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Column Number: 1221
Standing Committee F
Thursday 27 February 2003
(Afternoon)
[Mrs. Marion Roe in the Chair]
Clause 51
Transitional arrangements
Amendment proposed [this day]: No. 45, in
clause 51, page 19, line 33, leave out 'three' and insert 'twelve'—[Mr. Barker.]
2.30 pm
Question again proposed, That the amendment be made.
The Chairman: I remind the Committee that with this we are discussing amendment No. 355, in
Rob Marris (Wolverhampton, South-West): I was about to speak about animal welfare, but will give way.
Mr. Hugo Swire (East Devon): I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way so unexpectedly.
The purpose of the hon. Gentleman's amendment is to limit the period during which an applicant may continue to hunt, and he alluded earlier to the example of a publican being liable for rates pending an application's being granted. This morning, I suggested that that was a bad example, because it does not involve the animal welfare aspect, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker) referred earlier. It is not just a question of closing down a pub and continuing to pay the rates. It is a question of closing down a hunt, laying off staff and, unfortunately, destroying hounds. Hunt supporters may have to deal similarly with some of their horses. The hon. Gentleman has overlooked animal welfare.
Rob Marris: I do not accept that. My example referred not to rates but to overheads. The overheads of a public house include staff costs, and a publican might have to decide whether to lay off staff. The hon. Gentleman referred to a similar point concerning the staff employed by a hunt, whether it was the late great Captain Ronnie—whoever he was—or anyone else. A hunt would have to make a commercial decision if the long-stop 12-month period that I want to introduce were to run out. The animal welfare aspect is that those who own the hounds would have to decide whether they thought that they would receive registration 12 months hence—that is, 14 months on—in which case they would carry on feeding the hounds.
Mr. Swire: There is no similarity between pub staff and hunt staff. Hunt staff must be qualified and highly trained in what they do. They are employed largely in rural areas where there are no replacement jobs. If hunt staff lose their jobs, hunts cannot go down to the
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local job centre to replace them if the hunts are granted a licence at some future date. They will cease to exist.
Rob Marris: I am sorry to hear that the death penalty exists in rural areas. Those staff will not cease to exist, but they may cease to make themselves available for that line of work. That is something that any employer faces if there is a shutdown or redundancies. When the market changes, the staff may not be around. The hon. Gentleman undercut his argument by talking about skilled staff. Some pub staff are skilled and may get another job in another pub, but the expectation is that there may not be many hunts around with which hunt staff might find another job.
Gregory Barker (Bexhill and Battle): Can the hon. Gentleman explain the circumstances in which a pub or any other legal activity would arbitrarily have its licence to practice, operate or open withdrawn for no other reason than a change in legislation, and with no compensation in the full expectation that they would be able to carry on afterwards?
Rob Marris: Of course I can—that would be so if food hygiene regulations change, for example.
Gregory Barker: A pub would be forced to close down?
Rob Marris: Yes. A pub might have to close down while it went through the process of compliance. Would the people get any compensation? No.
I am anxious to make some progress this afternoon, as is my right hon. Friend the Minister and Opposition Members—and you, Mrs. Roe. The hon. Gentleman talked grandiosely about this being a matter of judging people and doing away with the presumption that someone is innocent until found guilty. That is not the case. Both the Bill and the long-stop provision that I seek to introduce would mean that someone could not carry on hunting beyond that 12-month period without registration. In a scenario such as that mentioned by the hon. Gentleman, registration would not have come through and the offence would be hunting without being registered. People would not simply be adjudged guilty; they would have decided whether they were going to engage in that human and physical activity.
It is interesting that when the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle spoke to amendment No. 45 he mentioned the need for further research, which was set out in the Burns report, and he said that that would be unfair. The Burns report was published in June 2000, nearly three years ago. The Bill was printed nearly four months ago, and those individuals who expect their activities to be subject to registration may be having research done now. It is interesting that the hon. Gentleman talked about the fact that one needs time to do such research, especially because of how the cruelty was framed. When he spoke about my amendment, he said that the Bill assumes that hunting is cruel when we know it is not. Either he has the research or he has not; either he knows whether it is or he does not. We are talking about something akin to the transitional period. If prospective applicants need time to engage in research, they could start now. They could also do that during the 15-month period that my amendment
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would introduce. They would have the three months that are built in to the Bill, plus an additional 12-month long stop.
Gregory Barker: Does the hon. Gentleman not understand that I, like many hundreds of thousands of people in the country, sincerely hold the view that hunting is not cruel? We believe that at the core of our being, just as I am sure that many Government Members believe that hunting is cruel. That is not, however, the same thing as saying that it is clinically proven by veterinaries and by scientific facts that will hold up as evidence before a tribunal or in court. The two positions are quite different.
Rob Marris: With the greatest respect, I must say that if that is the case, when the hon. Gentleman made his statement, he should not have used the word ''know''. He should have referred to something in which he strongly believed to the core of his being, or words similar to those he just used. The difficulty arose with the word ''know''.
On the changed cruelty test in 8(2) and the associated difficulties, to which the hon. Gentleman referred when we discussed his amendment, I shall remind him, as I did this morning, that the change to the Bill was agreed and reported in fewer than two columns of Hansard, and there was no Division. I assumed, therefore, that there was general agreement on that matter. He now tells me that there was not, and I understand that. However, at the time I thought that there was. Two columns of Hansard with no division is a pretty short debate.
Under clause 15, applications will be handled under regulations made by the Secretary of State. In the nature of things, and this Bill is no exception, dummy regulations are not put forward. That would be a desirable way to proceed under any Bill, because then hon. Members who sit on Standing Committees would have some idea of the kind of regulations that might be made. Dummy regulations were put forward on the Export Control Bill—I sat on the Standing Committee that discussed it last year. I am trying to tease out from the Minister what the Department expects it will do regarding its internal organisation and in terms of regulations that are to be published in pursuance of clause 15. What regulations will there be to ensure that applications are dealt with speedily and fairly? That is what my amendment is about: it is intended to increase the pressure on the Department to get things through quickly—that point has been raised, and it is a fair one. What do we know about the handling? How quickly will certain things go through?
Opposition Members have suggested that my amendment would be a little unfair to people, and there is some strength in that argument. However, I require reassurance from the Minister that we will not need a long-stop 12 months—as my amendment proposes—because the Department will deal with and get to the final determination, which is defined in clause 45(5), within the 12-month period that I suggest.
The Minister may say that my approach to the matter is an unsuitable way to get things moving
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quickly and to ensure that we do not have endless uncertainty and the sort of thing that it has been suggested is going on under the Act passed in Scotland, where de facto hunting is taking place. In our case, de jure hunting would be going on because if people were to apply for registration within the first three months, they would be able to continue their hunting activities until final determination—pursuant to clause 45—of their application. For clarity and fairness, I want the process speeded up.
Lembit Öpik (Montgomeryshire): I wish to make some comments about the hon. Gentleman's contribution.
That hunting applicants might go out and obtain evidence to prove that hunting is not cruel is a surprising expectation. In some parts of Britain, such as the area that I represent, farmers have an average annual income of about £4,000 or £5,000. That does not enable them to make a huge investment in research. If farmers wanted to be researchers they would work for MORI or another organisation that conducts polling research, or they would be vets. It is plainly unreasonable for the hon. Gentleman to imply that there is an onus of responsibility on farmers to conduct such research. We discussed that when we addressed earlier amendments, and there was resistance to providing substantial funding to help those individuals put together their cases.
I note—somewhat wistfully—that there is quite a lot of evidence to suggest that people feel that hunting is not cruel. Two out of three vets are opposed to a ban on hunting. However, we will digress from the amendment if we go further down that track. It is unreasonable of the hon. Gentleman to say in defence of his proposal that research is a viable option for the great majority of people who hunt.
The hon. Gentleman is impatient to ensure that there is not an open-ended opportunity to carry on hunting de jure—if that is the right legal term—because of potential hold-ups in the system. I spoke to him after the previous sitting, so he knows that I think that if that is his intention, he is attempting to realise it in the wrong way. He would punish the people who want to go hunting and make applications, whereas he should be attempting enforcement by putting limitations on the registrar—on how long they are allowed to process an application. How can it be fair that a farmer is no longer allowed to go hunting because the time has run out after 12 months because of the limitations of the application system? That is not natural justice. I ask the hon. Gentleman to reflect on that.
That point underlines the frustration that many Opposition Committee members feel. We will discuss compensation when we address a later amendment but the hon. Gentleman's amendment does not suggest that farmers should be compensated for a period during which they cannot hunt while their application is being processed. It is patently obvious to those of us who accept that pest control is one of the most important reasons for hunting that there should be a compensation scheme because lambs will be killed. In order to look at the utilitarian benefit of hunting, one needs to consider the net impact on, for example,
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lambs of preventing hunting from taking place. Therefore, once again, preventing people from hunting with dogs while they are waiting for their application to be processed has a negative animal welfare implication in areas such as upland Wales where hunting is the key means of pest control. I think that the Minister is familiar with such points, but on the assumption that he will not be sympathetic with amendment No. 355—I hope that he is not—I ask the hon. Gentleman, whose intentions I understand, to consider the injustice that would be facilitated by his amendment.
2.45 pm
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