Clause 8 - Tests for registration: utility and
Hunting Bill
8:55 am
Mr Peter Luff (Mid Worcestershire, Conservative)
I agree with my hon. Friend, but I must repeat something that I said earlier in the Committee's proceedings. The hunting fraternity did itself no service by claiming that it was entirely a pest control service. It created that impression early in the debate about the future of foxhunting and that particular claim has come back to haunt it. The claim was false because hunters misunderstood their role in the countryside. If they had defined themselves more accurately, we would not have the level of misunderstanding that is demonstrated by Government Members today.
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend about the need to test utility as wildlife management. I was out shooting in the Christmas holidays on land hunted by the Warwickshire hunt and we drove pheasants back into a wood that was owned by that hunt. It turns out that the wood is kept, as a management practice, for the purpose of keeping cover for foxes. It is also a perfect reserve for nightingales; indeed, it is one of the best reserves for nightingales in the country. Were hunting to be banned, the reserve would be managed in a completely different manner and the nightingales would disappear.
The term ''wildlife management'' has to be thoroughly and properly incorporated in the Bill. Wildlife management should mean suppressing a population level to an acceptable degree; it should
not mean killing as many individuals as possible, which is what the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) conceded that his phrase ''pest control'' was intended to mean. Wildlife management must mean maintaining the population at a certain appropriate level for the countryside in question and efficiency cannot be measured in terms of the numbers culled. In some cases, hunting with dogs can result in a low figure, yet can still be the best method.
During the hearings at Portcullis house in September, there was significant agreement among all parties that the motive behind an action was, in the main, irrelevant and that the suffering of the animal was paramount. Therefore, there is nothing wrong with including recreation and amenity in the definition of utility, as the amendments would do. I shall talk about that at greater length later. The protection of game birds is seen as a relevant reason to justify utility and yet game birds are shot primarily for recreation—although when I shoot birds, I also eat them. The Bill also allows for the use of birds of prey to hunt wild mammals for sport. Those are hypocritical elements that the Minister has completely failed to justify and they highlight the danger of the Bill leading to other legislation. That is why we are right to want the amendments to be agreed.
Dr. Wise has written an interesting paper that is widely available. He states:
''The Government's presumption that it is wrong to take the lives of wild animals for recreation or entertainment is inconsistent with its declared commitment not to interfere with other field sports.''
That is why including recreation is so important. The paper continues:
''Hunters have a vested interest in maintaining a healthy population of quarry species in their habitat, and selectively kill''—
this is something that Labour members of the Committee have not properly understood yet—
''weak and damaged animals as well as providing a self-financing wildlife management system. It is also impossible to legislate as to where recreation begins and ends. A gamekeeper controlling foxes with a terrier will, quite reasonably, obtain pleasure from a job of work well done. The recreational benefit of hunting to its followers finances the job of management thus enabling the 'control' benefit to be free to farmers. And unsurprisingly the ratio of 'sport' to 'work' will vary not only from region to region, but also according to a range of other factors like weather and time of year.''
Labour members of the Committee sometimes define hunting in a narrow straitjacket and one cannot do that. It has different roles and purposes in different parts of the country.
The test of utility is too narrowly drawn. The Burns report found that hunting often provides an economic contribution. That is a subject on which the Middle Way Group is somewhat distant from the Countryside Alliance—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for The Wrekin (Peter Bradley) is showing that he has not listened to what the Middle Way Group has been arguing for the past five years. That does not surprise me in the slightest. Stanley Kubrick's last film was ''Eyes Wide Shut''; as far as Labour are concerned, it should be ''Ears Wide Closed''. If the hon. Gentleman had listened carefully to what we have been saying, he would understand that there are important points of distinction; they will come out again in the clause
stand part debate, so perhaps he would like to hang around and listen.
The economic contribution is a dangerous argument. Some things in the countryside are uniquely done by hunting and those are the things that the Middle Way Group wants to add to the test of utility. Frankly, there are some things that could be done by other means. We do not believe that hunting is cruel, if practised in accordance with the codes of conduct. It has not always been practised in that way and that is one of the areas that the Middle Way Group has highlighted as a problem.
It is difficult to argue that jobs justify everything. I often say that bringing back capital punishment in public would generate an awful lot of jobs—people would queue up to buy tickets—but I am not sure that it would be an honourable way to create employment. It is difficult for the hunting lobby to put the economic test forward because if hunting is cruel one cannot justify the jobs it creates, and if it is not cruel the economic test does not matter.
Amendment No. 110 differs in one important respect from amendment No. 20. It misses out the economic argument, which is a weak justification for hunting in the countryside. That is not to show a lack of concern for those people—many of my friends will lose their jobs if hunting is banned. I am concerned about them, but we do not need to use that argument to justify hunting. Jobs associated with hunting are not unique and there are plenty of other sources of employment in the countryside.
Along with the other matters in amendments Nos. 110 to 113, social value and cultural cohesion are unique issues associated with hunting.