Clause 8 - Tests for registration: utility and least suffering
Hunting Bill
2:30 pm
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire, Conservative)
Absent friends, as the hon. Gentleman correctly says.
Undeterred by the Committee's reluctance thus far to widen the definition of utility or to change the way in which the definitions of utility and cruelty are interlinked, we shall shortly move to the absolutely central group of our amendments, which seek to widen the definition of utility. We tabled the amendments partly because we believe that it is terribly important that the registrar and the tribunal should have entirely objective ways of judging the applications that come before them. The registrar's decisions must not be based on opinion. He must have very clear rules laid out so that he can judge which applications are allowable and which are not.
In our view, that is the difficulty with the drafting; the difficulty is still in the rubric of the clause that the two amendments seek to change. If we leave in the words ''significant'' in line 12 and ''serious'' in line 13, we leave open to interpretation by the registrar words that should be extremely carefully laid down and defined. Both words can be defined in a variety of ways and are liable to interpretation. For example, the definition of significant from ''Collins English Dictionary'' is ''important . . . or momentous'' or
''of or relating to a difference between a result derived from a hypothesis and its observed value that is too large to be attributed to chance''.
''Significant'' is too large to be attributed to chance.
However, the utility of pest control using dogs is not a matter that is capable of simple proof. It would be extraordinarily difficult to prove even that the utility of using dogs is too large to be attributed to chance. Most of the demonstrations of utility that we
shall discuss could be attributable to chance. It is very difficult to prove cause and effect in matters such as habitat control and species management. In later groups of amendments we shall discuss the extensions to the definition of utility that we propose.