Clause 8 - Tests for registration: utility and least suffering
Hunting Bill
2:30 pm
Mr Hugo Swire (East Devon, Conservative)
My hon. Friend makes an extremely interesting point. I do not understand why the Minister, if he believes in his twin criteria of cruelty and utility, is not prepared to let stag hunters and deer coursers take their chance with the tribunal and the registrar along with other aspiring hunters. That would be logical, but I suspect there are darker forces at play, and I think that the Bill is based largely on ignorance and prejudice.
The Exmoor national park authority, which is an independent body like the Dartmoor national park authority, so probably not open to lobbying, wrote to the Minister, arguing:
''No agreed alternative model to the current management regime yet exists for an appropriate mechanism for deer management that will maintain the current numbers, quality and visibility of wild red deer on Exmoor.''
That supports my point.
If the provisions are about utility and if the management of deer herds and animal welfare are at the forefront of the minds of Labour Members, they owe us and the wider community—especially those who partake in stag hunting with hounds or make their livelihood from that—some answers. Why is there no deer management programme to be put in place in the event of a ban? How will that imbalance be dealt with?
With your indulgence, Mrs. Roe, I shall read a piece that relates to some questions posed this morning by the hon. Member for West Ham (Mr. Banks) on the varying discussions about the quantity and quality of deer on Exmoor over the years. The late Ted Hughes was a west countryman by adoption, poet laureate, a great fisherman and a lover of nature and the countryside. [Interruption.] Yes, he fished and shot—at least, I think that he shot—but he was a lover of nature. Those are not incompatible, as some hon. Members would suggest. He was a great fisherman rather than an angler. He wrote a very interesting article in that learned publication The Guardian some
time ago, which I am more than happy to make available to Committee members, should they wish to learn something. On the Exmoor deer, he said that
''after the War, when things eased off, with three Hunts fully operational the deer population soared away again, as it has continued to do ever since, right up to the 1995 census of 2,500 animals—far more than ever before in recorded history.''
[Interruption.] The hon. Member for West Ham has either lunched well or is bored by the late poet laureate or me, but I shall continue because this is important.