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Mr. Hogg: No. My right hon. Friend is entirely right about this. I pointed to the different views which one finds abroad to reinforce my real caution about seeking to impose one's moral standards by the criminal law. Millions of people in countries no different from our own take a profoundly different view on this issue. That should make one cautious about having a sense of confidence in one's own moral standards.
My right hon. Friend made another important point, which relates to the second issue that I mentioned--minority rights. It also relates to fox hunting. I do not mind if 95 per cent. of the population are against fox hunting; I am in favour of preserving people's right to hunt foxes, because that is the nature of democracy.
Mr. David Drew (Stroud):
Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
Mr. Hogg:
No. I will make a little progress, but I will give way if the hon. Gentleman wants to intervene later.
That is the proposition from which I started. I then asked myself, as all hon. Members need to do, "What is the difference in principle between farming creatures for fur and farming animals for leather?" Looking around the Chamber, I see that hon. Members, in large numbers, are wearing leather shoes, have leather handbags or are wearing leather braces. I also see a briefcase or two and leather watch straps.
Mr. Hogg:
We are all sitting on leather seats; you look particularly elegant on yours, Mr. Deputy Speaker. We could pop you on nylon and you would look just as nice. We could sit on velvet and we would be just as comfortable. We do not need leather, so we need to ask ourselves at this juncture, what is the difference in principle between rearing animals when the primary purpose is to enable us to wear belts and rearing animals to enable us to put fur scarves around our necks?
Maria Eagle:
I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way. As ever, he is making a well argued contribution. I attempted to address his point in my remarks; my Bill is aimed at the keeping of animals where the primary purpose is farming for fur. Most hon. Members have no objection to fur or skins as by-products of food production, and nor do I. That is the difference.
Mr. Hogg:
There is a difference, but it is not conclusive. Many animals are reared where the primary purpose is the use of what the hon. Lady refers to as by-products. Skins are a by-product of many animals reared for food, and that involves the tanning process and so on. However, the primary purpose in respect of a range of other animals is provision of leather of a specialist kind for a variety of luxury, or even non-luxury, goods. Man-made fibre could be substituted for all those goods.
Standing back from all this, my conclusion is that there is no difference in principle between farming animals for fur and farming animals for the provision of leather, for example. That takes me to a much more difficult question: what is the proper approach to adopt? The proper approach is that which is advocated by my hon. Friend the Member for Teignbridge (Mr. Nicholls). We should be asking ourselves whether it is possible to breed those animals in humane conditions. If it were impossible to do so, and the evidence was conclusive on that point, I would favour prohibition, but we must ask whether the systems of husbandry are acceptably humane. That approach has been taken to veal calves, to sows and, increasingly, to chickens.
We concluded that the use of veal crates was an unacceptable practice. We do not need to eat veal--there are plenty of alternatives to it--but we did not conclude that we should ban the keeping of veal calves. We decided that the loose pen system was the proper way to rear veal calves. The same is true of sows. The House decided many years ago that the proper approach was not to prohibit pig keeping--that would be monstrous--but to prohibit the use of close tethering and close stalls.
I am deeply concerned about battery cages for chickens. I have visited many battery cage farms and found those visits deeply distasteful. I say, en passant, to the
hon. Member for Garston that much of what she said about the frustration of natural instincts could be said, with equal force, in respect of chickens in battery cages. Chickens go in for all the practices that she referred to in respect of mink. My conclusion is, not that we stop rearing chickens, but that we set about asking the question whether they ought to be reared in a wholly different way. That is the proper approach.
Maria Eagle:
I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way a second time. Is he aware that improved animal welfare, such as he suggests, has been introduced in Hessen in Germany? The result is that there are no fur farms. Such improvements are not economically viable. He would put people out of business by stealth whereas my Bill accepts that improving standards is not economic and that compensation should be paid to those who would lose their business.
Mr. Hogg:
The hon. Lady makes a fair and an unfair point, and I believe that what she describes has happened in one of the lander. She is right that such standards can be required of fur farmers so that the process is made uneconomic.
Mr. Hogg:
My hon. Friend says tough; I was going to say, "Hard cheese," but it is the same thing. If we conclude that the requirements are necessary, but the consequence of those requirements is that the farmer goes out of business, I say, "Hard cheese," and my hon. Friend says, "Tough." We agree with those consequences, but we approach the matter in a different way. We have not decided that such farming is wrong in principle, but that, in order to make it tolerable, the farmer has to comply with a range of standards. If that cannot be done, he goes out of business.
Mr. Gray:
My right hon. and learned Friend mentioned pig farmers. Is he aware that a number of pig farmers in my constituency have gone out of business because of the abolition of tethers and stalls, and that they received no compensation of any kind because they were unable to live up to the welfare standards that the Government demanded? Precisely the same would apply to mink farmers: if they were unable to live up to those standards, they would go out of business. Hard cheese, as he says.
Mr. Hogg:
I shall come to the matter of compensation, because it is one of the specific points that I want to address. To round up what I have been saying on this point, I believe that this practice should not be prohibited because of principle. We should ask ourselves whether it is intolerably inhumane or whether we can impose requirements that would make it acceptable. If we could make it acceptable, that would be the way forward.
There is much evidence to suggest that it may be possible to impose acceptable standards. It is interesting that the Farm Animal Welfare Council in its 1988-89 report, although it identified shortcomings, did not say that the practice was inherently so inhumane that it should be prohibited. In Holland, the report of Professor Wiepkema--I apologise if I have mispronounced his name--made a number of recommendations that have been implemented, especially regarding the size and
nature of cages. It is important to remind ourselves--as I did in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Teignbridge--that Holland and the Scandinavian countries have high animal welfare standards and are sensitive to these issues. We must not disregard what they think is proper, because they are alert to these matters.
Mr. Swayne:
My fear is that my right hon. and learned Friend, in his pursuit of a more humane way of fur farming, will create another, quite different, danger. I contend that a more humane form of fur farming would be less secure, and would give rise to a larger feral population that would be a greater danger to our ecology.
Mr. Hogg:
That is a perfectly proper concern. My hon. Friend is a good advocate for the New Forest, and he is right to raise that issue. If the requirements of animal husbandry and ensuring a sufficiently humane regime were such that the animals could not be securely kept, the licence would not be issued. As my hon. Friend knows, the licensing regime takes account of security. If the consequences of improving animal welfare were such that the creatures could not be kept securely, the practice would have to stop. I would live with that, as I would regard it as a proper conclusion.
Mr. Phil Sawford (Kettering):
The right hon. and learned Gentleman is trying to make serious points about whether fur farming is correct in principle. I am not sure whether the issue of minority rights--very few people run fur farms--or the fact that many people wear fur necessarily establishes the principle. One of his key points is that there is no difference between leather by-products used for clothing and seats and the fur-farming industry. For me a significant difference is the cosmetic nature of what is essentially a fashion accessory. Is there not a key difference between leather and fur products?
Mr. Hogg:
I disagree in principle. The hon. Gentleman is making a value judgment. He is entitled to live up to his moral judgment: I am not asking him to wear crocodile skin. It is his moral judgment, and it may be perfectly proper. I am not criticising it. However, he should not use the criminal law to impose his value judgment on others. The Bill does not prohibit the wearing of fur, but in a sense it is the same principle, because it prohibits the breeding of fur creatures based on a moral judgment such as the hon. Gentleman is making. That is why I think it is wrong.
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