Clause 9 - The registrar
Hunting Bill
2:51 pm
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire, Conservative)
Never has an oration in this place been so interrupted—first by lunch and then by a vote. I will now seek to continue so that Labour Members can understand the crystal logic of what I am saying. [Interruption.] If the Minister would stop chatting he might be able to follow this. He is not very good at logic, but if he listens carefully he might improve.
The system will work only if it is seen to be fair and above reproach. That is what we all should aim for. The registrar's job must be to register the applications; he can either register the hunt or turn it down. It should be up to the tribunal—the people who make the value judgments—to decide whether the registrar's decision is correct. For that system to work in all its beautiful simplicity—many Opposition Members doubt whether it will work in any shape or form—the tests and the job of the registrar must be as objective as possible. We are concerned that the Bill will make objectivity extremely difficult. The amendments would therefore require the registrar to be impartial. We have laid down three ways in which he should be qualified. First, he should have knowledge of hunting and the area in question. Secondly, he should be impartial and be proved to be impartial. Thirdly, he should not be party political.
All three qualifications seem eminently sensible. We have already dealt with local knowledge. The NFU briefing, which I quoted this morning, said that the registrar should have local knowledge if he is to have any chance of achieving an impartial judgment. The party political point seems reasonably self-explanatory. If someone has an allegiance to either the Conservative or the Labour party it would be difficult to trust his judgment. In any case, as a civil servant the registrar would be precluded from involvement in party political activity. Both those categories are reasonably straightforward. The more difficult category, which perhaps needs to be explained in slightly more detail, is the question of the impartiality of his judgment.
The difficulty lies in the subjective nature of some of the things that he is asked to do. We have expanded on some of those objective tests already. The utility test, for example, requires the applicant to show that the mammal to be hunted causes ''serious damage'' to the matters listed. As we discussed the other day, he would have to show that the proposed hunting would make a significant contribution to the prevention or reduction of such damage. We sought to extract from the Minister a clear definition of the words ''serious damage'' and ''significant''. We did not get them. It will be left to the registrar to decide what is ''serious damage'' and what is ''significant''. Those are, by
definition, subjective judgments. Most people would come to a reasonable conclusion as to what is serious damage and what is a significant contribution to avoiding it. Most courts of law could come to a reasonable judgment about that. I expect it will end up in a court of law.
A very much more difficult issue is what constitutes cruelty. That seems to be the most central, subjective judgment, which we, in this Committee, have entirely failed to address. Had we done what I asked, which was for the Bill to put in clear terms—or for the Secretary of State to do so in subsequent guidance—that ''this'' is crueller than ''that'', the registrar would have had a relatively easy task to fulfil. Had people from the Beaufort country come along and said, ''We believe that using dogs is less cruel than trapping,'' and had LACS then said, ''No, we believe that using dogs is more cruel,'' the registrar could have referred to the guidance from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which would have made it plain which of those arguments was correct. He could then either have said, ''Fine, Messrs. Beaufort, you have got your licence,'' or ''Bad lack, Messrs. Beaufort, I am afraid you don't.'' It would have been a straightforward registration matter, entirely suitable for a civil servant to carry out. Civil servants are not qualified and should not be required to make large value judgments in the way in which the registrar would.
As we have demonstrated, the question of which method of dealing with foxes in particular, and other vermin in general, is least cruel is not a matter of simple proof. The Burns inquiry came to that conclusion. As is customary in Committee, I shall illustrate my point by using a quote. Lord Burns highlighted areas where he felt that further research was necessary. Referring in particular to foxhunting, he said:
''really very little science has been done, either in terms of welfare effects of hunting or indeed of other methods of control''.
How much research has been done, we do not know. As Lord Burns said, we do not know which is more cruel or which is less cruel. If Lord Burns does not know, how can we expect Mr. Smith, the registrar, a decent grade 7 civil servant, to know? The examination in Portcullis house could not come to any conclusion. It said that no conclusion had been arrived at as to whether there should be any form of ban on any form of hunting. The hearing in Portcullis house was unable to come to that conclusion but we are going to say to a grade 7 civil servant, ''Lord Burns cannot reach a conclusion, Portcullis house cannot reach a conclusion, the scientists have not reached a conclusion, there is no scientific evidence, we do not know which is more cruel or less cruel, but you, Mr. Smith, must make up your mind.''