Schedule 3 - Hunting with dogs: prohibition

Part of Hunting Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 10:45 am on 1 February 2001.

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Photo of John Gummer John Gummer Conservative, Suffolk Coastal 10:45, 1 February 2001

I do not think that what I said excluded that point. However, I am perfectly prepared specifically to include it, lest anyone should think that I am arguing about matters that need no discussion.

Whatever the Committee of the whole House may have thought, others in this country who favour a ban on hunting with dogs for the most part do so in a generalised way. Parliament has decided on the matter in principle, and such people look to it to establish legislation that works. However, the Government have discovered that making that legislation work is much more difficult than they thought. They have also discovered that if it is too broad, various people whom they did not have in mind will get caught up. Perfectly sensibly, defences that could be offered in explaining why a dog under one's control appeared to hunt at a particular place and time are therefore taken into account. However, the difficulty is that there is no doubt that the onus would be on the defendant to prove why his terrier, for example, took to its heels in its natural way and chased a rabbit successfully. I find that perfectly acceptable because that is what terriers do and that is the nature of the predatory chain, but I find the following peculiar.

I did not believe that when elected to Parliament I would ever be asked to discuss a law which, it seems, intends to stop animals from doing what they always do. Terriers chase rabbits; it is one of those things. Perhaps there is some animal welfare reason why they should not do so, but it does not have anything to do with morality, nor with the way that nature intended. With our great attitude to justice in this new century, we are to suggest that they should not do so and that in some way or other we must stop them. So we place the liability on the owner of the terrier, who is to be told that if he goes out with that dog, albeit for a perfectly reasonable purpose such as getting rid of rats, and it mistakes the quarry, he is responsible and must prove to the court that such action was an accident—that he went out to do something else, but the terrier took to its heels and he was unable to stop it.

The Government should take such shifting of the burden of proof seriously because it is fundamental. In the great scheme of things, it cannot be considered the most serious offence to permit a terrier to do what a terrier has always done: chase rabbits. I cannot believe that however much one hates hunting one can find that a terribly serious offence. We would not dream of changing the burden of proof in such a way in any other circumstance. I do not blame the Government for that change. It has occurred because they have been seeking to build around what would otherwise be seen by everyone as an intolerable invasion of human liberty enough protection to ensure that people do not go to the stake over the issue. I am not sure that that works. The change achieves the opposite; it creates a thoroughly unacceptable situation.