Schedule 3 - Hunting with Dogs: Prohibition
Hunting Bill
3:15 pm
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough, Conservative)
In an earlier intervention the Minister said that it was not his purpose to prosecute the dog; it was his purpose to prosecute the owner. He therefore said that if somebody was walking his dog and the dog got out of control and caught a rabbit, there were no circumstances in which the Crown Prosecution Service would institute a prosecution. That is fine as far as it goes, but it leaves aside the question of private prosecutions. If there is no way in which the CPS would institute a prosecution in such cases—we have now received fairly heavy hints from Members the Government Benches on that—the question arises of why paragraph 3 is included in the Bill. If we are to believe the hints of the hon. Members for Pendle and for West Ham, we must assume that it is possible that at a later stage those who support the Bill will remove the paragraph—or perhaps not. Perhaps it is their intention only to extend the dispensation to rabbits that already exists for rats. If that is a future intention, it is all up in the air; we have to debate the paragraph as we now see it.
We propose that paragraph 3 should be deleted. If that were done, those who wish to abolish organised hunting as everybody understands it—beagling, foxhunting, deer hunting—could achieve that by relying on paragraph 1. I believe that to be the case, but I presume that that is not the view of Deadline 2000 and those who have drawn up the Bill. They obviously believe that paragraph 1, which states:
``A person commits an offence if he hunts a wild mammal with a dog'',
could be circumvented and that people could carry on hunting, so paragraph 3 is necessary:
``A person commits an offence if he knowingly permits a dog which belongs to him (within the meaning of paragraph 23) to be used in the course of the commission of an offence under paragraph 1.''
I do not know why they believe that that paragraph is necessary and why paragraph 1 cannot stand on its own. Will the Minister explain that to the Committee? It is important that he does so. He has been fair and has told us that he comes as a neutral arbiter to our proceedings—although he personally opposes hunting—and simply wants to carry out the clear will of the House. Apparently hon. Members want to abolish hunting. However, we have not yet heard any arguments to justify legally the inclusion of paragraph 3. Will the Minister tell us whether he is now giving a commitment on behalf of the CPS—which, by the way, I do not think he is entitled to do?