Schedule 3 - Hunting with dogs: prohibition
Hunting Bill
12:15 pm
Mr Alan Simpson (Nottingham South, Labour)
I suspect that I am one of the few Members who has actually seen a fox being caught, disembowelled and dismembered. I witnessed it by accident when I was out with hunt saboteurs. I would like to disentangle some of the points that have been made by Opposition Members and especially by the hon. Member for Mid-Sussex.
The hunt was nowhere near the fox. Most of the pack had been given the slip by the fox, had got lost and were on their way home. The fox had doubled back on itself only to find that it was in the same field as some straggling hounds. It was pursued and torn apart at the edge of the road in front of rapturous onlookers. That might be immaterial to the nature of the hunt, but the hunters were some distance away, and fairly indifferent to what was going on. I suggest to the hon. Member for Mid-Sussex that if it was the ride that they had wanted, they would probably have got the same enjoyment from a drag hunt.
The central issue is whether it is right to train dogs to pursue mammals in order to kill them and whether that is cruel and inflicts ``unnecessary suffering''. That is distinct from the natural pursuit of one animal by another for food. The one thing that everyone—