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Standing Committee F
Tuesday 25 February 2003
(Morning)
[Mr. George Stevenson in the Chair]
New clause 11
Use of dogs below ground
'Registration under Part 2 shall not be effected in respect of any hunting that involves the use of a dog below ground.'.
Brought up, and read the First time.
8.55 am
Mr. Michael Foster (Worcester): I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 12—Lowland hunting of fox—
'Registration under Part 2 shall not be effected in respect of any hunting of fox in an area of land below an altitude of 500 metres above sea level.'.
Mr. Foster: I am proposing that new clause 11 be added to the Bill, but I also want to explain in a couple of sentences why I shall not move new clause 12. New clause 12 refers to foxhunting in the traditional sense and I believe that the symbolic nature of the fox in the Bill give us the onus to make a decision on foxes on Report instead of in Committee. However, new clause 11 covers terrier work.
Mr. James Gray (North Wiltshire): Do I understand correctly that the hon. Gentleman wants to ban foxhunting and activities associated with it on Report?
Mr. Foster: I made clear in my contribution on Second Reading the aspects of foxhunting that I do not like from an animal welfare perspective and I hope that those concerns can be dealt with on Report with the backing and full support of the Chamber as opposed to the smaller group in the Committee. It is with that in mind that any issues concerning foxes will be raised on Report.
Mr. Gray: I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman. One of his new clauses, which he is not moving, would have banned all hunting below 500 m—that is, all foxhunting. Will the hon. Gentleman clarify whether he will, on Report, seek to end foxhunting or simply to end cub hunting and other aspects that he dislikes?
Mr. Foster: If the hon. Gentleman reads my Second Reading contribution he will see that cub hunting was one of my concerns, as was lowland hunting. New clause 12, which refers to hunting below an altitude of 500 m, is a signal that I believe that lowland hunting should be examined by Parliament either in Committee or in the Chamber. I decided that the Chamber is the place for that decision to be made at a later date.
Mr. Peter Luff (Mid-Worcestershire): For clarification, does the hon. Gentleman intend to raise
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new clause 12 on Report or is he dropping entirely his commitment to new clause 12?
Mr. Foster: It may well be that another form of words can be found to enable the Chamber to debate the principles of lowland foxhunting, which would satisfy me entirely. The Bill has not yet left Committee, so I do not want to prejudge where we will be on Report.
New clause 11 refers to terrier work and we have spent some time describing that work. For those who are uncertain about it, it is the practice of sending a small dog—a terrier—down a hole where a fox is believed to have sought refuge for that fox to be flushed out and shot or for the dog to kill the fox underground. Humans also dig down to where the terrier is holding the fox at bay underground. Once that digging-out process is complete and the fox has been retrieved, it is then disposed of.
Two main areas of concern were identified in the Burns report: the animal welfare of the fox in relation to the digging-out process and the use of terriers and the physical injuries sustained by the fox if a fight takes place with a dog. We should also bear in mind animal welfare concerns relating to the terrier.
Mr. Gray: Has the hon. Gentleman ever seen the way in which a Jack Russell terrier attacks prey? If he has, he will agree that the terrier will always bark at the prey and then back off. I have never seen a Jack Russell terrier attack a fox and I doubt if I ever would. That is not the instinct of such dogs. Their instinct is to bark at the enemy—the person walking past the front gate of the house, for example—and then back off. What evidence does the hon. Gentleman have for saying that Jack Russell terriers or other types of terrier instinctively fight with foxes underground?
Mr. Foster: Given the last couple of days in the history of the Conservative party, I knew that its members were living in the dark. I did not realise that they were able to see underground, to where the battles between Jack Russell terriers and foxes take place. I will deal with that matter later and if it is not to the satisfaction of the hon. Gentleman I am sure that he will intervene.
Mr. Nicholas Soames (Mid-Sussex): Bollocks.
Mr. Foster: The word used by the hon. Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames), which I happened to hear, was totally unparliamentary. I did not know that the word ''bollocks'' was a parliamentary term, Mr. Stevenson.
The Chairman: Order. Here we are again. I did not hear that if it was said. If I do hear it, I shall take the strongest possible action.
Mr. Foster: Being a former member of the teaching profession does give one more acute hearing than most.
Terrier work is conducted in association with traditional foxhunting. If a fox escapes a hunt into a hole of some sort, terrier men are sent to flush out, bolt, or dig out that fox and have it shot. There is also the sport—and I use the term loosely—of terrier work, where unofficial terrier men will go out and somehow gain pleasure from putting terriers down holes to find
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and kill foxes. I have to be honest and say that the terrier work carried out by associated, traditional fox hunts, will no doubt be more tightly regulated than unofficial terrier work. However, the act of sending a terrier underground in that way causes real problems on animal welfare grounds. Whether that act is regulated through the Masters of Foxhounds Association or totally unregulated, I want it banned.
There is some uncertainty about the number of foxes that are killed through the use of terriers. The National Gamekeepers Organisation has a different estimate to the one that Burns gave. The British Association for Shooting and Conservation has a slightly different estimate to the NGA, and there will always be a problem in estimating the number of foxes killed through the unofficial work of terrier men. It would therefore be easy for us to bandy around numbers on the overall size of the problem; that might be an interesting argument but not an especially productive one.
Mr. Gray: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the submission made to the Burns inquiry by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, or the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food as it was called at the time, was that outside organised hunting, 50,000 foxes were dispatched every year using terrier work underground?
Mr. Foster: That is an interesting point, which reinforces my comment about bandying numbers around, because the NGA has come up with a lower estimate. It is difficult to make much progress using such arguments. It is the practice itself with which I am concerned.
Mr. Luff: Let us be clear on the numbers. I accept that views differ on how many foxes are involved, but the orders of magnitude are surely similar. We are not talking about 10,000 or 100,000 here or there.
Mr. Foster: If I were making an estimate, based on the numbers that I have seen, it would be in the region of 30,000 to 50,000 foxes officially counted. However, the unofficial estimate is, by its very nature, difficult to make. That is based on the evidence that has been submitted to me by BASC and the NGA. Regardless of the numbers involved, it is the principle and the process to which I object. I am concerned that a dog is sent underground in the first place.
The hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) asked whether I had witnessed a Jack Russell engaged with a fox in a so-called battle. I have to be honest: I have not. As I have explained, the engagements tend to be conducted underground, and my concern is with their underground nature. The Burns report contained a post mortem conducted on a fox that had been dug out, where terrier work had been involved. I do not know whether that case involved a Jack Russell, but it was obviously a similar type of dog. The case was from the Royal Artillery on the Salisbury plain, which I think is familiar to the hon. Gentleman. The fox was found to have multiple bite wounds on the face and the top of the head, damage to the right eye, bite wounds, haemorrhage and oedema in the region of the larynx
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and lower neck and other injuries associated with shooting. I think that the first three items on that list were not self-inflicted wounds but were inflicted by the terrier work. That evidence provides one example of terrier work engaging a fox in a fight between two similarly sized animals.
Mr. Gray: Yes, I was there that day and I remember it well. As I recall, that fox—I hope that the hon. Gentleman can confirm this—had been hunted first and then went to ground. The post mortem discovered that it had been shot previously. It had been through a lot of trials and tribulations over the years, but was eventually killed that day—it was shot by the terrier man, perfectly humanely. The notion that that fox was killed underground by the terriers is incorrect.
Mr. Foster: I am clear in my recollection: I did not say that that fox had been killed underground. I said that it was killed by being shot. It was shot twice, because the first bullet did not kill it. That is clearly laid down in the post mortem evidence. The hon. Gentleman is right that there was evidence that the fox had been shot beforehand. Shotgun pellets from a past shooting were found in the left hand side of the head, the left forearm, the abdomen and the left hind leg. The individual pellets were walled up in fibrous tissue, which showed that the wounds had healed.
If the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that the multiple bite wounds, damage to the right eye and haemorrhage and oedema of the larynx and lower neck were inflicted by the pack of dogs chasing the fox, that causes grave concern at the process of foxhunting. There was certainly no quick kill there. The hon. Gentleman has always argued that foxes never get away from a foxhound because they either escape unharmed or are killed, and are never injured and left to die a lingering death. I thank him for his contribution and if I were the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier), I would say that I rest my case. However, I will continue—in the manner of the hon. and learned Gentleman.
The Government have rightly recognised the animal welfare concerns of terrier work. Schedule 1(5) states:
''The fourth condition is that the stalking or flushing out does not involve the use of a dog below ground.''
The Government have made it clear that they are concerned about terriers going underground to flush out foxes to be shot or so that they can continue to be hunted. Let us assume that the fox is flushed out to be shot. The Government have said that they do not like that on animal welfare grounds. However, the Bill allows a terrier to go underground to engage in a fight to kill a fox. I have real concerns about that in terms of animal welfare. Allowing a dog to go underground to push a fox out to be shot is not allowed, but allowing a dog to go underground to engage in a fight with a fox until one—or both—is killed is allowed. Purely on animal welfare grounds, I want to tighten up the legislation and I hope that new clause 11 does that by not allowing terriers to go underground in the first place to engage in the activity.
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