Schedule 3 - Hunting with dogs: prohibition

Part of Hunting Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 10:30 am on 6 February 2001.

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Photo of Edward Leigh Edward Leigh Conservative, Gainsborough 10:30, 6 February 2001

Yes. People enjoy being martyrs, and I am sure that somebody will deliberately have themselves apprehended, refuse to pay the fine and go to prison in order to draw attention to what they consider to be an attack on their civil liberties. The Government will have to face that problem when it arises.

Do the people who are creating the offence believe that such activity is criminal behaviour, in that it brutalises the person who commits it or harms other people? That is why most criminal offences are created and why we lock up people who wound, rob, burgle or drive dangerously. Is someone who is hunting in the middle of Lincolnshire harming an urban dweller living in Scunthorpe, Doncaster, Brigg, Goole, Lincoln or Grimsby? There have been occasional well publicised stories of unfortunate incidents in which hunters have gone into villages and frightened schoolchildren, but in 99 per cent. of cases hunting does not harm any human being. Nobody else needs to worry about it or be involved in it.