Schedule 3 - Hunting with Dogs: Prohibition
Hunting Bill
2:00 pm
Mr John Gummer (Suffolk Coastal, Conservative)
Thank you, Mr. O'Hara. I shall try to keep to order without giving the impression that I am avoiding interventions.
The schedule would require us to control the dogs with which we walk in such a way that they choose their game carefully and know the boundaries of ownership of the land over which we walk. We would also have to defend our actions in court by proving that we were about something other than hunting. As I have said—you have made it clear, Mr. O'Hara, that this is entirely germane—we are dealing with the animal's propensity to chase.
The morality lies in the human being, not the animal, for it has no moral being, but is merely the creature of nature. That is the major distinction between man and animals. We are all animals, but we are a different kind because we have a moral propensity, which, many would say, is the most important element in our make-up.
Given that we must accept the moral position of man, it is perfectly proper to tell him that he may not do certain things. However, it is not proper to impute that morality to the animals over which—both in this sense and in the biblical sense—he has dominion. I am not in a position to pronounce on the morality of any individual man, in respect of shooting hounds or anything else, because, generally speaking, it has nothing to do with me. In terms of the amendment, however, I will be led astray. The proposition involves two kinds of villain; those who think that it is proper to shoot hounds and those who would deprive hounds of the ability to do what they have always done for reasons of ignorance, not understanding. The hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice) can decide which of those villains he is, because I assure him that he is one of them.
We are asked to require human beings to restrain the natural instincts of animals, not in some specified or carefully arranged circumstances such as badger chasing, as the Minister suggested, but in a normal activity that most of us carry out if we live in the country and which is one of the reasons why we are countrymen—walking with our dogs across the fields, some of which we or our neighbours may own.