Schedule 3 - Hunting with dogs: prohibition
Hunting Bill
11:30 am
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough, Conservative)
That point is especially germane to constituencies such as that represented by my hon. Friend; Mid-Sussex is not as rural as my constituency, and contains more villages and houses. I do not know how many farmers currently go out at night in Mid-Sussex and use rifles as a regular means of fox control. I am not familiar with pest control in Mid-Sussex, which is a heavily built-up area, but I suspect that lamping would alarm its good residents.
Paragraph 6.61 of the Burns report states:
``In the event of a ban on hunting, it is possible that the welfare of foxes in upland areas could be affected adversely, unless dogs could be used, at least to flush foxes from cover.''
Lamping may produce instantaneous death, but what if it does not? As has been repeatedly made clear—I have never heard an effective reply to this point—when an animal is hunted, it is killed; it is not left wounded. Those who are primarily concerned with unnecessary suffering must convince the Committee that it is less cruel to attempt to dispatch foxes with alternative methods. They have no answer to the point that we have made constantly; that when an animal is hunted, it is hunted to death. It dies and is not wounded. Numerous studies, which the Burns report adduced, have shown that death is almost instantaneous in the hunted animal; it is not wounded or left to suffer. We make the point repeatedly but, again, there has been no reply.
What will be the result of the Bill? Hunting will be abolished, so one form of pest control will go. There will be no incentive for farmers to keep a fox population on their land. The overwhelming majority of farmers support hunting because they believe that it is a natural process in the countryside. They see foxes as vermin and know that they will have to deal with them when hunting has gone. There will be no incentive to keep any foxes on their land because they perform no useful service, so farmers will get rid of them. They will get rid of them by a means that is just as cruel as hunting. Shotguns are totally ineffective, so farmers must take out a licence and wander round the countryside with a rifle.
A colleague who is not a country person and not particularly aware of the habits of foxes told me that he stayed in the countryside at the weekend. He happened to be looking out of a window when he saw a fox on an island in a lake. He could see how extraordinarily well it blended into the countryside. Anyone who knows anything about the countryside knows how skilful the fox is at evading detection. It is a wild creature. It does not wander around waiting to be shot. Have any Committee members who so blithely quote the Burns report ever tried to shoot a fox? None of them has. I am not as good a shot--