Clause 8
Hunting Bill
9:15 am
Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries, Labour)
I am deeply grateful to the hon. Gentleman. Whether he likes it or not, I am an elected Member of the House of Commons. He does not wish any of my colleagues from Scotland or me to take part in the debate. We are elected Members, but he would rather the Bill went from this place to the other place where not one individual is elected. There is something fundamentally wrong with his position.
My point follows on from the one made by my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire. When my
hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr. Foster) presented his private Member's Bill in 1997, the argument was about foxes and pest control. During the past five years, it has been clearly proven that that argument was flawed. It was a matter not of pest control but something else, and I am not totally convinced as to what that was.
My hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire is right: even the hon. Gentleman's example shows that shooting foxes is a far better way to control them than hunting ever has been or ever will be.