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12.48 pm
Mr. Douglas Hogg (Sleaford and North Hykeham): Hon. Members have been asked to be brief, so I shall focus on just two aspects of the Bill. First, the House needs to be clear about the nature of all traditional country sports. The sports of angling, fox hunting, stag hunting, beagling and shooting are all intrinsically the same, and have identical characteristics.
I come to the debate with a degree of personal knowledge. I have shot all my life. I have shot thousands of pheasants, and I beagled. I have participated on many occasions in fishing. I am also a supporter of fox hunting, although I do not ride to hounds. I know that all those activities, without exception, involve a degree of suffering.
I tell hon. Members who try to argue that fishing does not involve suffering that they are wrong. They have only to examine the 1979 and 1994 reports of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals--I can send them copies if they do not have them--to learn that the RSPCA's conclusion is that fish feel pain, and that one cannot draw a sensible distinction in terms of pain between the activities.
If the RSPCA's conclusion is right, there is no intellectually sustainable case for distinguishing between those activities. All of them are right, or none of them is right. I believe that all of them are right.
Mr. Gray:
Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?
Mr. Hogg:
I will not give way at this juncture.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Mr. Clark) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Sir N. Lyell), the former Attorney-General, drew attention to the penalties that are to be attached to fox hunting. The penalties are substantial fines and the prospect of imprisonment. Hon. Members must ask themselves whether it is appropriate to impose such penalties on people who are pursuing activities that are manifestly not in the range of those that should be subject to the criminal law.
One way in which to judge the matter is to ask oneself the question, how would we react if fishermen were subjected to such penalties? On a Sunday, all of us go for walks down by the river, on the Trent, and to the dikes--
[Interruption.] Labour Members may not go walking in the country, but I do. I go to the Trent, and I see angling ponds. I visit lakes, and I see dikes. I also see families fishing together. I ask myself whether such people should be the subject of a criminal law, and the answer is: manifestly not. If that is true of fishermen, why in all conscience should we try to subject fox hunters or others, such as beaglers, to such a penalty?
My second point is very similar to that made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), and goes to the rights of minorities in free societies. In a free and tolerant society, minorities have rights that they are entitled to assert against the majority. That tolerance requires us to be tolerant of activities of which we may disapprove.
A free society is not one which says that people have rights that happen to be conferred on them by the majority. That is neither a free nor a tolerant society. Sophisticated constitutions recognise that fact, which is why many societies have bills of rights entrenched in those constitutions, to ensure that majorities cannot oppress minorities.
Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold):
Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree with the message sent to me by very many of my constituents who support hunting, telling hon. Members who will vote for the Bill's Second Reading, "We do not seek to ban those activities that you participate in--so, please, exercise tolerance towards our activity, and do not seek arbitrarily to criminalise it"?
Mr. Hogg:
I entirely agree with that message.
One may disapprove of many things in society. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal, I do not like ritual slaughter. When I was Minister of Agriculture, I was pressed to ban it, but I took the view that the rights of the Jewish minorities and those of the Muslim community overrode other considerations.
The same applies to many other activities. I have no time for obscenity, I find blasphemy pretty disagreeable, I am not very keen on boxing, and I well understand that abortion raises serious moral questions, but my conclusion is that these things are best left to the individual, because, in a tolerant and free society, people have the right to make moral decisions for themselves. They have a right to choose between the good and the bad, the worthy and the unworthy. It is for them to decide, not for the criminal law to impose its own restrictions.
Mr. Hogg:
No, I shall not give way.
Angela Smith (Basildon):
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr. Foster) on introducing the Bill. Contrary to reports that it is a bad Bill, it is in fact an excellent Bill. Indeed, the Public Bill Office made compliments about its drafting.
I have listened to the arguments deployed in the debate, and what has struck me is that so many of them have been contradictory and somewhat misleading. I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Mr. Clark) is no longer in the Chamber, because some of his points should be corrected. He said that people would be prosecuted for chasing a squirrel in a park. However, if he had read the Bill, he would know that, as squirrels are rodents, they are specifically excluded from the Bill. He also said that the powers in the Bill are draconian--
Mr. Desmond Swayne (New Forest, West)
rose--
Angela Smith:
No, I am not giving way. I have 10 minutes; many hon. Members wish to speak, and there is little time.
The right hon. Member for Kensington and Chelsea said that the powers in the Bill were draconian. He should be aware that they are the same as those provided in the Protection of Badgers Act 1992, which were accepted under a previous Government and are working well. The power to seize vehicles is rarely used; it is an ultimate power, not an automatic one.
It has been said that a fox is a pest and needs to be controlled, but fox hunting has been around only for the past 250 years. What happened before then? Were we knee-deep in foxes in the middle ages? I suspect not.
There are artificial earths where foxes are encouraged to breed. We cannot have it both ways--either the fox is a pest or it can be encouraged to breed. Fox hunting does nothing to control the fox population. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mrs. Golding) mentioned mink hunting and the terrible problems that mink cause, which mean that mink still has to be hunted to be controlled. If mink hunting is so effective, why do we still have these problems? It is clearly a wholly ineffective method of mink control.
I shall deal now with hare coursing. I attended the Waterloo cup competition with my hon. Friends the Members for West Lancashire (Mr. Pickthall) and for Hull, North (Mr. McNamara). We were told that the hare was in a state of serious decline. The House may be surprised to know that the Waterloo cup's budget includes an item for restocking, which means transporting hares to Liverpool to ensure that there are adequate hares to be coursed for the competition. Coursing supporters are advised not to identify with the hare as it may spoil their enjoyment of the event--I suggest that it would.
We have heard much about minority rights. It has been said that minorities have a right to hunt, to torture and to kill our wildlife, but the same argument was deployed by badger and bear baiters. Minorities have rights, but they do not have the right to cause suffering to our wildlife. We, as the majority in the House, must stand up for the majority of people in the country and make our views heard.
We all know that the Bill should be given a Second Reading with a good majority. The danger is that there may be an attempt to stop it in another place. The only hope that fox hunters have for the survival of their sport is to use parliamentary procedures. Right is on our side. We have a majority in the House and, if the House
expresses its will and if a majority of hon. Members support the Bill today, it should not be obstructed in another place.
We have a mission to modernise the country. [Laughter.] Conservative Members may laugh, but we want to move forward. Instead of bleating on about losing their so-called sports--[Interruption.]
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael J. Martin):
Order.
Angela Smith:
Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I repeat: we have a mission to modernise the country. It is important that we bring ourselves up to date. Instead of bleating on about losing their so-called sport, hunters should be astonished that it has lasted so long. It has lasted until the 20th century, but it will not continue into the 21st.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. Before I call the next speaker, I should like to say that there are streams of people coming to the Chair, asking about their place in the queue. I cannot hear the debate. I am enjoying the debate, so perhaps they could refrain from approaching the Chair.
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