Schedule 3 - Hunting with Dogs: Prohibition
Hunting Bill
4:51 pm
Mr Mike O'Brien (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office; North Warwickshire, Labour)
We are dealing with the activity of flushing out and stalking. If it were not covered in the schedule, it would be left to the courts to interpret whether the activity amounted to the obstructive and destructive behaviour addressed by section 68 of the 1994 Act. We are making it clear that that activity will not be allowed under the schedule if it takes place without permission. It makes explicit a similar but not exactly the same provision as that in section 68 of the 1994 Act.
The Government remain neutral on the Bill, but we have a duty to ensure that when it reaches the statute book it is sensible and workable. I cannot advise the Committee to accept the amendments. However, a number of points have been made during our debate that I want to consider further. Those points were raised primarily by the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal, who has apologised to me for not being present this afternoon. I am grateful to him for telling me why and he will no doubt be able to see my response in Hansard. He raised a couple of points that I wish to consider. I am not sure whether they will merit an amendment, so I cannot say whether I am likely to table one. I want to consider two aspects. The first relates to land that is ambiguously owned—where ownership cannot be clearly identified. I note that the provision in the schedule is quite wide, but I want to be sure that it covers the various options that the right hon. Gentleman suggested might arise.
Secondly, the hon. and learned Member for Harborough asked whether a person could retrospectively give consent. In other words, somebody has gone on to land and has stalked or flushed out, and the owner of the land, although likely to give permission—indeed the person thought that permission had been given—had not given it. None the less, when the owner of the land found out that the flushing out or stalking had been carried out, he had no objection to it. I shall consider that issue, because the concept of retrospective permission was raised not only by the hon. and learned Gentleman but by the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal.
The right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed, who apologised for not being in his place, referred earlier to the police and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals dealing with an injured wild mammal. He was concerned about a diseased mammal, such as a fox, which the RSPCA wanted to take into its custody or dispose of. We shall shortly come to amendment No. 121, which deals with diseased animals. Although the right hon. Gentleman is not in his place, I can say that the Government will be neutral on that amendment. The matter raises difficult policy issues, and the Government have decided to leave it to members of the Committee to take a view. The Bill could be amended without significant damage to its effectiveness, although I shall comment on that when we come to the amendment.
I hope that hon. Members feel that the debate has raised some issues of which the Government wish to take serious account, including the three points that I have mentioned. However, none of the amendments deals with those issues seriously, at least not in a way that would be acceptable to the Government or, I suspect, on reflection, in a way that would make good law. Therefore, I ask the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington), in view of my conciliatory approach at least towards the end of my contribution, to seek to withdraw the amendment and to accept that the Government listen when good arguments are made but do not listen so much when they are not so good.