Schedule 3 - Hunting with Dogs: Prohibition
Hunting Bill
2:15 pm
Mr John Gummer (Suffolk Coastal, Conservative)
As long as one can ensure that a terrier, or any dog, does not chase sheep, it can wander around on its own in the countryside most of the time, and will quite happily do so. The schedule raises a serious question. If the local chairman or paid organiser of the League Against Cruel Sports, with Winkie and Rufus in mind, allows those two terriers to wander about, and they do what terriers always do—chase rabbits and, from time to time, to catch them—we come back to the point raised by the hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire. Evidently, he should have taught them, infallibly, never to chase, and certainly never to catch, a rabbit. If he knows that they do chase and do catch rabbits, is he then knowingly helping the hunt? He has to prove that he was not doing so. That is the nature of the Bill.
I know that that is embarrassing for Labour Members, because that is not what they mean. They do not want us to be in this position; they want us to be in another position. They want to be able to ban hunting without having to face awkward and difficult questions about how we put a ban into operation. Conservative Members have accepted that that is what the House has decided, but we must challenge it to find a way that does not bring the law into disrepute. They think that it is a necessary and moral law; we happen to think the opposite, but the majority agreed with the other side. How do we stop the House bringing the law into disrepute? It is a serious and central issue.
Of course I am concerned about Winkie and Rufus, but I am less concerned about the Winkies and Rufuses who wander about the countryside than about those properly under control but which do what Winkies and Rufuses do naturally. Anybody who calls a dog Winkie deserves to be imprisoned on that basis alone. Rufus is a better name, although I am not sure that I would call a dog that is manifestly not that colour Rufus.
The issue is serious. I shall put the point carefully, because I have clearly upset the hon. Member for Pendle and other hon. Members. Now that the hon. Member for West Ham (Mr. Banks) is with us, I am anxious not to upset him again. I shall put the point this way round. I am tempted to tell the Committee what my taxi driver said about the hon. Gentleman and the pigeons on his head in Trafalgar square, but I shall not do that, because I would be in trouble with you, Mr. O'Hara. [Interruption.]