Clause 8 - Tests for registration: utility and least suffering
Hunting Bill
8:55 am
Hon. Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex, Conservative)
I am sure that the Minister will tell us about his extensive knowledge of field trials in his reply. Coursing is best compared to field trials, in which birds are put up and shot to test the skill of the gun dogs that are sent to retrieve them. Any argument for banning coursing would apply equally—this is the dangerous element of the Bill and it worries a great many of us—to field trials. By parity of reasoning, the argument would also apply to shooting and fishing. Coursing can also be compared to competition angling, in which the object is not to kill the fish. Again that is a favourable comparison from the welfare perspective. There are stages in hunting at which dogs that were hunting by scent begin to hunt by sight or, in other words, to course the fox. I saw a fox coursed the other day; it escaped very happily and satisfactorily. To distinguish dogs hunting by sight—coursing—from dogs hunting by scent is intellectual nonsense.
Will the Minister explain how it is possible, logically speaking, to leave coursing out of the clause? We will return to the debate and go into matters in much greater detail when we discuss the wicked proposal for the abolition of coursing. Opposition Members think that excluding coursing from the clause is completely
illogical. I support the proposal of my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire.