Schedule 3 - Hunting with dogs: prohibition
Hunting Bill
6:30 pm
Mr Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed, Liberal Democrat)
Interesting though the point made by the hon. Member for Mid-Sussex was, it was not the one that I was going to make. I appreciate that I am putting the Parliamentary Secretary under some pressure, and I accept that she might need to write to me on this matter, although we may have finished considering the matter by the time she is able to do so.
Unless the hon. Lady's definition of hunting is imported into the Bill, any deliberate tracking of a mammal with a dog, unless provided for in the listed exceptions, is hunting and is banned. Therefore, all sorts of tracking of animals by dogs for the purposes of wildlife management, conservation or counting a herd are precluded, even though there is no intention to kill at the end. The Parliamentary Secretary has, in good faith, imported into the definition of hunting the idea that the intention must be to kill. However, the list of exceptions, which includes one where there is clearly no intention to kill—seeking a wounded animal—suggests otherwise. I hope that a much more careful examination can be made of this point.