Schedule 2 - The hunting tribunal
Hunting Bill
5:45 pm
Mr Alun Michael (Minister of State (Rural Affairs), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Cardiff South and Penarth, Labour/Co-operative)
The hon. Gentleman will have to see if he can catch your eye, Mrs. Roe. I should like to clear up the remaining points. If there is a moment or two I will be happy to give way later.
A number of colleagues wanted to be clear about one point. The discretion for a legal chairman or president to sit alone is standard process and is
intended to enable issues of procedure, case management and other interlocutory matters to be dealt with quickly and efficiently, without the need to convene a three-person tribunal where the expertise of the panel members is of no relevance to that part of the proceedings. As I have said, it is intended that there would be the balanced tribunal with a membership of three for substantive hearings.
I have to resist amendment No. 301, which would attack the balanced composition of the tribunal that is established by the Bill, which is at the heart of the application and the appeal system. Indeed, its central principles not only recognise utility, but prevent cruelty. I must also resist amendment No. 302. My comments at the beginning of the group about the need to rely on existing well-tried procedures for ensuring impartiality apply here too. The amendment would prevent the appointment of wing members who are or have ever been members of organisations campaigning either for or against hunting. That is rather similar to the exclusion of political history in an earlier amendment. Of course, the system should ensure that people with a bias or who are involved in campaigning groups are not inappropriately appointed.
I must also resist amendment No. 208, which would fetter the Lord Chancellor's discretion to give misbehaviour as wide an interpretation as may be necessary. There are tried and tested systems for dealing with that issue. I am happy to give the hon. Member for North Wiltshire an absolute assurance that those systems would apply. The president, chairman and members will be acting judicially, not as quasi-barristers or solicitors, and the whole system, as the hon. Gentleman said, must be fair, seen to be fair and free from bias. I assure him that the system that will operate under the Bill will meet the requirements that he set out in his amendments.
Debate adjourned.—[Mr. Ainger.]
Adjourned accordingly at four minutes to Six o'clock till Tuesday 28 January at five minutes to Nine o'clock.