Schedule 3 - Hunting with Dogs: Prohibition
Hunting Bill
2:00 pm
Mr John Gummer (Suffolk Coastal, Conservative)
I want to remain in my serious mode for a moment; my hon. and learned Friend sometimes tempts me to levity.
We are discussing a serious issue: the nature of our moral responsibility.
Human beings are moral creatures and should be driven by moral considerations. Animals are not moral creatures and cannot be driven by moral considerations. We are dealing with the interrelationship between a moral creature and a creature that cannot be moral. It is proper to lay on moral creatures moral requirements, but it is also necessary to recognise how far those requirements—echoing your impartial comments, Mr. O'Hara—can practically be carried out in the circumstances that we are discussing. The issue is not whether we think that it is a good idea for dogs to chase rabbits, or whether we try to make a moral distinction between dogs chasing rabbits and rats, but the position in which the human being finds himself in such circumstances.
I admit to the Committee that I have a problem with the human moral distinction between rats and rabbits. The following example is taken, not from the expert advice that my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) is so often able to quote, but from the more familiar ``Just William'' stories. William, you will remember, is a man of considerable sagacity—aged about 12 years—of whom I am particularly fond as a mentor. He discusses the problem of why the lady down the road is a bird fancier and not a rat fancier. You will see immediately the relevance to what we are discussing, Mr. O'Hara.
William is fed up with bird baths, bird fanciers' clubs and so on and sets up a rat sanctuary with a rat bath and a rat table, and defends them. He does so in order to argue that it is difficult to make a moral distinction between rats and birds. I find the same problem in distinguishing between rats and rabbits. It is difficult to see why it is morally acceptable for a terrier to chase rats and morally unacceptable for it to chase rabbits. For a human being to allow—or indeed encourage—a terrier to chase a rat is evidently perfectly all right, as long as it is on one's own land and not underground. Those are two other issues that leave me with a problem. Why morality should be restricted to one's own land and above ground is not something that Holy Church has so far considered. I am thinking of asking the new cardinal whether he could instigate a consideration of the morality of chasing a rat above but not below ground. What biblical, theological or ecclesiological reason is there for that?