Clause 8 - Tests for registration: utility and least suffering
Hunting Bill
4:30 pm
Mr Gregory Barker (Bexhill and Battle, Conservative)
To reiterate my hon. Friend's last point, I think that Labour members of the Committee have displayed an extraordinarily high degree of ignorance of the countryside. We know that the best of English countryside is an artifice; it has been man-made over hundreds of years. I say to Labour members, ''Come to East Sussex. Come to Bexhill and Battle, my constituency.'' They will find that the most attractive high weald countryside—hedges, small farms, copses and woodland—that brings tourists into the area and which people love to enjoy is land over which the hunt is invited; typically where the landowner has a direct interest in hunting.