Clause 6 - Deer
Hunting Bill
2:30 pm
Mr Edward Garnier (Harborough, Conservative)
Welcome back to our proceedings, Mrs. Roe. I am sure that you have missed us all terribly.
Before we adjourned, I was talking about the possible need to extend the ownership or use of rifles and firearms—
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
On a point of order, Mrs. Roe. There seems to be trouble with one of the keys to the Room and the people who were waiting outside are not inside. I should hate them to miss the comments of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier).
Mrs Marion Roe (Broxbourne, Conservative)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. The problem has been noted and I understand that the key is about to be put into the lock to enable strangers to come in.
Mr Edward Garnier (Harborough, Conservative)
I do not know whether my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Mr. Swire) ever had to perform the ceremony of the keys at the Tower of London.
Mr Edward Garnier (Harborough, Conservative)
I was talking about the possible need for wider gun ownership and wider use of firearms in areas of the west country where the red deer population is highest. If the path that I have outlined were chosen, how will the near extinction of a genetically diverse and truly wild red deer herd be avoided? That arises from the suggestions made by my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton at the end of last week about the change from the understanding that the deer herd was communally owned. If deer hunting were banned, people might consider that the commercial worth of the beasts was worth exploiting and they might want to kill them to stop them grazing down their pastures.
My contact, who owns the Porlock estate, asked how the balance between grazing resources and deer distribution would be found and how the risks of injury would be avoided. How will public safety and security issues be balanced with the need to maintain sustainable horticulture and farming environment? Will grants be available for fencing to prevent the unwelcome movement of deer across particular parts of the country? How will the strong genetic diversity of Exmoor red deer best be conserved? How will natural selection be preserved if the use of guns for the control
of red deer numbers is carried out without sufficient understanding of all the varied qualities of the wild red deer necessary for the successful breeding of those deer in a busy holiday landscape? Is it true that shooting of red deer has escalated recently on Exmoor, particularly on land owned by the National Trust? I know that my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) referred to that and I believe that he also referred to land owned by the League Against Cruel Sports.
Mr Alun Michael (Minister of State (Rural Affairs), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Cardiff South and Penarth, Labour/Co-operative)
I am sorry to interrupt the hon. and learned Gentleman but, as he noticed a moment ago, there was a flurry of noise and I am not sure that I heard everything he asked me. I should be grateful if he repeated his questions.
Mr Edward Garnier (Harborough, Conservative)
The Minister will understand that I am relaying to the Committee concerns expressed by the owner of the Porlock estate. I am asking him to assure me—and, through me, the owner of the Porlock estate and those who live on the Exmoor deer land—how the strong genetic diversity of the Exmoor red deer can best be conserved. How will natural selection be preserved if the use of guns to control red deer and others is done without sufficient understanding of all the various qualities in wild red deer necessary for successful breeding of those deer in a busy holiday landscape?
I also asked whether the shooting of red deer had escalated recently on Exmoor, particularly on the land owned by the National Trust. I said that my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire had mentioned that this morning. Both he and my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton referred to the land owned by the League Against Cruel Sports—where there is, I believe, no shooting and certainly no hunting—and said that there were question marks about the health and diversity of that herd. Before widespread shooting, the wild red deer stood proudly on hillsides and surveyed holidaymakers confidently, but the deer are now timid, more secretive and possibly scarcer. The red deer is the emblem of many aspects of Exmoor's life. Would that remain true if the largely healthy, alert, wild red deer population became invisible?
Mr Hugo Swire (East Devon, Conservative)
Is there not a real possibility of the deer herd becoming gun-shy over a period and spending most daylight hours in woods and coverts and coming out late at night? I suggest that that would have a seriously detrimental effect on Exmoor as both an environmental location and a tourist location.
Mr Edward Garnier (Harborough, Conservative)
I am sure that my hon. Friend is right. Night shooting with powerful rifles, in or out of woods, is not sensible in a tourist area.
Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test, Labour)
As is always the case, I want to ask a question in the spirit of genuine inquiry. We established earlier today that the vast majority of deer are shot only. Would that already have made the deer gun-shy if the hon. and learned Gentleman is correct in his supposition?
Mr Edward Garnier (Harborough, Conservative)
It could have done, but I do not have any information to give the hon. Gentleman the facts. What I can say is that the maintenance of deer hunting
would, I suggest, lead to a far better animal and environmentally diverse picture. I understand that the hon. Gentleman abhors all forms of hunting and wants it to go, full stop. However, the availability of stag hunting in the west country produces a complementary package of ways of dealing with the problem of deer.
Mr John Gummer (Suffolk Coastal, Conservative)
I am becoming a little mystified in listening to my hon. and learned Friend because it seems to me that the more he exposes the circumstances, the more he shows that the problem that might arise is perfectly properly solved at the moment and the Government are creating a problem that does not exist at the moment without providing a solution. The matter to which he refers might be better considered by a registrar.
Mr Edward Garnier (Harborough, Conservative)
It would be. I have no doubt that the registrar could be persuaded that the utility test was passed. I could go down the list in clause 8 looking at the various aspects of utility with which the registrar will be concerned. I suspect that the registrar, if he were doing his job properly, fairly and dispassionately, would in some circumstances be able to find a case made in one or other of the various paragraphs of clause 8(1). I regret that the Minister seems to have reached a decision on all sorts of grounds outside the issues that we are currently discussing which have led him to conclude that clause 6 must remain as drafted.
As my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire has said on a number of occasions, we are yet to have a fully rationally based argument in favour of clause 6. I may be wrong, but I have the impression that we have listened to a slightly Louis XIV style of argument; ''I have said what I have said, and that assertion provides the basis of the argument.'' I am not sure that I understand it, nor that people in the west country—for whom I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton will speak far more ably than I—will accept it as an argument worth putting into criminal law.
If clause 6 stands part of the Bill, there will be huge economic consequences for the tourist industry and for the west country in general. I want to be assured that the Minister and his colleagues have done their homework and that their arguments stand up to questions from someone who lives and works there. How can we be sufficiently confident that someone with a gun can assess as perceptively and measure in relevant terms the blend of intuition, instinct and the use of landscape, rivers and havens that has enabled natural selection to develop a truly wild red deer herd on Exmoor?
It is a matter of national as well as local pride that this natural selection has encouraged the selection of the most vigorous and confident herd of wild red deer anywhere west of the Urals. If that ability is lacking or is compromised by whatever factor, what will be the consequences for the wild red deer herds of Exmoor? My hon. Friend the Member for Taunton outlined on Thursday what may happen to the red deer herds. My hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire told us what happened to the red deer herds pre–1855 when
the Yandle family reintroduced stag hunting on the moor.
What is the Minister's anticipated understanding of what will happen if this clause finds its way into an Act of Parliament? What is our country to do? We are all naturalists in this country. We will look at Exmoor in the future and find that something has gone terribly and avoidably wrong. It cannot be suggested that this is not an anticipated and foreseeable problem. If the confident and vigorous wild red deer herds of Exmoor are weakened or damaged through poor or inappropriate management, who in this country is to bear the responsibility, not only to the diminishing herds, but to succeeding generations of humans who, until now, have enjoyed seeing the herds roaming wild on Exmoor and in other parts of the west country?
One does not have to look too far to see that in other parts of the world shooting has caused terrible damage to wild animal herds. I am not going to make a flippant point because in Africa there were not packs of elephant hounds or elephant hunts in the way that there are in the west country. But unbalanced elephant shooting has led to the development of new populations without tusks. [Interruption.] I know that the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Peter Bradley) is good at sedentary interventions.
Mr Alun Michael (Minister of State (Rural Affairs), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Cardiff South and Penarth, Labour/Co-operative)
Will the hon. and learned Gentleman give way? I am trying to help him.
Mr Edward Garnier (Harborough, Conservative)
I know. Let me finish my insult. On second thoughts, it does not need to be said.
Mr Alun Michael (Minister of State (Rural Affairs), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Cardiff South and Penarth, Labour/Co-operative)
The hon. and learned Gentleman was making a serious point. He inadvertently referred to elephant hunts in the west country. I am sure that was not what he intended.
Mr Edward Garnier (Harborough, Conservative)
I was saying that there is not an equivalent to stag hunts in Africa in relation to elephants. I think the Minister understands the point I was making. There are now populations of tuskless elephants in Africa because the eradication of the elephant population has led to a generation of unevolved elephants that have lost the ability to grow tusks.
Although there is not an exact parallel—I am certainly no animal scientist—it is worth making the point that in the event of the wrong type or number of hinds and other red deer being shot, we may end up with a herd not only diminished in number but changed in its very nature.
Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test, Labour)
I do not know the science of elephant genetics especially well, but the emergence of tuskless elephants may have had something to do with the fact that poachers chose the elephants with particularly fine tusks, so they were eliminated from the gene pool; those without particularly fine tusks continued to breed.
Mr Edward Garnier (Harborough, Conservative)
The hon. Gentleman may be right, but I fear that in future those with access to the current hunting land in the west country will, for commercial reasons, choose the biggest beasts because they have the most body weight and therefore the highest meat-sale value. They may go for the royals, or even the
imperials with the yet bigger heads. We will be shooting for the pot—the commercially exploitable meat value of the beast—and for the trophy, the head, rather than looking at the best way to control the herd as a whole.
At the moment, the hunts look for the oldest, sickest and weakest and those that do not bring quality and added value to the existing herd when they breed. That is what we want. As I and other hon. Members have pointed out, if hunting is not allowed and the sense of communal ownership has been lost, when the herd comes on to someone's land, the landowner, to prevent the deer from eating valuable pasture, will not only shoot as many as possible but aim at the outset for those that will provide the greatest commercial return. That is why I have mentioned the heaviest beasts and those with the finest heads. Once those are lost from the breeding stock, the herd will become smaller, physically less interesting and much less reflective of the herd that has sprung up since the reintroduction of hunting in 1855.
Mr Mike Hall (Weaver Vale, Labour)
I am following the hon. and learned Gentleman's argument with interest. He is arguing that shooters consider the commercial value rather than the conservation value. Given that 85 per cent. of the deer herd is now killed by shooting, is there any evidence that that happens now?
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
Perhaps I can help my hon. and learned Friend to answer that question. The figure is not 85 per cent.; 70 per cent. are shot, 15 per cent. are taken by the hunt because they are injured or sick and 15 per cent. are hunted.
Mr Edward Garnier (Harborough, Conservative)
Parliamentary life is full of disappointments. If I cannot answer the hon. Gentleman's question, no doubt he will do the research, or he will invite the Minister to provide the evidence that I cannot give him or evidence to build up the converse case and the negative point.
I am relaying to the Committee the concerns of a particular landowner who happens to be personally interested in the local economy, the maintenance of the strongest possible deer herd on his and neighbouring land and, therefore, the maintenance of stag hunting. He has not been convinced that anything that the Government have come up with to replace stag hunting in the control of that pest has been adequately advanced.
There are many other ways of controlling a pest, which we have been through, such as shooting, gassing and trapping. However, we are talking about a large beast, which can be almost the size of a Friesian cow. It would clearly be inappropriate and unfeasible to trap or gas it. I can think of only two ways of dealing with that pest: shooting by rifle and hunting. Both methods should be allowed to continue in parallel, performing a complementary role. If one relies only on shooting, it will lead to the adverse consequences that my hon. Friends and I have outlined. I suspect that the Minister appreciates that those consequences may well follow.
The questions that I have been asking on behalf of the Porlock landowner are from someone who is not wholly unknown to me. It so happens that the owner of the land, Mr. Mark Blathwayt, is my cousin. I do not make a secret of it, but it is better that I make the blood relationship between myself and the person concerned clear to the Committee so that others do not say, ''You didn't tell us about this.'' I have no financial interest in Porlock nor any interest other than joining my cousin, his fellow landowners and his fellow residents in the west country in wanting a red deer herd preserved and extended into the depths of this century, without the damage that will happen if we do not put in place a proper management arrangement, including well regulated and well managed contingents of traditional stag hunting.
That seems vital, and it would be a pity if clause 6 stood part of the Bill. Whether it is for the reasons put forward, I think, by the hon. Member for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping)—[Interruption.] It is very difficult to tell the difference from this distance between two very distinguished Members of Parliament who have Edwardian beards and similar glasses. [Hon. Members: ''Put your glasses on.''] I am long-sighted. I am being diverted, but it is entirely my own fault. I am sure that they are both wonderful MPs in their own ways.
The hon. Member for Sherwood and I, although we have entirely different views on the ends of the Bill, agree that clause 6 should not stand part. When we were discussing clause 8, the hon. Member for West Ham (Mr. Banks) indicated that he was dissatisfied with it. I cannot remember whether he voted against it. [Hon. Members: ''He did.''] If he did, let us hope that he is consistent this afternoon and votes against this clause, along with the hon. Member for Sherwood.
Mr Tony Banks (West Ham, Labour)
On the question of elephants losing their tusks, may I say to the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) that rhinoceroses in east Africa are routinely de-horned to stop poachers killing them?
Mr Tony Banks (West Ham, Labour)
I was just pointing out that de-horning is carried out to prevent poaching.
I apologise to the hon. Member for North Wiltshire for missing the end of his fascinating and erudite speech this morning. He would be quite wrong to think that I left because I find him one of the most irritating and tedious people on the planet. I heard him say something as I left. I went to see Baroness Amos on behalf of a group of my constituents, whose husbands and sons are incarcerated in Egypt. I wanted to offer that apology.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire, Conservative)
I wholeheartedly accept the hon. Gentleman's most gracious apology.
Mr Tony Banks (West Ham, Labour)
In that spirit, I shall quickly move on.
I heard the hon. Gentleman talk this morning about the need for pest control in relation to deer. That point
has been raised by both sides. The concept of pest control is very interesting. Not just in the west country, but throughout this country and all over the world, human beings have so encroached on the territory of animals that it has naturally become over-crowded. Consequently, to deal with a problem that human beings have created, we always say that animals are pests, that there are too many of them and that they need to be culled. It is said that seals and cormorants eat too much fish. We all know the basic reason for that: human beings are the most evil, vile species, and they are so selfish and stupid that they are prepared to create an imbalance in nature which they then have to deal with. The price is always the animals.
Mr Hugo Swire (East Devon, Conservative)
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that a deer herd, wherever it is, needs regularly to be culled to prevent disease and improve quality?
Mr Tony Banks (West Ham, Labour)
As a matter of fact, in the end, I do. Before I get there, I want to make the point that one often hears that a species has become a pest and that there are too many of a certain animal, but that is because so much of their normal territory has been taken away. Nature normally keeps things in balance. The only species on the planet that alters and distorts the balance of nature is ourselves. That is why I do not have much time for the hon. Gentleman as a member of that species, or even for myself—I am not singling the hon. Gentleman out for any unique or peculiar insult.
The hon. Member for North Wiltshire, who is going to visit the LACS sanctuary, which I hope he enjoys, made a comparison between the cessation of deer hunting on Exmoor and the cessation of football in the east end. For a number of West Ham supporters, football has already ended in the east end. I suspect that the hon. Gentleman would probably have a more enjoyable time looking at deer in the west country than he would watching West Ham at the moment. I hasten to add that I say that with great sympathy for the citizens of the east end and my constituents who support West Ham. I do not support West Ham, but I feel for them. I know how important it is to them that West Ham stays in the premiership. I do not see any comparison between the people who watch and enjoy football, whether on television or at the ground, and those who participate and enjoy the strange ritual of hunting deer.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire, Conservative)
Perhaps the hon. Gentleman was not here long enough to hear how I developed the argument. I was making the point that, culturally, hunting deer holds a central position in the lives of people on Exmoor and is thus similar to the way in which his constituents regard football.
Mr Tony Banks (West Ham, Labour)
It would be interesting to test that theory. If the hon. Gentleman says that that is so, I accept it. However, it merely confirms my feeling that they must be a very odd bunch of people in the west country.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
My constituents on Exmoor regard deer hunting with great affection, in much the same way as the hon. Gentleman's constituents regard West Ham.
We are unlikely to want to see West Ham relegated or hunting banned.
Mr Tony Banks (West Ham, Labour)
I do not want to go too far down that road. I accept and understand why the hon. Gentleman defends his constituents' activities, however bizarre and grotesque I may think them. There are occasions when I go to see West Ham play and I am glad to see them lose—when they are playing Chelsea. In normal circumstances, I like to see them win. I might add that it causes a few problems in my area for the Member of Parliament for West Ham to have been a Chelsea supporter for so many years. That is one of the burdens that I have to bear and I hope that my constituents will bear it with me.
On the matter of whether deer are pests and on damage to land, I am simply not convinced. I did not hear the conclusion of the speech by the hon. Member for North Wiltshire because I had to be elsewhere, but I suspect that I would not have agreed with him or his conclusions. He would not have changed my mind any more than I will change his, which is why I do not intend to go on at any great length. I find arguments about precious land and the need to deal with the pressure of deer herds specious.
We produce far too much food for our needs. We pay farmers large amounts of money not to grow anything on their land. Farmers could play a very honourable role in preserving wildlife, which would be much better than their saying that they have valuable grazing land that must be protected against deer that want to munch a mouthful of their grass.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
On the basis that the hon. Gentleman says that deer are not pests, as a vice-president of the League Against Cruel Sports, which owns Baronsdown in my constituency, will he comment on why the deer that go to that 250-acre sanctuary have to be fed because there is not enough natural grass or foliage for them to eat?
Mr Tony Banks (West Ham, Labour)
I can only hazard guesses. I should imagine that the deer would be in some danger if they were to wander too close to some of the hon. Gentleman's constituents, who would blast away at them with their shotguns. [Interruption.] Of course, I know that they do not use shotguns. I am trying to keep my temper. One cannot say anything to the hon. Member for North Wiltshire that he does not take absolutely literally, hence my irritation this morning.
Mr Tony Banks (West Ham, Labour)
I have made a few mistakes in my time, and I am about to make another.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire, Conservative)
The hon. Gentleman is somewhat excitable. It is perfectly legal for farmers to use either shotguns or rifles to kill a stag. He was right the first time. Will he answer the main point of my speech this morning, which was not that stag hunting would be a good thing or that deer should be killed by any means, although that seems to be the thrust of his point? I said that it should be the right of the registrar and the tribunal to decide difficult matters rather than deer hunting being outlawed. Does he agree?
Mr Tony Banks (West Ham, Labour)
The hon. Gentleman knows that I do not agree with that. I am not overly happy with the registration system, as I have said, but if we are to end up with such a system, I want to ensure that we have delineated as far as possible what will happen when a registration application is made. I do not want to put the matter in the hands of someone who would interpret the legislation far more widely than Government Members want.
I support clause stand part. Several Government Members were tempted to add to the species in clause 6, but they felt that the matter would be better left for wider participation on Report on the Floor of the House.
Naturally, I do not accept that deer should be hunted. I reluctantly accept that they need to be culled, however, and I have given reasons why the need to cull arises. I understand the need to take out sick, infirm and diseased animals, which can be done far more effectively by those who understand deer husbandry and the herd. They can act in a way that is much more scientific and precise than chasing the animal for miles across beautiful countryside.
Mr Hugo Swire (East Devon, Conservative)
The hon. Gentleman implies that those who will take on the task of culling deer after hunting has been banned are in some way better qualified to make a judgment on animal welfare as it relates to deer. Will he pause to reflect that people who have devoted, in many cases, their entire lives to observing, being with and hunting deer are more likely to have a better understanding of them than any council-employed officer or deer commission employee?
Mr Tony Banks (West Ham, Labour)
The hon. Gentleman is probably correct. The concept of poacher turned gamekeeper is one that we know of in politics as well as rural activities. I hope that those who find that they are no longer able to hunt deer make their skill available to those who ensure the health of the deer herds. If they love the animal, I see no reason why they should want to keep that knowledge from those who are responsible for looking after deer herds. It is alarmist to say that something awful will happen to them afterwards and that Exmoor will become like the wild west. One must have a gun licence to go out anyway.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
I hope that the hon. Gentleman does not leave the Committee soon after he has spoken. If those who work for the Devon and Somerset stag hounds and the Quantock stag hounds are no longer to be employed by the hunt, and he wants them to use their expertise, how will they be paid for a day's or a week's work? Will money come from nowhere? At present, they are paid by those who go hunting.
Mr Tony Banks (West Ham, Labour)
I most certainly will not leave the Committee after I have spoken, unless my endurance is pushed to breaking point by Opposition Members.
The hon. Member for Taunton takes us into a hypothetical situation. We need to be more imaginative. We are told how many visitors go to Exmoor, where the great attractions are the deer herds and the beautiful countryside. One hopes that people continue to go there. A rural economy does not depend simply on hunting. The skills of those in the countryside should be—[Interruption.] The hon.
Gentleman seems to think that there is something wrong with that. He is privileged to be able to live in the countryside. Perhaps he would like to come and see my constituents in Forest Gate.
I love going to the countryside, because it gives me great pleasure. It is an amenity that we can all enjoy. Therefore, I admire those who understand the ways of animals and have perhaps acquired the skill of stalking them. Regrettably, that may make them better able to kill those animals, but the skill has been gained—it is there.
Whatever the creatures involved, I would think it a great pity if people were to say, ''If we are not allowed to go out and hunt, we will not have anything to do with the countryside.'' I do not believe that that would be their attitude. If it were, they would be depriving themselves and us of something that belongs to us all, which we all have a right to enjoy and a duty to respect. Those are the things that I believe in. If the hon. Member for Taunton accepts that there will be changes and if he turns his formidable intellect to the more creative use of those whose jobs might go, the better it will be for us all, including those he represents.
I would have liked to add to the species in clause 6. I hope that an opportunity will arise elsewhere to do so, but I support clause stand part.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
Clause 6 does not allow deer hunting to be considered in the same way as other hunting. It bans the hunting of deer—no ifs, no buts, no registrar, no tribunal and no tests of cruelty or utility. The Government say that they take a principled approach to the Bill, but we have yet to see that when it comes to deer hunting. Put simply, clause 6 should not be in the Bill, as there should be the ability to consider deer hunting in the same way as foxhunting—by a registrar and, if need be, by a tribunal.
The Minister said in his statement to the House in December that hunting deer with hounds is cruel, but where is the evidence for that? No doubt we will hear from him, but, before we do, I want to make a few points.
The Bill allows the hunting of some mammals, but it leaves the deer—a mammal—out of the equation. The Minister says that he knows my constituency and that part of Exmoor well, but I am not sure that he has grasped it after one, two, three or four visits of a day or half a day. As we know, Exmoor is in the Taunton, North Devon and Bridgwater constituencies. I also share the Quantocks with the Bridgwater constituency. Both areas are hunted, one by the Devon and Somerset stag hounds and the other by the Quantock stag hounds. There are also the Tiverton stag hounds. Therefore, three sets of hounds hunt deer in Devon.
There is every reason why the deer in those areas are the strongest red deer in Europe: hunting has a utility in terms of deer management, as we discussed last Thursday, but does it pass the cruelty test? Does it serve a useful purpose? Does it lead to unnecessary suffering? In December, the Minister said that stag hunting might even pass the utility test, but that it fails the cruelty test. He claims ''incontrovertible
evidence''—he uses the words time and time again—but what is that incontrovertible evidence?
In elucidating for Labour Members, I should explain what a deer or stag hunt is. Exmoor is not like Scotland, where landowners have 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 or 25,000 acres at their sole disposal to go stalking with a rifle. The 250,000-odd acres of Exmoor are made up of a patchwork of many owners. Dogs, more properly called hounds, hunt down the deer by scent and chase it. If the deer is healthy, it gets away; if it is weak or old, it does not. Then, as a natural response, it comes to bay, as it would have done when deer were hunted by wolves in centuries gone by.
Mr Rob Marris (Wolverhampton South West, Labour)
Will the hon. Gentleman tell me, as I do not know, what proportion of those multitudinous landowners allow hunting on their land and what proportion do not, leaving aside the 10 per cent. owned by the National Trust?
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
I cannot give the hon. Gentleman a percentage. There are about 500 to 600 compliant landowners. One could argue that, as the National Trust is quite a large landowner, only it is not involved. The figure is approaching 90 per cent., if not more. Some of those who are anti-hunting may live in three or four of the villages on Exmoor. They will have a small back garden and will dislike hunting. The hunt will never go over their land. Therefore, the vast majority of landowners on Exmoor hunt. That is also true of private landowners on the Quantocks. I hope that that answers the question.
If the deer is weak or old, it will come to bay in the natural way, as deer would have done when being hunted by wolves many centuries ago. If the deer is close, it may be walked up to, or it will be taken quickly by the huntsmen around the neck and shot directly between the eyes. One cannot get a closer kill than that. It is almost the only way in which one can closely kill a deer directly.
As any hon. Member who has tried to shoot a deer with a rifle from any distance knows, even at more than 100 yd, due to wind velocity or because most rifles have not been zeroed to the person using it, one can miss by 3, 4 or 5 in, which considerably adds to the damage to the deer and does not kill it immediately. As a consequence, stalking can cause dramatic damage to a deer, even if a high-powered rifle is used that can kill a human being from much further away than 100 yd.
Therefore, it is important to establish, first, that the hounds do not take the deer and, secondly, that the deer is shot at close range immediately. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire said this morning, it is rare that more than one shot is necessary.
Mr Gregory Barker (Bexhill and Battle, Conservative)
My hon. Friend has come to an obvious but extremely important point. Given the Minister's lack of principle in respect of deer hunting, does my hon. Friend agree that, in seeking a total ban, the Minister has simply pandered to the widespread prejudice,
which is based on a misconception, that hounds kill deer in the same way as they kill foxes? That is not the case. The sport is being killed on the basis of a profound misconception.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
As a townie, I would probably have had a neutral opinion on foxhunting and deer hunting, preferring them to be left to those who want to practise them. I am aware that many young people, when they first come across foxhunting, consider it cruel that the apparently cuddly fox will be ripped to pieces by a pack of hounds. I am also aware that there is a misconception in the wider world that the same thing happens to the deer. We know that it does not—the deer are shot. It is important to put that on the record as often as possible, so I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention.
Graham Sirl, formerly in charge of Baronsdown, the deer sanctuary in my constituency, has said:
''A ban on hunting will not save one animal's life''.
In fact, it will probably cause much greater suffering. The shooting of deer by stalking will probably take place. Hugh Thomas, chairman of the Exmoor and District Deer Management Society, estimates that in the event of a hunting ban, the herd will diminish by 10 per cent. a year. That means, sadly, that even more deer will be shot each year. Simply shooting deer causes considerably more harm and suffering to deer in totality than simply being hunted with hounds and shot at close range by one of the hunt staff or someone who is allowed to carry a pistol.
The desire to ban hunting in clause 6 is not borne out by the evidence so far as I can ascertain, and I am keen to speak against it. We have been struggling to find the magic phrase the ''incontrovertible evidence'' of which the Minister has spoken many times during the past couple of months. It appears—this is crucial—that very little evidence exists at all. The one thing that all scientists are asking for is more evidence before we as a Parliament make a decision.
One of the leading individuals who has called for more evidence is Dr. Wise, a veterinary surgeon since 1966, a lecturer in animal husbandry at Cambridge and, quite importantly, a non-hunter of deer. He says that if wild animals reach their maximum carrying capacity because there is no natural predator, the population will suffer more as it succumbs to starvation and disease. That could happen to deer if we take away man with hounds, because there are now no wolves. There will then be too many deer for the amount of land on Exmoor, especially as deer have a tendency to procreate quite a lot. [Interruption.] There will therefore be fewer deer because they will be shot. I am assuming, first, a situation in which deer will be shot. If there are more of them, they will be shot because they are pests and will be taken out. Deer, if allowed to carry on by their own devices, will overpopulate an area, as will all species; including mankind, to take the earlier point made by the hon. Member for West Ham.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
Unfortunately, that is exactly what happens under some regimes.
Deer have not yet evolved to be shot with a rifle. They have not yet worked out that they need to produce more males for the shooting that goes on. Shooting takes those with antlers, for the obvious reason that some people consider them trophies, especially in Scotland. Hunting is not currently carried out on Exmoor for trophy reasons, but if trophy hunting became more prevalent on Exmoor, those hunters would go for the stags with the better heads and antlers.
Mr Tony Banks (West Ham, Labour)
Is the hon. Gentleman still referring to Dr. Wise's report? Some 200,000 deer are culled in this country. Given that we are talking about only a marginal increase in the number of deer shot, why will all the things that he is referring to happen? A vast number are already shot every year. Why have all the things that he is talking about not yet happened all over the country?
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
I am surprised by the hon. Gentleman's intervention. As I understand it, he is saying that 200,000 deer are currently shot. The vast, vast majority of those are in Scotland. Unless I am much mistaken, I have not yet seen many deer getting a first-class return down to Somerset. Perhaps they say, ''I'm going to have a weekend off in Somerset because I won't be shot there.''
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire, Conservative)
The truth is that there is significant over-population of red deer in Scotland. One has only to drive through the highlands to see large numbers being killed on the road. That is because stalking has declined in the past 10 or so years because it is so expensive. There is vast over-population of red deer and a similar thing might happen in the west country were it not for stalking and hunting.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
Although one can see red deer easily in Scotland, one cannot see them quite as easily as on Exmoor. I appreciate the desire of the hon. Member for West Ham to visit the countryside. I am glad when people come to my constituency as tourists. Exmoor is criss-crossed with roads, bridlepaths and public footpaths, so people have access to see the deer easily. The argument is that if there is no hunting with hounds, there will be fewer deer for people to see.
Mr Hugo Swire (East Devon, Conservative)
My hon. Friend touches on an interesting point. The countryside that he describes is one with criss-crossing paths, bridleways and so forth and people use those facilities to walk on Exmoor and look for the deer. If deer are being shot in increasing numbers rather than hunted, that has severe implications for the welfare not of the deer, but of tourists visiting Exmoor.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point about the safety of humans on Exmoor when walking through what could be a dangerous scene.
Mr Michael Foster (Worcester, Labour)
The hon. Gentleman mentioned a 10 per cent. increase in the number of deer that will be shot. My understanding is that about 1,000 are culled at present, so a 10 per cent. increase would be 100, which is fewer than the number
of deer being hunted. The hon. Gentleman cannot draw his conclusion from those figures.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
I could not do the mental arithmetic quickly because I was trying to listen to the hon. Gentleman's argument. In round terms, 100 deer are taken by the hunt and about 100 are picked up by a casualty service. That represents about 30 per cent. I thought that only 500 to 600 deer were culled or killed in any given year. I do not know what the hon. Gentleman's profession was before coming to the House, but I worked in the City.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
No wonder the hon. Gentleman changed jobs, because 10 per cent. of 3,000 is 300, so 300 more will be shot. [Interruption.] People hear what they want to hear. For the sake of clarity, the size of the herd will diminish by 10 per cent. per year. Out of 3,000, 300 more will be shot each year. Currently, only 100 are hunted; ergo, 200 more will be shot. What is the problem?
Mr Michael Foster (Worcester, Labour)
The hon. Gentleman said that the number of deer that would be shot would increase by 10 per cent. If 1,000 are culled each year, an increase of 10 per cent. would be 100, which is the figure that I quoted. He made no reference to 3,000.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
I was reading a note that I had been handed that quotes Hugh Thomas of the Exmoor and District Deer Management Society. He estimates that in the event of a hunting ban, the size of the herd will diminish by 10 per cent. per year—10 per cent. of 3,000 is 300, which Mr. Thomas says is a depressing figure—to only 10 per cent. of the present herd. He fears that the deer on Exmoor will be culled by a substantial amount and reduced from 3,000 to 300.
Mr Alun Michael (Minister of State (Rural Affairs), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Cardiff South and Penarth, Labour/Co-operative)
It is always difficult to deal with figures because they may vary from one year to another or may be interpreted in different ways. I suggest that we use the figures in the Burns report. The report estimates that there are 12,500 wild red deer in England and Wales, some 10,000 of which are found in the south-west of England, with 4,000 to 6,000 within the stag hunting countries on Exmoor, the Quantocks and mid-Devon. The Burns report estimates that about 1,000 deer need to be killed each year in the areas covered by the three hunts in order to maintain a stable population. That seems a reasonable basis from which to consider the issues.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
Before the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Foster) tries to say that he has won a point, we were talking about three hunts. The Minister gave the correct figures for all three hunts, but I have been talking exclusively about Exmoor, which, if the hon. Member for Worcester does not know, is quite a distance from the Quantocks and has a different hunt attached to it. I am talking about the number of deer killed on Exmoor, not that figure plus the number of deer killed by the Tiverton stag hounds and the Quantock stag hounds. If he wants to discuss the figures afterwards, I will willingly go through them with him.
Hunts selectively cull weak and damaged animals. Two or three Saturdays ago, for example, the teeth of
the two hinds taken by the hunt were checked, which showed that one was eight years old and one was 12 years old. The optimum age for a deer is five or six years old. When they get to eight, and certainly when they get to 12, they are beginning to age. As with any elderly animal, elderly deer are more susceptible to catching diseases from which a younger deer would recover, and dying a slow, agonising death. More importantly, elderly deer need to be culled because they cannot feed themselves in poor weather. If it snows, it is harder for deer to get to the grass and they have to look for low-hanging leaves. If, as at the moment, there are many deer, the weaker ones, particularly among the smaller hinds, are unable to reach up to the higher leaves. It is necessary to cull deer that are eight or 12 years old. Nobody could have told how old those deer were from 100 yd.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
There is no way to do so short of going up and saying, ''Hello, I am a deer dentist. Will you show your teeth?'' No one could possibly have known the age of those deer. When hounds hunt deer, the weaker deer cannot get away. As a result, they are more likely to stand at bay allowing the huntsmen to shoot them. That is why hunts are in a better position selectively to cull weak and damaged animals.
Dr. Wise believes that a moral basis for banning hunting is only relevant if there are overwhelming animal welfare reasons; the so-called ''incontrovertible evidence''. A recent letter from four vets acknowledged that hunting has already been banned on National Trust and Forestry Commission land on Exmoor. In those areas, hunts can neither monitor nor manage the deer.
Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test, Labour)
Once again, I have been attempting to follow the hon. Gentleman's line of argument. My understanding of how a stag hunt works is that, prior to the hunt setting out, a stalker will select the deer to be chased and the stag hunt chases it. I presume that the stalker is not an animal welfare agent who is deliberately selecting a deer that will not run away because that would give the hunt no fun. The idea that the hunt deals only with those deer that are least able to deal with themselves is a fantasy because the stalker has to choose an animal that can run away in order for the hunt to happen.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
The hon. Gentleman makes the point that harbouring could serve another purpose because the deer could be shot at that point.
Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test, Labour)
Essentially I was making two points. First, if an animal is really sick, the stalker could say that it is not worth the chase and should be shot to put it out of its misery, which is a point mentioned in the Burns report. Secondly, by the nature of preparing for the hunt, the stalker will need to select an animal that will run away; otherwise the hunt will not take place.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
May I help the hon. Gentleman and Government Members on what is harbouring and the reasons why those things happen? Stags are not shot at the time of harbouring for various reasons. First, it is
carried out at a distance; quite often in excess of 100 yd and sometimes of 200 or 300 yd.
Secondly, the harbourers currently get free access from the landowners. If the compliant 500 to 600 landowners that I mentioned earlier to the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) were no longer compliant, the harbourer would not get access to anyone's land and would not be able to search out the stags or hinds—depending of the time of year—to be hunted the next day. Harbouring operates with the consensus of landowners; they are compliant. Harbourers inform hunts about the whereabouts of groups, rather than particular animals. They do not say, ''That stag over there,'' unless there is a stag that is looking unwell, limping or needs selectively culling.
Depending on the time of year, harbourers inform hunts only of the rough whereabouts of the animals. Most importantly, harbouring does not make the final selection; the hounds make the final selection by chasing and ultimately bringing to bay the deer that needs culling. I hope that that answers the question about harbouring. I think that there was a misconception about what takes place.
Mr Michael Foster (Worcester, Labour)
The hon. Gentleman is being extremely courteous. I am still puzzled by the evidence presented to the Committee about the 3,000 deer that need to be culled on Exmoor. Burns makes it clear that in the three areas where stag hunting currently takes place, only 1,000 deer need to be culled to maintain a stable population. It appears that there is some discrepancy between Burns's evidence and the evidence that the hon. Gentleman is presenting to the Committee.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
I do not have the Burns report in front of me, as the hon. Gentleman does. Once again, he obviously does not know my part of the world well at all. We are talking about three countries that are hunted by the Tiverton stag hounds, the Devon and Somerset stag hounds, which hunt Exmoor, and the Quantock stag hounds. According to what the Minister said just a few moments ago, there are 4,000 deer in total, of which 1,000, for all three hunts, need to be culled each year. I am talking about Exmoor, where there are roughly 3,000 deer of which around 500 are culled each year.
The gentleman in question knows about deer management because he is the chairman of the Exmoor and District Deer Management Society and he said that the number of deer that will be taken out by culling by shooting if stag hunting with hounds disappears will be 10 per cent. of the total each year. I had always been led to believe that we would be down to about 40 per cent. of the current deer population, but, worryingly, he estimates—he is not renowned for being keen on deer hunting with hounds—that the figure would go down to 10 per cent. of the current deer herd on Exmoor. I am not talking about the Tiverton stag hounds or the Quantock stag hounds.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire, Conservative)
I was most interested to hear the exchange between my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Worcester on this very technical and difficult subject. Does my hon. Friend agree that that
discussion highlights the need for the registrar and tribunal to discuss those technical matters, rather than us? The Committee plainly does not know how many deer there are on Exmoor; we do not know how many ought to be culled or the means by which that should happen. That should be a matter for the registrar or tribunal.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
My hon. Friend made that point most eloquently this morning. I perhaps take a stronger view; we should not really be having the Bill at all. I am sure that my hon. Friend also takes that view from a certain standpoint.
Time is getting on and I want to make some progress. The letter from the four vets acknowledged that hunting has already been banned on parts of Exmoor and that the hunt can therefore neither monitor nor manage the deer. We can already see that the proportion of males to females has been distorted on those two large estates, because of unrestricted trophy hunting. Shooters have mainly been going for the male deer with large antlers for the obvious reason that they look rather nice on walls.
More importantly, the fact that the deer tend to feed in the way that they do means that landowners around those large estates erect even more fences to prevent excessive damage to their crops. That further reduces the grazing available to deer and as a consequence lessens the number of healthy deer. That is the problem with Baronsdown, the LACS sanctuary on Exmoor. People there are alleged to feed deer, which attracts deer on to the land. Those deer are to some extent over-fed and congregate too closely and spread disease. There is an unhealthy element to the deer herd on Exmoor because of Baronsdown. It is an unfortunate by-product of what I can see is a well-meaning animal sanctuary. It is unfortunate that it had all of that bad publicity towards the end of last year.
Mr Colin Pickthall (West Lancashire, Labour)
On the question of his fears about imbalance, I should be genuinely interested to know if that has been the result of stalking over the years in Scotland.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
I hold no brief for stalking in Scotland. I am led to believe that there are many more hinds than stags with large antlers in Scotland. We are talking about hunting with hounds, and I am no expert on stalking in Scotland, because it is a long way from Somerset. Is the hon. Gentleman happy with that?
Mr Colin Pickthall (West Lancashire, Labour)
Not quite. I understood the hon. Gentleman to be speculating that if the Bill as it stands were passed, too many stags would be killed because of trophy hunting and the desire of people in small bungalows to have antlers hanging on their walls, leading to an imbalance in the population. I do not know if that has been the case as a result of stalking in Scotland, where stags are more attractive to the shooters.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
In Scotland, the estates are considerably larger; by a magnitude of 10, 20 or 30 times in many cases, or even 40, 50 or 60 times. They are a lot more remote. It is quite obvious when someone who is about to shoot a stag is creeping on to an estate up the only road for 20 miles. Stalking in Scotland is well regulated by the landowners, the ghillies and the
gamekeepers. The situation in Somerset is different. There is less land ownership, and some common land.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire, Conservative)
There is also the fundamental difference that the deer in Scotland largely belong to the landowner, and are looked after in the hope of charging for stalking. In Somerset, the deer do not belong to the landowner on whose land they happen to be grazing at any particular moment.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
Part of the reason for that is that they will quite often move over six landowners' property in one night. In consequence it becomes difficult to determine at what point a deer is on one's land. By the time one catches up with it, it may have moved over the land of three or four landowners. It is incredibly difficult to establish who owns the deer and who has shooting rights.
To return to Dr. Wise, he believes that animal brains—he would know because he is a physiologist of some repute—are very different from human brains. Animal fear, he says, is not equivalent to human fear. That point is largely intuitive but, anthropomorphically, people will take a view and say, ''Of course deer are suffering.''
A hunting animal is instinctively programmed to run. It cannot appreciate that it has been targeted or that its life is threatened. It has not seen television and does not know that if someone is chasing after it with a gun, the person carrying the gun is likely to shoot it. A deer does not appreciate that. It certainly does not appreciate that point when hounds are running because most of the deer on Exmoor will have heard or seen the pack of hounds at some time. It will not know that its cousin once removed was killed three or four months earlier; it will not have worked that out. However, when one is singled out and shot, it will work out that there is a deer lying on the ground. That is one of the problems with culling. It makes deer herds nocturnal, which they are not currently.
Mr Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside, Labour)
If the deer are not scared or worried by the hounds, why do they run?
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
Deer are instinctively programmed to run. They do not have a mental process whereby they think, ''I am in fear,. I must go.'' Instead, their reaction is, ''I am being chased, I must go.'' There is a difference, although I am no physiologist.
Mr Tony Banks (West Ham, Labour)
I think that I know a tad more about the brains of animals than the hon. Gentleman does. I am wary of arguments in which various learned gentlemen say that they know what an animal thinks. We probably do not know at all what animals think. Regardless, we are not judging by the standards of the animals. They are not legislating; we are. Therefore, the hon. Gentleman's arguments are specious.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
They are far from specious. When making laws in this country, a democracy that believes in tolerance, one should be tolerant and allow individuals to pursue what they wish. Unless cruelty
or unnecessary suffering are proven, there is no real evidence of any suffering.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire, Conservative)
I am puzzled by the line of argument from Government Members. They seem to be indicating that sheep that run away from a sheepdog are having a terrible time or that birds that fly away from the bird table when one goes into their garden must be terrified out of their wits. Are we to ban bird tables, gardens and going into gardens?
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
Indeed. This morning, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough pointed out that the logical extension of the Bill is that it will be illegal for sheepdogs to round up sheep. Arguably, there is no difference between the feelings of sheep and deer.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
Some of the sheep may feel distraught, as the hon. Gentleman comments from a sedentary position. More importantly, there may well be physical suffering from fatigue. I am sure that the hon. Member for West Ham is, to use a parliamentary term, very tired after a whole day out walking the streets of his constituency. He might want to put his feet up, but does the activity do his feet any lasting damage? I doubt it very much.
Professor Bateson, who is an expert on animal behaviour, certainly is not a neuroscientist. It would have been helpful if he had been a neuroscientist. The Minister's so-called incontrovertible evidence is based on Professor Bateson's 1997 evidence, in which he himself concludes that it would have been helpful if he had been a neuroscientist. In 1997, he said that there was long-lasting physical suffering from fatigue, but he now says that he is unsure about that. The joint universities study of 1999 found no such evidence.
Likewise, the evidence that was given on day two at the Portcullis house hearings by Professor Harris—who, incidentally, is an expert on the physiology of exercise—and Douglas Wise hardly backs up the word ''incontrovertible'' that the Minister has been relying on so much during the five weeks that we have been discussing hunting in this Committee and before that when he mentioned it in the House.
Indeed, Professor Bateson—an animal behaviourist and not a physiologist—claimed that the strongest evidence that he found in 1997 was, in fact, physiological. He said at the time that he was not capable of making the distinction. To use the point of the hon. Member for West Ham, Professor Bateson is not an expert in anything about which he drew conclusions.
It is a shame that the Minister based his so-called ''incontrovertible evidence'' on the evidence of someone who did not actually feel fully qualified to draw conclusions. In fact, Professor Bateson stated:
''Only someone who was scientifically illiterate could argue that evidence from a new area of research was incontrovertible.''
I find the Minister's point surprising, and am keen to hear what he has to say on that. The bottom line is that the evidence from Professor Bateson is not backed
up by anyone else in the joint universities scheme or by the other two highly esteemed vets who gave their evidence on the second day. That is hardly ''incontrovertible evidence'', to use the class phrase that the Minister keeps coming out with.
Bateson addressed the effect of a ban on deer welfare, but looked only at the short period before the deer come to bay and are taken by a pistol shot. Looking at the last 15 or 20 minutes of a deer's life is to miss the wood for the trees. We must remember that the death is quick in deer hunting. There are no wounded survivors, unlike with stalking. I am sure that the hon. Member for West Ham does not like the idea of stalking, but there will still be a need to cull the deer. I contend that the figures that I gave, rather than those of the hon. Member for Worcester, were right although we can discuss that afterwards. It is worrying that the deer herd will be down by 10 per cent., which will mean that 2,700 deer are likely to suffer death by shooting in the next few years.
Professor Bateson also said:
''I think welfare issues have to be balanced against conservation, economics and recreational issues.''
He is looking at the subject in the round. As hunting is the only method that results in a clean head shot to a deer, it must be considered more humane than stalking. As Vets for Hunting, representing more than 400 rural vets, said:
''No one should be under the illusion that stalking compared with hunting is the humane option.''
Even Bateson, in his ill-fated 1997 study, estimated that 10 per cent. of stalked deer require two or more shots to be killed and that 5 per cent. escape. They escape to die a slow, lingering death. There are no wounded survivors from hunting deer with hounds.
It would make far more sense for the registrar to examine the practice because, as my hon. Friends have said, we do not yet know enough about it. People in my constituency know a lot about it and believe hunting to be more humane than stalking. I shall give some statistics—perhaps the accountant from Worcester would like to take note and check my arithmetic. If we compare 100 deer shot by stalking with 100 deer hunted and shot at close range, of the 100 stalked deer, according to Bateson—the man who produced the incontrovertible evidence—five would not be killed immediately. He said that there would probably be ''no instantaneous death'' for them and that they would last 48 or 50 hours. By my reckoning, the suffering of those five deer would amount to 250 hours of great pain. However, to return to the 100 deer hunted with hounds and shot at close range by someone from a stag hunt, if we accept that all of them suffer from much damaging fatigue—although studies after Professor Bateson's say that that does not happen—each suffers for 15 minutes. For 100 hunted deer, that amounts to 25 hours of low-degree suffering.
To look at the matter in the round to see whether stalking is more humane than hunting with hounds, hunting—a managed adaptation of a natural form of predation, from which healthy deer escape—appears to be naturally selective and to cause less suffering. It
seems clear to me, from Professor Bateson's evidence—even though the Minister has based on Bateson's advice the fact that hunting with hounds is cruel—that hunting is less cruel than stalking. Most people would think that if they looked at the figures and I shall be interested to hear what the Minister has to say on them.
The upside of our hunting is that we have the strongest wild deer herd in Europe. It is the healthiest, the largest and the most visible to people outside Exmoor.
Mr Michael Foster (Worcester, Labour)
The hon. Gentleman has a problem with evidence, statistics and facts that are quoted. In the description that he just gave of 100 hypothetical deer, he gave 15 minutes as the average duration of a stag hunt. Can he account for the fact that, on page 39, Burns says:
''Recent research indicates that . . . the average duration of the hunt is about three hours and that the distance travelled is about 18 kilometres''?
There is a slight difference between 15 minutes and three hours.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
The hon. Gentleman has been too keen to look at the Burns report instead of listening to what I say. According to Professor Bateson, on whom the Minister has based all his incontrovertible evidence that hunting deer with hounds is cruel, the animal suffers from fatigue in the last 15 minutes of its life. Prior to that, it has not suffered from fatigue. Does that help the hon. Gentleman, who was trying to be overly selective in his intervention?
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
Exactly. That is a large element of the Opposition's argument. We do not know how Professor Bateson knows that. He now does not necessarily know how he knows it. However, he has made that statement on which the Minister—whom the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mr. Hall) has been following through the Lobby in the past few weeks—has based his view that the evidence is incontrovertible.
Mr Tony Banks (West Ham, Labour)
In that case, perhaps the hon. Gentleman can tell us from his copious knowledge how long he would estimate the fatigue to be, if he believes that Bateson is wrong. Over the three-hour chase, is it five minutes, 15 minutes or an hour? Let us see what the hon. Gentleman thinks, not what all these personages from academia think.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
The hon. Gentleman wants it both ways. In an earlier intervention he decried and pooh-poohed all the so-called experts. I would not claim to be an expert. I simply claim to be somebody who can undermine the Minister's case that he relies on experts' incontrovertible evidence.
Mr Gregory Barker (Bexhill and Battle, Conservative)
Does my hon. Friend agree that we are moving into an area where more research needs to be undertaken? We are talking about trauma, stress or fatigue, which is no doubt similar to that endured by thousands of people every year who contest marathons. One has only to go down to Westminster bridge to see people who have run 24 miles collapsing, but that in no way compares to the horror of a major
shotgun or bullet wound, which causes real, bloody injury. Labour Members have closed their minds to that possibility.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
The point must be that, when deer have escaped, they have been observed to be undamaged and have returned to normal life. Vets for Hunting, a group of 400 rural vets, says:
''there is no scientific evidence, and this includes clinical observation, that deer . . . that escape hounds suffer irreversible physiological or pathological damage as a result of being chased''.
That evidence is more empirical than any that I can give the hon. Member for West Ham. What I think is not important—I have never hunted deer with hounds and I would not know what happens. We are trying to discuss whether there should be an outright ban on stag hunting and deer hunting based on incontrovertible evidence provided by a Professor Bateson, who seems to have changed his mind and upon whom—an animal behaviourist and not a physiologist—the Minister has based all his evidence.
It is surprising that the hon. Member for West Ham should want to know what I have to say, when he will be keen to ban all forms of hunting, regardless of what Professor Bateson says. I am looking at the Bill in the round and believe that we should have a much more liberal licensing regime than one that immediately bans stag hunting, which will dramatically affect a large part of my constituency.
Deer hunts also provide a valuable service by finding casualty deer. Stag hounds take 15 per cent. of deer, which they find injured or dying. It is common sense that one could not find them as easily without hounds, which is why my amendment to put in place a deer management scheme was so important when we briefly discussed it on Thursday. The casualty service further lessens the suffering through which some elderly deer go.
On Thursday, the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West pointed out that 85 per cent. of deer are not taken by the hunt, but I have just explained to him where another 15 per cent. of them go. What happens to the other 70 per cent.? They are evidently stalked and shot. The question, to which I do not know the answer, is how many of them are shot legally. I can tell the hon. Gentleman that the 15 or 30 per cent.—whichever way one wants to look at it—taken by stag hounds ensure that we have a healthy herd of 3,000 deer. Taking 100 or 150 deer leaves 3,000 deer on Exmoor, which are looked after for free by a deer management scheme that works.
Earlier, the hon. Member for West Ham asked why we could not use the hunt's expertise if hunting were banned, which is what will happen under the Bill, to take people round Exmoor. Perhaps we can, but how will the hunt be employed. We need a deer management scheme and I hope that the Minister will be able to respond by the Tuesday that we come back from our parliamentary holiday—it is a parliamentary but not a ministerial holiday.
Mr Alun Michael (Minister of State (Rural Affairs), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Cardiff South and Penarth, Labour/Co-operative)
For the avoidance of doubt, I shall be spending my time with my new grandchild, so, as far as I am concerned, it will be a holiday.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
I wish the Minister, his grandchild and his son and daughter-in-law or son-in-law and daughter well. I hope that he has an enjoyable and relaxing break before our final week discussing the Bill.
Apart from the deer hounds providing a valuable service in finding casualty deer, dispersal discourages inbreeding and the spread of disease. One of the problems with Baronsdown is that the deer are attracted on to a small estate of only 250 acres, and when disease gets into the herd it runs right through it, which is a particular problem with worms. Some people believe that the Baronsdown sanctuary has far too many unhealthy looking deer, which is an unfortunate side effect of the laudable aims of the League Against Cruel Sports. It is allowed to try to protect deer, but the problem with disease is an unfortunate side effect of its beneficial thoughts. It would probably be better in the long run for those deer if they were not all herded on to one sanctuary.
On Second Reading, the Minister claimed that Professor Bateson and the evidence to the Burns inquiry clearly showed that chased deer suffer, even if they are not caught. I hope that I have shown that that is not the case. Professor Bateson, on whose evidence DEFRA and the Minister have based their conclusions, has had different thoughts since then. He considers it illiterate to call a first study incontrovertible and claimed that the evidence was physiological, despite his lacking the expertise to make that judgment.
Bateson is asking for more research, which is needed before we ban something on instinct without sending it to the registrar.
Before we instinctively ban something without sending it to the registrar and subjecting it to tests of cruelty or utility, we should include deer hunting with foxhunting and other forms of hunting, so that the registrar can examine it more closely.
The cruelty element does not exist in hunting to the extent that the Minister believes, although he may believe that there is utility. The Bill has obviously pre-judged that, because the tests are consequential. Failing one means failing both, so we will have no chance to show the utility of deer hunting. The deer belong to all on Exmoor and hunting is vital to the management process—it is seen as a communal resource that is beyond financial value. The community works hard to stop poaching, and it is largely successful. That means that those who do not hunt deer get to see a lot of deer if they go to Exmoor, and the more who go to Exmoor, the better it will be for that otherwise economically depressed part of the country.
Graham Sirl has argued that
''hunting with hounds does play an integral part in the management system for deer on Exmoor and the Quantocks.''
The system is most favourable to the well-being of the herd because it discriminates against the old and infirm. The Government claim to have been principled, but they have singled out the hunting of deer with hounds. On Exmoor, the animal is seen as a pest.
We have heard that a deer can eat three times what one sheep can, and there can be as many as 100 deer in one field. The other day, I was driving over Molland common in Devon, and 70 deer were roaming as a herd. Some 70 deer eat the same amount as 210 sheep, which represents a substantial flock by some farmers' standards on Exmoor. I heard only yesterday of a farmer just outside my constituency who was hoping that, over the next few weeks, some breeding ewes and their lambs would be able to use a field, on lower land than on Exmoor, which had been put to one side specially. However, some 35 to 40 deer had come on to that land, so the grass will disappear. That will have an economic impact, but it also has the impact of making the husband of that individual want to get his rifle and shoot the deer. However, he would not do that as hunting still exists, so those deer survived.
According to a 1997 west Somerset survey, hunting is worth £4.5 million to the economy of Exmoor alone, not including the Quantocks. Stag hunting is worth about £3 million to the farriers, the Crown hotel, the White Horse hotel and the Royal Oak at Withypool. All those places do fantastically well in the winter months. Tourists, such as Labour Members, visit Somerset in the much sunnier, warmer months. I do not blame them, because obviously it can be cold and damp when one is 300 or 400 m up on a piece of land next to the Atlantic ocean.
The obvious reason that the economy does so well out of stag hunting, and shooting such as driven grouse and pheasant shoots, is that it brings in so much money. Exmoor can provide fantastic sporting pursuits. If we get rid of stag hunting, we will create a large hole in my constituency's economy. The herd will reduce by 10 per cent. each year. According to Hugh Thomas, chairman of the Exmoor and District Deer Management Society, it will be reduced to only 300, but let us assume that the figure is 1,000, which would still be a dramatic reduction.
Shooting will be the main way that people take out deer. There will be a lot more poaching, or semi-illegal shooting of deer for the bag, which will find their way to butchers further and further afield. At the same time, the deer will become scared of humans and daylight, because it will be during daylight that they are normally shot. To answer an earlier question, 500 to 600 compliant landowners on Exmoor look after the herd. If the arrangement for managing the deer population is destroyed, it will not be easily replicated on Exmoor or the Quantocks.
Hunting is the glue that binds the community together. I can understand how West Ham United closely binds together the constituency of the hon. Member for West Ham. Like some people in his constituency, there are people in mine who do not like deer hunting, stag hunting, foxhunting or hunting of any kind. The hon. Gentleman does not want all the West Ham supporters taken out and carted off.
Obviously, they do not want him carted off either, because he is re-elected each time without too much hassle. They have a tolerance for the hon. Gentleman. I wish that he would extend tolerance to my constituents so that they can continue to do what they have done for a century and a half, thereby providing huge benefits for tourism, land management, deer management and the economy as a whole.
Ms Candy Atherton (Falmouth and Camborne, Labour)
The vast majority of the people in my constituency who contact me oppose hunting. I would not want the Committee to think that the people of the west country overwhelmingly support hunting.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
I am making exactly that point. There are people in my constituency, even on Exmoor, who do not like any form of hunting with hounds. I appreciate that and respect their opinion. The very fact that I mention it shows that I represent their opinion as much as that of those who go stag hunting.
However, a huge majority of people on Exmoor support the idea that hunting with hounds is the way to ensure a healthy deer population and to cull deer in the least cruel way. I have no idea whether such hunting is cruel. The hon. Member for West Ham asked what I think, but, as I said, I do not know what I think. What I do know is that the Government have said—I come back to it again—that there is incontrovertible evidence of cruelty based on the findings of a gentleman who is not a physiologist, who himself has changed his mind. The evidence is not incontrovertible. If there is no hunting, many landowners will see the deer as a roving cash crop—a possible source of funds—and they will be taken out indiscriminately by opportunists.
The Minister said that there is incontrovertible evidence on the cruelty of deer hunting, but that is not my perspective or that of the vast majority of people on Exmoor. To answer the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Ms Atherton), the vast majority of letters that I have received are pro-hunting, perhaps because people know that I take a pro-hunting line and believe that tolerance should be shown. No doubt people write to the hon. Lady because of her views.
Mr Hugo Swire (East Devon, Conservative)
It is worth pointing out that the hon. Lady represents Falmouth and Camborne, which is not known for its hunting. It is a long way from Exmoor, which is what we are discussing. I represent a west country seat with three hunts, and I had a meeting with 280 hunters last weekend. The great majority of people in the west country have no desire or appetite for an outright ban, but support some form of regulation—one has only to look at the polls conducted by the Western Morning News. I would not want the Committee to be misled into thinking that the west country in any way wants the abolition of hunting with hounds.
Ms Candy Atherton (Falmouth and Camborne, Labour)
The Western Morning News is widely sold in the west country, but it would admit that it targets farmers and the hunting community in
particular. The paper may say that it is even-handed, but it tends to support hunting. It stopped targeting individual constituencies, because the overwhelming majority of people from my constituency who took part in the poll voted for my position, which is to ban hunting.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
I shall not get into the relative merits of the poll. The hon. Member for St. Ives (Andrew George), who is not in his place, represents a Cornwall constituency, although he has made great play of the fact that Cornwall is not part of the west country. It might be part of the south-west, but we in Somerset are very much part of the west country. Whatever mail the hon. Lady gets—I am sure that she responds to it, as her constituents would like her to—I cannot match the weight of her postbag by any stretch of the imagination, because the vast majority of people in my constituency are more worried about hospital waiting lists and the fact that policing is skewed towards Bristol, although we all pay for it. Hunting is not the be-all and end-all, but for people for whom it is the be-all and end-all, we should be tolerant and allow them to continue to hunt as they wish.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire, Conservative)
I am slightly concerned at the line being taken by my hon. Friend and the hon. Lady. They both seem to be arguing that if a larger number of people is in favour of hunting, it should be allowed and that if a larger number is against, it should be disallowed. Surely, one of our main purposes in this place should be to defend the rights of minorities. Even if a majority of the hon. Lady's letters are against hunting, surely she, like me, should be looking after people who are in the minority—the depressed minority in our society today.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
Far be it from me to argue that, although the vast majority of letters in my postbag are in favour of hunting. However, I accept that the hon. Lady's postbag is the opposite. I know that my predecessor, Mrs. Ballard, now of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, claimed that, when she was well known as a Member of Parliament with anti-hunting views, her postbag was immensely anti-hunting. That goes to show that such matters depend on the individual view of Members.
My main point is that I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray), who rightly pointed out that the issue is about toleration of those who wish to hunt. In my opinion, their views stack up. Unfortunately, the Minister's do not. He accepts that there is probably utility in deer hunting, and I strongly back that view. He claims that there is also cruelty, but there is not incontrovertible evidence of that. He has included deer hunting in the Bill as incapable of being registered, but he is wrong. The clause should not stand part of the Bill, and I shall vote against it.
Mr Mike Hall (Weaver Vale, Labour)
I will be brief. I shall support the clause, but I have reservations. Members of the public will notice that we have not tabled amendments on including foxhunting. My hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood, in a thoughtful contribution this morning, said that he is looking forward to amendments being tabled to the clause at a later stage. I support that view. I would like the clause to be
amended, but I want that done on the Floor of the House, so we have reserved our position.
I listened to the thoughtful, if rather long-winded, speech on deer hunting by the hon. Member for Taunton. I notice that a member of the Middle Way Group, the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff), has joined us, and I welcome him. If I understood the hon. Member for Taunton correctly, he said that the chase involved in stag hunting does not cause irreversible physiological or pathological damage to the chased beast, be it stag or hind. Earlier in his speech, he tried to convince us that the dogs or hounds select the beast to be chased, and select the sick, the old or the diseased. I wonder—
Mr Mike Hall (Weaver Vale, Labour)
That is how it was put to the Committee—the dogs select the beast to be chased. It is then shot after a three-hour chase, as my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester said. I wonder how a sick, diseased or old stag or hind might feel after being chased through the countryside for three hours. I doubt that I could last 15 minutes of running through the countryside. My hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Mr. Pickthall), who is not in his place, might have something to say about an earlier episode that we had in the Lake district, although I hope that he does not go into too much detail about it.
Mr Gregory Barker (Bexhill and Battle, Conservative)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that being chased—running through the countryside, which comes naturally to a stag or a deer—is as nothing compared with a major gunshot wound?
Mr Mike Hall (Weaver Vale, Labour)
If the hon. Gentleman gives me a second, I will of course give way.
The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle raises an interesting point about a gunshot wound. I would be distressed about animals being shot and left wounded, which is why I have reservations about the attitude to the deer herd. My hon. Friend the Member for West Ham says that culling is necessary. If it is absolutely necessary, that is fine, but we must consider the point. At the end of the chase, the stag or the hind is shot as well. If the chase does not cause the beast any irreversible physiological or pathological damage, the outcome certainly does. That is recognised in Burns.
Mr Gregory Barker (Bexhill and Battle, Conservative)
The hon. Gentleman says that at the end of the chase the stag is shot as well. One fundamental difference is that the stag is shot after a hunt at close quarters, and the shot never fails to kill it. When stalked, it is shot from a great distance and may be grievously wounded. Furthermore, it is either caught or it escapes. Inevitably, some stags are wounded rather than killed outright.
Mr Mike Hall (Weaver Vale, Labour)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, because my understanding of stalking is that if the stag or deer is not shot with
the first shot, the ghillie, who is an expert marksman, takes it out.
Mr Mike Hall (Weaver Vale, Labour)
Will the hon. Gentleman give me a second? I shall give way to the hon. Member for Taunton in a moment. That is an interesting point, and I am glad that we have been able to tease the problem out.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
The hon. Gentleman conjures up a picture of deer being chased at great length, arguably for up to three hours, as the hon. Member for Worcester has said from a sedentary position. [Hon. Members: ''On average.''] It is not even three hours on average. It may be as little as 20 minutes, although it can be more. The average is probably between one and two hours.
Perhaps I may refer to an expert in physiology, Dr. Wise, once again. He says that deer are physically capable of travelling many more miles at a trot, but that that is of no avail, because they are not fast enough to evade hounds. He adds that the average speed of a hunt is a fast human walking pace. The impression given by the hon. Member for Worcester is not the reality. Paula Radcliffe recently completed a marathon—over twice the distance of an average hunt—at nearly three times the average speed of a deer. I do not want the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mr. Hall) to get the idea that hunting a deer happens in the way suggested by his hon. Friends.
Mr Mike Hall (Weaver Vale, Labour)
I should say that I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's intervention, but it was more of a speech and a repetition of what he said for a good hour. The Burns report is clear: it says on page 39 that a hunt lasts on average three hours. The hon. Gentleman may be right that some deer, hind or stags are caught in 20 minutes, but, according to Burns, it takes much longer than that in some cases. I do not know what is the condition of that beast at the end of the chase, but I am concerned about it.
I must press the hon. Members for Taunton and for East Devon (Mr. Swire) on the point that the deer herd will reduce by 10 per cent. a year if we ban stag hunting. We do not know what evidence backs up that claim, but is there evidence to suggest that the herd has declined by 10 per cent. a year where deer do not have to be hunted in the way described?
Mr Mike Hall (Weaver Vale, Labour)
I promised to give way to the hon. Gentleman, so I will, but only on the condition that this is an intervention, not a speech.
Mr Hugo Swire (East Devon, Conservative)
In the spirit in which the hon. Gentleman raised the point, he seeks clarification and I hope to provide it.
The hon. Gentleman referred to a stalker wounding a deer—in Scotland, one must expect—and handing
the rifle to the professional stalker to finish the animal off. The hon. Gentleman is right that that can happen, but often it does not, because a wounded stag or hind can get up quickly in difficult terrain and disappear. One can find oneself spending a whole day with a fully qualified and experienced stalker, trying to locate a horribly wounded animal. That is fact—it happens.
Mr Mike Hall (Weaver Vale, Labour)
My understanding is that if the first shot does not take out the stag or hind, the ghillie takes it out with his rifle. The stalker does not have to wait for the gun to be reloaded.
Mr Hugo Swire (East Devon, Conservative)
The ghillie would not have a rifle with him. That is the stalker.
Mr Mike Hall (Weaver Vale, Labour)
I stand corrected and I am grateful for the intervention.
My final point relates to the claim that commercial activities will take precedence over conservation if we ban stag hunting. I do not accept that that is a strong argument or reason for the clause not standing part of the Bill. I am concerned about the clause standing part unamended, however. I have not sought to amend it in Committee, as the matter should be dealt with on the Floor of the House to give each Member the chance to say whether other things, such as foxhunting and mink hunting, should be included. That will be my position when the Bill returns to the House. I hope that that makes my views clear to a wider audience.
Mr Rob Marris (Wolverhampton South West, Labour)
I, too, shall be brief, as the clause stand part debate has been pretty thorough. I want to say a little about the current system and the three stag hunts down in Devon and Somerset. The hon. Member for Taunton spoke eloquently and at length. I am sure that he was very successful in the City, because 0 per cent. suddenly became 15 per cent. in relation to casualties. Paragraph 5.62 on page 95 of the Burns report states that
''1,000 deer need to be culled each year''
and 160 are taken out by hunting—that is 16 per cent. The 80 casualties would have died anyway and are not included in the 1,000 deer that need to be culled.
We are left with a slightly adjusted figure, which I raise with the hon. Member for Taunton: 84 per cent. of deer that have to be culled each year are taken out not by hunting, but by other methods. According to paragraph 5.57 of Burns, the most common method is shooting by stalking.
On the improvement of the stock, which Opposition Members have talked about, that is clearly not the case pursuant to Burns. I am not saying that Burns is the bible, but Burns commissioned research and the inquiry pulled together a lot of information. Paragraph 5.62 states that hunting does not take out sufficient hinds and calves. It does not improve the stock that much, because it is not achieving the right things.
Paragraph 5.63 states that dispersal ''is only very temporary'', so dispersal is no great argument.
Mr Edward Garnier (Harborough, Conservative)
Will the hon. Gentleman accept it from me that it is the churning of the herd that is important? The herd must be kept moving to prevent it from dwelling on any particular holding for too long and causing damage. It does not matter whether the
deer are moved on every day or every half week, as the important thing is to keep them moving so that no one land holding is the victim of over-grazing.
Mr Rob Marris (Wolverhampton South West, Labour)
I understand the hon. and learned Gentleman's point and the concept. However, the fact is that Burns refers to the effects of dispersal as ''very temporary''. I am not an expert, but that suggests to me that hunting and dispersal do not do a lot in relation to the sort of point that he raised.
Burns addressed the question of what would happen if hunting with dogs were stopped in those three hunting areas. In paragraph 5.68 he states that the numbers of deer that are currently hunted would
''be made up fairly easily by licensed deer stalkers''.
I am not yet embarking on whether that is desirable. I am just setting out my stall, as it were, pursuant to Burns.
I think that the hon. Member for East Devon raised the argument about deer becoming gun-shy. If the current situation is that 85 per cent. of deer are not culled by hunts and the most common method of culling, according to Burns, is shooting by stalking, I would expect the deer to be gun-shy and hiding from the tourists at night already, because it is only the dim ones that will not pick that up. Even on the most generous interpretation of the figures, we are talking about somewhere between 70 and 85 per cent. of deer that are culled being shot. The gun-shy argument and the tourist argument are a bit thin. Unfortunately the hon. Member for East Devon has had to go out, so perhaps the hon. Member for Taunton, who is in his place, can tell me whether the tourists flock to those three hunting areas to see the hunt. Clearly, some do, but I suspect that an awful lot—probably the majority—do not. The hon. Gentleman can correct me if I am wrong, but that is my suspicion.
Mr Ian Cawsey (Brigg and Goole, Labour)
Is my hon. Friend aware of the study, ''Managing British Mammals'', by the wildlife conservation research unit at Oxford university? It states:
''It is also sometimes suggested (e.g. Exmoor National Park Authority 2000) that deer stalking could not be done safely on Exmoor due to the large numbers of tourists and general public in the area. However, Exmoor is far from unique in this respect. In The New Forest, an even more popular tourist area . . . annual deer culls by Forestry Commission rangers have exceeded 750 throughout the last decade . . . no accidents involving''
the
''public have occurred during on those culls.''
Mr Rob Marris (Wolverhampton South West, Labour)
I thank my hon. Friend for that. The precise figures had slipped my mind.
Mr Gregory Barker (Bexhill and Battle, Conservative)
The hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Mr. Cawsey) will be aware that the topography of the New Forest, which is forested, is entirely different from Exmoor. It is much easier to approach a wild deer or stag in the New Forest than on Exmoor where they can see for miles.
Mr Rob Marris (Wolverhampton South West, Labour)
The topography may be different, but I should have thought that people running around with shotguns and rifles would be more of a problem in forests.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
There used to be buck hounds in the New Forest, but no longer because the Forestry Commission banned hunting. The hunt was disbanded and stalking now takes place. The hon. Gentleman is arguing that the same could happen on Exmoor, but that is not the case because the Forestry Commission owns large parts of the land on which buck hounds relied in the New Forest. That is not the case on Exmoor where the land is more widely distributed among owners. If there are three farms and hunting is not allowed on the middle one because the owners are pro-shooting, deer will be shot as they move across that farm. The deer do not realise that they will be shot until it has happened.
Mr Rob Marris (Wolverhampton South West, Labour)
We are back almost to where the hon. Gentleman and I started in terms of land ownership patterns, which are different. I shall cite the figure that I believe was given by the hon. Gentleman, albeit as an estimate. If the 10 per cent. of land that is owned by the National Trust is left aside, around 90 per cent. of other landowners allow hunting on their land, although that may not quite add up to 90 per cent. of the total. Of course, patterns of land ownership are important.
I take on board the argument about community interest in that part of England and although I know that it is anathema to Opposition Members, other activities are available. I believe that the hon. Gentleman referred to £3 million a year in terms of drag hunting and particularly of rural diversification, on which the farming industry in England and Wales does not have a stellar history over the past 20 years. We need more rural diversification with the assistance of the Council for Small Industries in Rural Areas and such bodies.
On the question of deer in that part of the world, with the little information I have, I tend to agree that the British Deer Society's suggestion of a deer commission for England to deal with deer management if clause 6 stands part of the Bill and deer hunting is stopped; it comprises only 15 per cent. but would have a larger effect on patterns of land usage. That might be sensible and I urge it on my right hon. Friend the Minister. I shall listen with interest to what I hope he will say about that.
I have some sympathy with the hon. Member for North Wiltshire about the logic of the Bill, in that clause 6 bans deer hunting but not foxhunting. I stand with the wise comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood, echoed by my hon. Friends the Members for West Ham and for Weaver Vale, because I would have liked foxes to be included in clause 6. I suspect that an amendment to that effect will be introduced on Report and it is better for the House as a body to deal with the issue, which is controversial because feelings run deep on both sides, as we know from the Committee. It would be better for the matter to be dealt with on the Floor of the House.
Mr Edward Garnier (Harborough, Conservative)
Like the hon. Member for Sherwood, the hon. Gentleman is being candid about his intention, but I want to be clear about his attitude to the clause and to the Bill as a whole. Perhaps he can also help me with his hon. Friends' views. Does the
hon. Gentleman want to see all forms of hunting, with or without hounds, banned altogether? Does he believe that the licensing system effectively licenses cruelty?
Mr Rob Marris (Wolverhampton South West, Labour)
First, I shall not speak for my hon. Friends. They are quite capable of speaking for themselves. Secondly, it is not a licensing system; it is a registration system. Thirdly, as I have said, I should like to have seen foxes included in the clause. I shall not vote against clause stand part, because I believe that deer should be included, but if an amendment were tabled on Report to include foxes in the clause, or a mechanism to that effect, I would be likely to vote for it.
Opposition Members have often criticised the Bill for altering or making illegitimate certain human behaviour. As I have said more than once in the Committee, the Bill is about human behaviour, and I believe that hunting is as much about human behaviour as about animal welfare. It is demeaning for humans in the 21st century to carry on activities that, although they have a pest control element, are not to do with collecting food.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire, Conservative)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is the first time that a Labour Member has accepted that the Government are seeking to change human behaviour and that the Bill has nothing to do with animal welfare? That is contrary to what they have been arguing for the past six weeks.
Mr Rob Marris (Wolverhampton South West, Labour)
I do not accept that at all. I did not say that it had nothing to do with animal welfare. I said that the primary motivation for me was human behaviour. As I said earlier, my hon. Friends can speak for themselves.
I shall not read out all the scientific evidence, but the Burns inquiry commissioned a joint report, ''Contract 7'', from Patrick Bateson, the behaviourologist, and the physiologist, Roger Harris, who tend to have different views about hunting. They may have fallen out later following the joint universities study and so on, but this joint piece of work was done in 1999. It is available on the handy CD at the back of the Burns report, which I am sure we all have cracked into. I appreciate that I shall be accused of selective quotation. In one sense, that will be justified, because I shall not read it all. Bateson and Harris say:
''It is agreed that deer exhibit physiological and metabolic changes (in body temperature, muscle glycogen, lactate, glucose, fatty acids, cortisol and others) associated with prolonged intermittent exercise, at times severe and extreme, arising from the normal behavioural escape response of the deer to repeated threats.''
I end the quotation there to say as an aside that the average length of a chase—I stress the word ''average''—is three hours and the average distance covered 18 km. That is 6 km an hour, which, as the hon. Member for Taunton said from a sedentary position, is a brisk human walking pace. One gathers from what Bateson and Harris have said that deer are a bit lazy; they stand around all day trying to eat and do not go far.
Bateson and Harris go on:
''The duration of the period over which deer are repeatedly challenged in this way, and consequently the amount of exercise undertaken, is much greater than would ever happen under natural
conditions (except possibly in the case of the shorter hunts). It is agreed that deer live in relatively small home ranges moving about them slowly except when disturbed by humans, dogs and vehicles. Taken together with the physiological effects of hunting, it is clear that hunting with hounds would not be tolerated in other areas of animal husbandry''.
I move on, again briefly, to the vets. There is a body called Vets for Hunting. Figures were bandied about earlier about what vets think. Out of, in round terms, the 15,000 members of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, Vets for Hunting has managed to sign up 3 per cent., in spite of all the publicity, the debates in its journal and so on.
Mr Rob Marris (Wolverhampton South West, Labour)
I shall finish the point and then give way.
An opinion poll run on vets by NOP in July 2001 was often cited as saying that 63 per cent. of vets in rural areas oppose a hunting ban on welfare grounds. Another question in that survey produced the result that 66 per cent. of vets thought that a ban would decrease the suffering of foxes or were unsure.
Mr Adrian Flook (Taunton, Conservative)
I am sure that there are 15,000 vets in Britain, of which a large element no doubt operate their surgeries in cities, because the amount of money that we spend on our domestic pets is of great importance. Does the hon. Gentleman agree, therefore, that the 400 or 500 vets in Vets for Hunting are rural vets? Does he know what percentage of rural vets they represent?
Mr Rob Marris (Wolverhampton South West, Labour)
I confess that I have no means of knowing. I stand to be corrected but, as the hon. Gentleman tempts me, I would say that there was a disproportionate number of vets in rural areas, although I appreciate that there are many cat and dog vets in cities such as Wolverhampton. Even if we agreed that only a third of vets were in the rural areas, it would be 5,000. Vets for Hunting represents 427 out of 5,000, which is not even 10 per cent.
Mr Hugo Swire (East Devon, Conservative)
I have stumbled across the figures, if the hon. Gentleman will indulge me. He referred to the NOP poll, published in The Daily Telegraph on behalf of the Countryside Alliance, of 1,000 members of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. Despite all the statistics, the key point is that only a small fraction of those polled—24 per cent.—supported the total ban option contained in the options Bill. In other words, the majority favoured the continuation of hunting either under a form of licensing or through registration, as the hon. Gentleman wants.
Mr Rob Marris (Wolverhampton South West, Labour)
I do not dispute that figure, but I respond to the hon. Gentleman with the figure that I gave earlier. In the same poll, the July 2001 NOP poll, 66 per cent. thought that a ban would decrease the suffering of foxes or were unsure. I appreciate that the clause stand part debate relates to deer, but inevitably
we bring foxes into it. The Bill is concerned with decreasing suffering. That is, pursuant to clause 8, a cornerstone of the Bill. Some of the 66 per cent. might have thought that a ban would decrease the suffering of deer, but still thought that there should not be a ban; for example because of the community of interest argument that we heard earlier. Therefore, one figure does not necessarily lead to another. We must be careful with statistics, as we all try to be.
The hon. Member for North Wiltshire has a point when he says, ''What is the logic of the Bill? Foxes are in one category and will go through registration. Deer, under clause 6, will not. That is illogical.'' To some extent I agree with him and I look to the Government to do something on Report to address that illogicality. It would be more appropriate if it were done on the Floor of the House.
Mr Gregory Barker (Bexhill and Battle, Conservative)
Before the hon. Gentleman concludes, will he answer the question that I put earlier to one of his hon. Friends? How does he rate the pain, agony and experience of a wounded deer that is shot, but not fatally injured, alongside the exhaustion of a deer that runs for 18 km? Does he agree that it is infinitely worse to be shot, left wounded and waiting some hours to be dispatched than simply to run across Exmoor?
Mr Rob Marris (Wolverhampton South West, Labour)
I shall respond to that and then sit down. As I said earlier, a primary driver for me on this issue is human behaviour. Animal welfare comes into it—
Gregory Barker rose—
Mr Rob Marris (Wolverhampton South West, Labour)
No, I shall not give way. The hon. Gentleman tempts me on animal welfare. All I can say to that is that in my whole life—this may greatly surprise members of the Committee—I have never been shot and I have never run for three hours being chased by a pack of dogs over 18 km through the countryside, so I cannot say.
Mr Peter Luff (Mid Worcestershire, Conservative)
I had not intended to speak in the debate, because I have had to miss a large chunk of it, as the hon. Member for Weaver Vale said. I apologise for that, but the new hours that we voted for in this place make the number of conflicts that we face almost intolerable. [Hon. Members: ''Hear, hear.''] I apologise to you, Mrs. Roe, and to the hon. Gentleman for my absence.
The hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West is always interested in the Middle Way Group's view. Its view on hunting deer is not terribly strong. Wildlife Network, the group that gave birth to the Middle Way Group, had a policy of opposing deer hunting.
Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.
[Continued in column 983]