Clause 1 - Hunting wild mammals with dogs
Hunting (Re-committed) Bill
10:45 am
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire, Conservative)
The grave point that I was making, Mrs. Roe, is that the futures of 26,000 foxhounds and doubtless tens of thousands of other hunting dogs will be put into doubt. Those who say that those dogs can somehow be, in the famous expression of the RSPCA, re-homed are, of course, incorrect. There is no way that a pack animal such as a hound can be re-homed. If the Minister is keen on that, I will make certain that half-a-dozen hounds are delivered to his house to allow him to consider how they can be re-homed. Re-homing a hound would be more cruel than putting it out of its misery in a humane way.
The matter does not only concern hounds—a large number of horses are kept in this country purely for hunting. They would have to be put down or sold off, and the horse market would collapse. There would also be enormous consequences for the 15,000 people who are employed full or part-time in hunting. There would be huge consequences for 1 million people in Britain today who take a keen interest and follow hounds one way or another. Property and vehicles would also need to be disposed of. The practical consequences of what is, by anybody's standards, an extreme piece of legislation would be profound.
Without entering into the more controversial areas, I appeal to the compassion of the Committee that if the Bill is to become law and we are to ban hunting of all kinds as it proposes, surely it would be reasonable to allow 12 months for it to become effective. Requiring it to be rushed through in three months—or, even worse, in one month as the hon. Member for Dumfries suggested—would be unfair.