duped into believing that Column Number: 1022 they were attending something legal, or at least that they had no criminal intent. The amendment would ensure that the Minister does not pass into legislation something that he may not intend. Clause 7 would criminalise the person who permitted his land to be used for hare coursing. There is legal uncertainty about what constitutes ''permitted''. As the Committee heard, in many parts of the country farmers have been victims of unauthorised hare coursing by gangs and in some cases of serious physical assault. We must protect them from prosecution where they have not given permission for their land to be used, but have prudently not attempted to prevent it from being commandeered. Amendment No. 316 would introduce the concept of ''knowingly permits'' into the clause and would offer innocent occupiers some protection. I am sure that the Minister does not want farmers whose land is forcibly commandeered by hare coursers to be inadvertently criminalised. If he is not prepared to accept the amendment, I hope that he can be persuaded to consider the matter with a view to tabling an amendment at a later stage. As the hon. and learned Member for Harborough said, the expression ''knowingly permits'' is used in clause 4(1) on the same page. As he said, the Minister must make it clear why ''permit'' is used in clause 7, but ''knowingly permits'' in clause 4. Is he saying that a higher order of permission applies to clause 4, involving active consent, whereas ''permit'' in clause 7 implies passive acquiescence? The Minister for Rural Affairs and Urban Quality of Life (Alun Michael): It may help the hon. Gentleman if I point out that there is a difference between permitting land to be used for activities, some of which would be legal, so there could be a doubt in the landowner's mind, and permitting it to be used for hare coursing, because there will be no legal hare coursing. That is the distinction. Andrew George: I am grateful for that clarification, but that does not justify the removal of the word ''knowingly'' in relation to hare coursing. The Government must make it clear that active consent is involved and not passive acquiescence or backing down in the face of threats. Mr. Garnier: That is the point. The difference between active and passive permission is the difference between saying ''Yes, of course you can. Feel free.'' and putting a telescope up to Nelson's eye. There are any number of variations of permission, which the hon. Gentleman and I would understand in an ordinary English conversation, but which, when one is creating statute law that extends criminal law, we must be much more precise about. Andrew George: That is helpful. The Minister should take on board the genuine concern of landowners, tenants and those who manage land that land may be used without their permission being given in the sense that the Committee understands it—in other words, genuine, active consent from people, knowingly understanding that the activity will be illegal and that they are colluding by permitting it to take place. The Bill does not make it sufficiently clear Column Number: 1023 that a landowner is protected if they feel threatened or have not understood, if there is an element of passive acquiescence or if an activity is taking place on their land about which they do not know. Despite the Minister's intervention, the level of proof of permission given is just as important under clause 7 as it is under clause 4. On the remainder of the amendment, I accept that at the time that I tabled it, I had not made the connection with clause 45(3), in which the word ''belongs'' is defined. Although the amendment provides a belt and braces for the important definition of ''belongs'', I still urge the Minister carefully to look at the definition of ''permission'' and to accept that tenant farmers and those who manage land on which illegal activities may take place need to be protected from unintentionally being criminalised. Rob Marris: On amendment No. 316, I have considerable sympathy with the hon. Member for St. Ives. When I first went through the Bill in December, one of the things that I wrote on my copy was ''knowingly'' before the word ''permits''. I hope that the Government will be able seriously to consider that matter on Report. He talked about the wording of clause 45(3), in which it is important to include the word ''knowingly'', which connotes basic intent and is in the middle rank between ''expressly'', which connotes specific intent and was the subject of an earlier debate, and ''permits'', which is hard on occupiers of land. We debated amendment No. 10 earlier and the hon. and learned Member for Harborough kindly allowed me to intervene on him two or three times. His analogies were illuminating, but perhaps not in the way he hoped that they would be. I urge hon. Members to reject the amendment. We have heard analogies about Mrs. Jones at a bank robbery and Darren at an affray in the town centre on a Friday night. People do not say, ''Let's do a bank robbery because Mrs. Jones will come and watch.'' or ''I won't ask you to step outside now to glass you because my mate Darren is not watching.'' Mr. Garnier: I am sure that there is no one called Darren in Harborough. [Laughter.] I hope that the Harborough and Lutterworth Mail Lobby correspondent is in the Room. There is no evidence to suggest that the people who organise formal coursing events in which two dogs are tested against each other say, ''Let's hold a coursing event because lots of people will come and watch.'' The primary purpose of coursing is to test two dogs, not to create a spectator sport. Rob Marris: I was going to come to that point. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire can assist me on this because I may have got it wrong, but my understanding is that one of the attractions of hare coursing events is gambling. The word ''participates'' in clause 7(1)(a) does not cover gambling because clause 7(2) defines ''participates''. [Interruption.] I will develop the argument if I may. Similarly, ''facilitates'' in clause 7(1)(c) does not cover Column Number: 1024 gambling. Whether people can gamble at a hare coursing event—perhaps this does not apply to the Waterloo cup—as well as putting some money in the tin for the lifeboats, as the hon. and learned Gentleman suggested, will influence whether such an event is organised. Mr. Garnier: There is already a mass of law on what gambling is lawful and what is unlawful. I am not sure that using the coat hanger of gambling is helpful or improves the Bill. If the Government want to stop gambling, they should have the intellectual honesty to say so. If they are trying to stop unlawful gambling or gambling on courses, they should say so. They should not try to do that through the back door by using the word ''attendance''. 9.45 am Rob Marris: Clearly, I have not explained myself very well. I have no desire to stop gambling per se. It is a lawful activity within certain constraints. I am using it as a peg. My understanding—I stand to be corrected—is that the decision on whether some hare coursing events take place depends on whether a sufficient crowd will be attracted not only to observe the so-called sport of hare coursing, but to gamble on the outcome: whether the dog catches the hare or the hare escapes and so on. Mr. Garnier: That situation exists now. If an event is organised, people may be encouraged to attend because they believe that they can make some money or they enjoy gambling. If hare coursing events are outlawed simpliciter, everything else falls away with it. I am sure that the Government are making laws that they intend will be obeyed, but if the Bill becomes law there will be no hare coursing events so there will be no events at which to gamble. Rob Marris: I am trying to point out that attending an event encourages it to take place. Passing a bank robbery and stopping and looking at what goes on or stopping when a fight is taking place outside a pub on a Saturday night has no bearing on whether the event takes place. The fight will take place because people have fallen out and the bank robbery will take place anyway. The prospect of attendance does not affect whether the event takes place. My understanding is that hare coursing is different, partly because of the gambling, so I think that the amendment should be rejected. Mr. Pickthall: I have a great deal of sympathy for amendment No. 10. The hon. and learned Member for Harborough made his case better in the final sentence of his last intervention than during his entire speech of analogies. He said that when the Bill becomes law, hare coursing will go, so to some extent subsection (1)(b) is unnecessary. The only hare coursing that I have attended was the Waterloo cup at Altcar, which I attended many times on both sides of the fence: as a spectator invited by the organisers and, more often, as a protester. At Altcar, the public road runs fairly close to the course, perhaps 8 yd or so from it. Opponents of hare coursing use that road from which to protest. They are within their legal rights to walk on the road, which they do in lesser numbers since my hon. Friend the Member for Column Number: 1025 Worcester (Mr. Foster) introduced his Bill because they anticipate that hare coursing will be swept up in general legislation, but in the years before that they attended in large numbers. There is a bund round the course and it is difficult to see the actual chasing inside, but it can be seen. I have been there and watched from the public road when hares were pulled to bits. As I understand it, the law will have some difficulty distinguishing between who is there as a supporter of what is going on and who is there as an opponent. They are still parts of the audience. Even if people on a public road cannot get a good view of the hare coursing, they can certainly get a very good view of the beer tents and all the drunks, who are more entertaining, in some ways, than the coursing. Other coursing takes place in that area and around that public road, in addition to the large event that is the Waterloo cup. There are not large numbers of spectators at such events. However, the road is one of the routes between Liverpool and Southport and people driving by pull up and watch. They could be swept up under paragraph (b) and deemed to be committing an offence. I suspect that the reason behind paragraph (b) is simply that hare coursing is the last remaining major spectator blood sport. I and many other people particularly dislike hare coursing because it is largely a spectator sport and is therefore reminiscent of bull baiting, cock fighting and other such atrocities that used to take place. The Bill might be tackling the audience, rather than the event itself. My problem, and the reason why I have sympathy for amendment No. 10, is a practical one. Certain things do not seem sensible. I certainly do not want any of my local citizens who support organisations such as the League Against Cruel Sports and the RSPCA, and who are often elderly, to be arrested for attending an event to protest at the fact that it is taking place at all. To return to what I said at the beginning, none of that should happen anyway, because hare coursing will become illegal and I do not believe for one moment that gamekeepers on estates around Altcar will break the law. I know them and talk to them and they do not seem the sort of people who would do that. I do not think that there are tickets to get into the event. That would be impossible. It is a large estate and it would be impossible to have gates around it and places to get in, like at a football match. However, a large amount of money changes hands. My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West is absolutely right. The basis of most of what happens there, apart from booze, is gambling. A lot of that gambling is illegal because it involves young people—kids—handling money. I have seen videos of that. I hope that the Minister will consider the amendment seriously. I remain to be convinced that he can adduce an argument to show that protesters and innocent passers-by at Altcar, and other places that are geographically similar, would not be included. I also want him to explain why he thinks that paragraph (b) is necessary at all, given that it is his clear, honourable and proper ambition to abolish hare coursing entirely. As we know, British citizens always obey the law. Column Number: 1026

©Parliamentary copyright 2003	Prepared 13 February 2003