Schedule 1 - Exempt hunting
Hunting Bill
4:15 pm
Mr Paul Holmes (Chesterfield, Liberal Democrat)
As this is the first time that I have spoken, may I thank you for the very efficient and fair way in which you are chairing the Committee, Mr. Stevenson?
I speak to amendment No. 347. Schedule 1 sets out classes of hunting exempt from the registration requirement. The exemptions in paragraph 7 involve the rescue of a wild mammal that is ''diseased or injured''. On the face of it, it is hard to understand how hunting a wild mammal can lead to its rescue. The answer lies partly in the definition of hunting in clause 45(2), which refers to the
''pursuit of a wild mammal''.
Pursuit, for the purposes of paragraph 7 of schedule 1, could therefore be to locate or flush out an injured or diseased animal to trap it, treat it and eventually release it. It could also be to kill the animal in order to relieve its suffering, if that is deemed ''appropriate action'', as mentioned in schedule 1(7)(6)(a). There seems to be an omission in the conditions in paragraph 7 for such cases, as it fails to impose a limit of two dogs when locating and flushing out the injured or diseased animal.
The desirability of restricting the locating and flushing of injured or diseased animals to one or two dogs seems self-evident. A pack of 40 hounds cannot be kept under the same close control as one or two dogs. Members have argued today that up to one third of the foxes killed by hunts are caught almost as soon as the hounds put them up. Autopsy evidence on foxes killed by hunts, submitted to the Burns inquiry, shows that many of those foxes are not killed by a clean bite on the back of the neck.