Schedule 1 - Exempt Hunting
Hunting Bill
2:45 pm
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire, Conservative)
My right hon. Friend makes a good point. We have argued all along that an enormous amount of bureaucracy and delay will be involved if too many applications go to the registrar. We were arguing that on Tuesday with regard to dogs at field trials, which will apparently now have to be registered. Every time a gamekeeper uses his dogs for any purpose, he will have to make two or three separate applications for the different quarry species that he wants to catch. The registrar will be buried under applications and bureaucracy. Now, the Minister is admitting that and justifying the exemption of rats and rabbits for that reason. He has also said that if he did not exempt them, an unduly harsh burden would be placed on gamekeepers and farmers. That is precisely what we have been arguing for foxes, mink, stoats and weasels. If the Minister passes these measures he will place an unreasonable burden not only on the registrar and tribunal system, but on gamekeepers and farmers.
None of the arguments that the Minister has advanced has taken us one inch closer to understanding why he has singled out rats and rabbits. We can conclude only that he has done so for political reasons, because of human behaviour and because of the people who he believes take part in ratting and rabbiting compared to those who take part in foxhunting or deer hunting. In the brief remarks that he has just made, he gave us no clue on what special evidence had led to that conclusion. He sat in
his eyrie round the corner in DEFRA and concluded, for his own good reasons, that rats and rabbits should be exempt. He refuses, time after time, to tell us, the public or anybody why he came to that conclusion. When I asked a moment ago, he said that there was evidence, which was easily available. When I asked what that was, he said that I had not been listening, so he would not tell me.
There is no evidence. If there is, I again challenge the Minister to produce it. If there is any shred of evidence that explains for why rats and rabbits should be singled out, whether written or scientific or whatever, I challenge him to tell us what it is. If he cannot do that, I put it to him that the reason for this decision is nothing to do with evidence, but purely the human behaviour that he believes lies behind ratting and rabbiting and behind deer hunting. We shall come in a moment to what the Minister has called the incontrovertible evidence that has caused him to mess up the part of the Bill on deer hunting. I shall challenge him to lay out in very precise, detailed terms what that evidence is. He says that he has evidence for wrecking part of the Bill to exempt these two categories, and we want to know what it is.
The Minister has made a concession to ratting and rabbiting. We do not want to mess that up. That would be quite wrong, because there are farmers who will welcome it. Incidentally, as a Minister of the Crown, perhaps he will address himself to the issues rather than making cheap jibes. We tabled this probing amendment to try to investigate the Bill's bizarre structure, but we are obviously not going to press it to a vote because we like the fact that the exemption has been made. That seems sensible and legitimate. [Interruption.] The Minister says, from a sedentary position, that we are being inconsistent, but we are not. We welcome the exemptions and will welcome any other exemptions that he cares to make. We tried this morning to persuade him to make an exemption for mink hunting, which he refused to do. We notice the fundamental illogicality in the Bill but, plainly, we are not going to seek to correct it.
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.