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Mr. Bayley: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Beith: I said that I would put my argument and then see whether I had some time to spare out of my 10 minutes.
The Bill would have a drastic effect on life in rural communities. I think that that is one reason why the Labour candidate in my constituency felt that he could not simply take a line on the issue, but had to consider opinions in the area. Country areas are not devoid of people who are opposed to hunting. I do not accept for a moment the notion that everyone in the country likes hunting and everyone in the towns hates it: there is a
balance of opinion in both. Hunting is widespread in my area and many people are involved, but that area also includes strong opponents of hunting.
Many people in my constituency owe their employment to hunting. Some of them owe their housing to hunting, because their home comes with the job. Many businesses, large and small, depend on the hunting trade. A saddler in my constituency employs 13 people and 80 per cent. of his business comes from hunting. The Bill's effect on rural communities must be taken into account.
The continued existence of hedgerows and copses is due to the fact that farmers who hunt, or who want hunting to continue, ensure that cover is available for foxes. The continued presence of foxes in the countryside is due to the fact that farmers ensure that foxes are not exterminated, because they support hunting and want it to continue; yet it is suggested that so great a penalty should be paid by rural communities because some people feel very strongly that hunting has no place in modern society, or is uniquely cruel. There must be a stricter test than that if we are to pass legislation that will send people to prison, and will have such a drastic effect on the countryside. The argument is not sufficiently compelling.
There will be secondary effects. The racing industry will be substantially affected, especially national hunt and point-to-point racing. Many other activities depend on the keeping of horses, and people will not keep stable staff in such numbers if hunting ceases to exist.
All those problems might have to be faced if the arguments that no foxes should be killed in future and that the use of hounds to control foxes is uniquely cruel were substantiated. However, the hon. Member for Worcester has recognised that dogs may have to be used to flush out foxes, and that foxes will be killed in the future.
Mr. Kevin McNamara (Hull, North):
The right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) referred to the serious matter of unemployment. Organised trade unions in these areas have found no evidence of any particular threat to employment. The assumption is that, if hunting is abolished, people will no longer ride on horses and use saddles, and there will be no more race meetings and point-to-point. That is nonsense.
The right hon. Gentleman also argued that we are making criminals of ordinary, honest people. That is nonsense, because we have already done that with otter hunting, bear baiting and badger baiting. We have said that those activities constitute such cruelty that people deserve to go to prison if they defy the law.
The right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) said that fox hunting was the most efficient way of getting rid of foxes. The right hon. Member for Berwick-upon- Tweed said that many foxes escaped. They cannot have it both ways.
The hounds used for fox hunting are bred and trained for stamina. Faster animals could kill the fox if the object of the exercise were to get rid of the rodent and the pest, but it is not. The object of the exercise is fun. My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr. Foster) graphically described seeing a pregnant vixen's cubs torn from her belly and eaten by hounds in front of a pensioner. Schoolchildren have seen hounds pulling foxes to pieces. That is the pleasure and fun of it. The right hon. Member for Henley says that hunting is fun. Hares are pulled to pieces by greyhounds at sporting events. People go to hear the hares squeal for fun. Stags are driven over cliffs for fun. What sort of a society has fun in that way? The virtue of the Bill is borne out completely by the comments and attitudes of the right hon. Gentlemen: the arguments of Berwick and Henley are inconsistent.
Conservative Members show a strange feeling of sympathy for ordinary working people in the countryside, whereas, if they could, they would use gangs with combine harvesters to depopulate the countryside of farm labourers. Their arguments are nonsense.
I want to ask my hon. Friend the Minister about timing. My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett) said that we should consider the Bill carefully. What will happen if attempts are made on Report to sabotage it?
The Government have said that they will not give time to the Bill, because it might interfere with other important legislation--legislation to deprive single mothers of their benefits, for example, but that is another matter.
During the 30 years for which I have been in the House, Governments have supplied extra time for private Members' Bills 36 times. I supported them on some occasions, and on other occasions I did not. The point is that time was supplied, more often than not by Labour Governments--the Governments of Lord Wilson and Lord Callaghan. This is one occasion on which I think that new Labour could take a lesson from old Labour. The Government should listen to the voice of the House, see what majority the Bill secures and then supply the time.
How can we avoid defeating all the admirable objectives that are contained in our Government's manifesto? We can do what we have done in the case of other private Members' Bills, and take the business after 10 pm. That would certainly flush Members out--Members on both sides of the argument--and those wishing to speak for and against the Bill would be able to do so through the night. We have done that in the past, and we can do it again. It would not affect the Government's timetable in the House, and it would be a sign from Ministers that they were not merely allowing a vote on the principle of the Bill.
Everyone in the country--and, I suspect, everyone in the House--believed that, following such a vote, we would have the legislation. That is why so many people who have written to us asking for the Bill to be given Government time feel betrayed. They believed that, if we approved the principle, we would be given the time. If the Government do as I have suggested, they will be able to meet their commitment and ensure that the Bill is passed.
What will happen in the other House? I suspect that the other House will try to mangle the Bill, as they tried in 1979 to mangle--and succeeded in mangling--my Hare Coursing (Abolition) Bill, which a Labour Government
had taken over. If we are looking for justifications for altering the upper House, what better case can there be than this? The overwhelming majority of the population support the Bill, and, having seen the unelected sons--the bastards, even--of monarchs and others reject it, they would tell us that we would be justified in doing whatever we want to the other place.
Mr. Nicholls:
The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful case. Does he think that we should have a debate on capital punishment on the same terms--that, if the people want it, they should be automatically entitled to it?
Mr. McNamara:
If the hon. Gentleman can secure for a Bill to bring back capital punishment the same majority that we shall secure for a Bill to abolish hunting, he can take it to the upper House; but he knows that not more than a handful of hon. Members would support such a Bill in the House of Commons. Hon. Members have been elected on the basis of a manifesto commitment in regard to hunting, with the support of the overwhelming majority of people.
If their Lordships mess the Bill around, there is always the Parliament Act 1949, which was introduced at the behest of the grandfather of my hon. Friend the Minister without Portfolio in order to secure the legislation to nationalise steel. Those would be very good new and old Labour precedents.
Mr. John Gummer (Suffolk, Coastal):
I spent a good deal of time in both the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Department of the Environment fighting to protect the whale, and I want to make a parallel between that and what we are discussing today. We fought to protect the whale first because it was likely that many species would become extinct if we did not, and secondly because the mechanism involved in killing a whale is by no means the most humanitarian that could be employed.
If we apply the same arguments to fox hunting, we see a very different picture. First, there is no question of extinction, and therefore no need to protect foxes. Secondly, there is no discernibly more humane way of killing them. That leads us to ask why the Bill is before us. I believe that it is because there is a battle not between town and country, but between fantasy and reality. It is a fantasy that drives Labour Members to support the Bill. First, they do not understand that the death of wild animals in any circumstances is not a pretty sight. Had the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Foster) described the death of guinea pigs as graphically as he described other deaths, he would have had exactly the same effect on his audience. The only difference is that a fox tore the guinea pigs limb from limb when they were alive, whereas what happened to the hare in his account happened after it was dead. Unfortunately, the hon. Gentleman is one of those people who live in a world in which death has become so unacceptable that it cannot be described in reality.
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