Schedule 1 - Exempt Hunting
Hunting (Re-committed) Bill
2:30 pm
Mr Lembit Öpik (Montgomeryshire, Liberal Democrat)
I shall speak succinctly because I am interested to hear the response of hon. Members who support the changes to the Bill. The Middle Way Group, as ever, bases its arguments on logic and fact, not passion and subjectivity. If right hon. and hon. Members choose not to respond, the conclusion must be that they are not willing to countenance improving the dreadful Bill before us.
Amendment No. 75 would include in the Bill consideration of biodiversity and wildlife management of an area. If damage to biodiversity is a good enough reason to permit the killing of an animal by stalking or flushing out, the same act, if it contributes to biodiversity, should be permitted. We are suggesting that there is a biodiversity benefit in hunting and that it should be recognised.
Before the Bill was changed to remove the registration provisions, the Minister suggested that the test for utility should include conservation and wildlife management, but that was removed from the
list of criteria. The Minister said in Committee on 21 January 2003:
''The narrowing down of a variety of definitions resulted from listening to the evidence and discussion ''throughout the process.''—[Official Report, Standing Committee F, 21 January 2003; c. 298.]
That discussion presumably included the Portcullis house hearings. However, in a letter to the Countryside Alliance on 6 November 2002, less than a month before the Bill was printed on 3 December, the Minister was still referring to
''balancing the concerns of animal welfare and conservation with farming, land-owning and fishing interests.''
If the Minister was then persuaded of the biodiversity benefits of pest control, why is it missing from the Bill? Even with the hugely truncated, modified Bill before us, it is surely not unreasonable to request the Minister to take on board an amendment that is not controversial and that certainly would not change the spirit of what is wanted by the hon. Members who favour a ban. Our plea is that the Minister accepts in the good faith in which it is intended our contribution to schedule 1 which would reintroduce something that the Minister once said was important—biological diversity and wildlife management of an area.
Amendment No. 74 challenges the meaning of flushing out with dogs. Stalking, which is finding and following an animal unobserved, can certainly be undertaken with two dogs—perhaps with even one—but flushing out cannot be done with just two dogs on the sort of terrain on which gun packs operate, such as mid-Wales. The implication that flushing out can be done with two dogs suggests that the author either totally misunderstands the meaning of flushing out or—I hope that this is not the case—it is a malicious effort to try to curtail the activities of gun packs. The hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Foster) acknowledged in past years that gun packs were not a target for prohibition. He sensibly accepted the arguments, which I put forward, that whatever he may think of people on horseback who chase after foxes with dogs, the gun packs that operate in the uplands of mid-Wales and the fells are clearly embarking on pest control.