Schedule 1 - Exempt hunting
Hunting Bill
4:30 pm
Mr Paul Holmes (Chesterfield, Liberal Democrat)
Not now.
We have heard that up to one third of foxes are killed almost immediately when hounds catch up with them. In that situation, I do not see how one could use a pack of hounds to catch a diseased or injured animal and then stop the hounds to assess whether it should be treated and released—Rolf Harris or not—or dispatched there and then, for its own good. That would not be possible with a pack of 40 hounds, which would kill one third of all foxes immediately. The autopsy evidence submitted to the Burns inquiry shows that the huntsman usually cannot control the hounds at the point of capture of a fox. The fox is then, in the words of the Burns inquiry, ''often disembowelled'' by the pack of hounds. One could hardly, after that process, assess the animal to see whether it should be treated and released back into the wild or dispatched. It would have already been dispatched at that point.