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1.20 pm
Sir Richard Body (Boston and Skegness): It is truly a privilege to be the first to congratulate the hon. Member for Luton, North (Mr. Hopkins) on his maiden speech. Those of us who have heard very many maiden speeches will agree that we have just heard a model of what a maiden speech should be.
I did not think until now that anyone could be lyrical about Luton, but all of us who have just heard the hon. Gentleman must now be persuaded that that town is a much more interesting and attractive place than some of us had hitherto believed. I also thank the hon. Gentleman very much for what he said about his predecessor, John Carlisle.
In the few precious minutes left to me, I shall raise the problem that we face with drag hunting. It has been claimed on several occasions in the press, in advertisements and in the debate that drag hunting could provide the jobs that would be lost if other forms of hunting come to an end as a result of the Bill, and that it is a humane alternative to the other forms of hunting.
For 25 years, I have been master of a pack of drag hounds, as defined in the Bill. I am now superannuated and I am chairman of the hunt committee. More important than that, I am chairman of one of the two associations that represent the interests of that form of hunting.
I shall illustrate the problem with the example of the Berks and Bucks drag hounds, which is not untypical of most packs. As the name suggests, it hunts throughout the whole of Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, a large part of Oxfordshire, Hampshire and Wiltshire--in five counties. In language that we can perhaps more readily understand, that huge area encompasses no fewer than 20 constituencies, and also the areas covered by eight packs of fox hounds.
The drag hounds hunt just one day a week; the packs of fox hounds always two or three days a week, over a slightly longer season, giving a ratio of 1:20. For every one day's drag hunting, there is in that vast area fox hunting for some 20 days.
Hon. Members may ask why drag hunting cannot be expanded twentyfold. I shall explain. We require to hunt on grassland. Over the past 25 years, I have never been able to persuade a farmer to allow 30 or 40 horses to gallop over his precious winter wheat, which is already two or three inches high, or over any of his other arable crops. The farmers wish for the drag hounds to be only on pasture. In the past 25 years, large parts of our countryside have been taken over by the plough for growing arable crops. I assure the House that it is extremely difficult to find sufficient grassland to enable a pack of drag hounds to operate. A satisfactory day's hunting requires three lines of about three miles each--that is about nine miles of almost continuous grassland that avoids motorways, other main roads and railways.
Drag hunting is even more difficult now. Over the past 15 years, farmers with substantial amounts of grassland have turned to grazing sheep. The lambing season coincides with the hunting season, and no farmer is particularly enthusiastic about having a pack of drag hounds and 30 or 40 followers galloping through a flock of pregnant ewes. To my certain knowledge, farmers have been very generous in accommodating those packs of drag hounds and blood hounds that operate in the country. They usually agree to one day's hunting in the course of a year.
However, it is inconvenient for farmers to allow the hounds to come more frequently. Almost invariably, they must move stock on the morning of the hunt and ensure that fences are repaired and made stock proof afterwards. If conditions are wet, 30 or 40 horses will churn up the turf. Farmers are generous in allowing drag hunts on their land, but few are willing to allow them to occur more than once in a season. Therefore, it follows that it is impossible to increase the number of drag hunts per year and thereby accommodate, with the existing packs of drag hounds, the 400 or so people who go fox hunting--indeed, the hunts are already oversubscribed.
It is unrealistic to extend the scope of drag hunting--and, in many ways, I regret this. A large number of members of my association--all of whom have the responsibility of preparing the countryside for packs of drag hounds and blood hounds--agree with me. I have been authorised to say on their behalf that the scope for increasing drag hunting is very limited. We could introduce probably only about 10 more packs of drag hounds into the countryside. That situation will continue as long as we have limited grasslands and other areas that are suitable for drag hunting.
I hope that some hon. Members remember the late Reggie Paget, the former Labour Member of Parliament for Northampton. He was brought up as a countryman and to treat animals humanely. Throughout his time in this place, he applied a test to legislation involving animal welfare of any kind. He would ask: will it decrease or increase the total amount of suffering in the whole animal kingdom? He would disregard all other factors and apply only that test. I believe that this Bill fails that test.
Like Reggie Paget, I disapprove of shooting foxes. Long ago, when I was 14 and fox hunting had been curtailed for the duration the war, 20 of us went out with our shotguns to destroy as many foxes as we could by flushing them out in the way that the Bill permits. We were at it all day and, by the afternoon, we had shot four foxes outright. However, we saw at least 20 other foxes. We had shot at them also, and they clearly all perished later.
Mr. Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield):
I join the congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North (Mr. Hopkins) on his maiden speech. It was excellent, but I became worried towards the end because I thought that he would not pull the fox out of the hat. He did so in the last minute. I was encouraged to learn that, in my hon. Friend, we have a critic of some of the economic orthodoxy of our day and someone who will be an articulate champion for fresh thinking on the economy.
Like everyone else who has spoken in the debate, I am not a hunter. I wonder where the hunters are.
Mr. Gray:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Sheerman:
No, although I recognise a hunter.
I have never hunted and all the time I have been in Parliament I have been a supporter of every Bill that decreases the amount of cruelty to animals. Indeed, I supported all three of the most recent Bills. However, I do not want people to think that I am anti-hunt: I am against cruelty to animals. Many people have criticised the position of my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr. Foster) and claimed that his supporters are anti-hunt, but I do not believe that to be the case.
I have always been a passionate advocate of decreasing the violence that people do to animals and I wish to be assured by my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester, as the Bill progresses, that we have the right answers. Decreasing cruelty is a good aim and I am sold on the idea that we must stop stag hunting. I am convinced by all the arguments. I believe that we must stop hare coursing, because I am convinced by all the arguments. On the subject of fox hunting, I wish to ensure that the alternatives are better than the methods that we wish to prohibit.
I do not go along with the libertarian argument, because I agree with the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe), who spoke with such passion, that this sovereign Parliament has in the past stopped people doing ghastly things that they thought were all right for many years. That included badger baiting and hunting, which I detest.
I share another passion with many hon. Members on both sides of the House, and that is a concern about our rural environment. Many of the thoughtful speeches today have pointed out that we are living at a time when our rural environment is at risk in the worst possible way. If we go into the countryside now, and walk by a stream or river or down a tiny country lane, the most significant indicator of the demise of the country and rural environment is the lack of birdsong. Who would have thought that we today would no longer think it commonplace to hear the common hedge-sparrow, the skylark or the song thrush? What have we done to our environment when so many creatures that were plentiful only a few years ago have disappeared? A number of common small mammals have also disappeared or become endangered species.
The former Conservative Government were responsible for allowing a free market in the careless expansion of the urban environment and supermarkets. Let the market decide what can be concreted over and what can then be built. That was the philosophy of the previous Government for most of their 18 years. As a result, dreadful things happened to our environment. We must haul back that damage and put things right.
Labour is not blameless, but under the Conservative Government we saw the growth of a sort of agriculture that is the most inhumane that anyone could imagine. However, we are all responsible for that. We like to go to supermarkets to buy meat that is nicely packaged in plastic. I am a meat eater so I am guilty, but what agriculture, the food chain and the processors in the food industry have done to the rural environment is shocking.
We do some ghastly things to animals, and too often behind closed doors. People should go--certainly Members of Parliament--to an abattoir to see what goes on. If Members do not do so, they are not doing their job properly. I was talking to a junior Minister--one of an entirely different breed--who went to see something about training in an abattoir. For a long time he was pretty much destroyed by that experience. He gave up eating meat for at least a week. Despite that slightly humorous aside, there is something desperately wrong with the rural environment and we must work extremely fast to get it right.
We must maintain a partnership that is aware of the dangers and does something dramatic about them before it is too late. I recognise that there is great passion on both sides of the debate. It appears from the results of most of the polls of which I am aware that two thirds of the people are against hunting with dogs, with about a third being in favour. That is a considerable majority and a substantial minority. If we are to tackle the problems that we see in the rural environment, men and women of good will on both sides of the argument must carry things forward through the Bill and out the other side, as it were, by working together. That is important. There is great passion, but an understanding of the other point of view must pervade the Bill. I hope that that becomes evident as we consider the Bill in Committee.
I live, as estate agents say, betwixt town and country. I know, as a Yorkshire Member, that the small towns of Yorkshire are close to the rural environment. We do not see much fox hunting in my part of the county, but we do see the ghastly terrier gangs, which come extremely quietly, sometimes at night, with their packs. They dig out foxes. They also dig out badgers when they can get away with it. They do the most despicable things with their dogs to those poor dumb animals.
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