Schedule 3 - Hunting with Dogs: Prohibition
Hunting Bill
10:45 am
Mr David Lidington (Aylesbury, Conservative)
The purpose of this group of amendments is to replace the criminal penalties embodied in the schedule with a civil penalty. If members of the Committee will bear with me, I shall take them through the group to explain to which parts of the schedule each amendment relates.
Amendment No. 6, the lead amendment, deals with the primary offence of hunting with hounds, as defined at the beginning of the schedule. Amendment No. 7 decriminalises the offence of allowing land to be entered or used for the purpose of hunting with dogs. Amendment No. 8 relates to the offence of a dog owner allowing one of his dogs to be used for hunting. Amendment No. 9 deals with the offence of acting as an official at a hare coursing event or allowing land to be used for the purpose of a hare coursing event. Amendment No. 10 deals with offences by people who enter a dog for hare coursing, who allow a dog to be entered or who control or handle a dog during or for the purposes of hare coursing.
Amendment No. 11 suggests the way in which the civil penalty that I propose should operate. The level of the penalty should be set by regulations laid down in statutory instruments, and subject to the negative procedure. There is a case for affirmative procedure, but I believe that it is the normal practice of both Houses to deal with the level of penalties—whether civil penalties or fines—by means of the negative procedure. That is why I have tabled the amendment.
Amendments Nos. 16 to 23 are consequential on the first group of amendments that I have described. In summary, they remove references in part II to criminal offences and substitute references to civil penalties.
Amendments Nos. 26 to 29 amend part III. They require the Secretary of State to apply to a magistrates court for forfeiture of a dog—termed in paragraph 18 a ``hunting article''—and to obtain a ban on somebody who had been subject to a civil penalty on owning a dog. That relates to paragraph 19. I want to make three points in support of the amendments.
There is a matter of principle, on which I shall speak briefly. To make the act of hunting and associated acts criminal offences is a disproportionate response to the ill of which the advocates of a ban complain. I feel that particularly strongly because it is noticeable that schedule 3 says nothing about cruelty or animal welfare. Nor does it define, as under previous animal welfare legislation, activities that Parliament regards as cruel and that have become criminal offences under our law. We have instead a schedule that outlaws the activity of hunting with dogs, although hunting is nowhere defined in the Bill. The Government have simply said that the courts will interpret the statute in accordance with the normal meaning of ``hunting'', which is a circular argument that leaves people at risk of arrest, prosecution and conviction of offences that have nowhere been sufficiently tightly defined by Parliament.
Although we all know the adage that ignorance is no excuse for disobeying the law, there is a duty on those who make the law to ensure that Bills reaching the statute book are readily comprehensible to those whose lives are affected by them. People must know when they carry out an activity that they are trespassing against the criminal law, and therefore be able to weigh the consequences if they persist.