| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Paterson: That was a most interesting comment. I believe that it shows that the basis of the Bill is flawed. We must try to make the Bill work, along the lines that the hon. Member for Liverpool, Garston (Maria Eagle) has suggested, without sweeping in many innocent parties whom she clearly does not intend to sweep into its remit.
My right hon. Friends the Members for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean) and for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) have chosen to include in the new schedule a list of species. That seems a sensible idea. The problem is that the list is faulty. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst will not mind if I criticise it sharply. The list is arbitrary and capricious, and it does not encompass many of the species that have been farmed in Europe in recent years, and which could easily be farmed again in this country.
The first animal on the list is commonly known as the arctic fox--Latin name, alopex lagopus. The hon. Member for Garston rightly said that the red fox--vulpes vulpes--was not mentioned. Surely that is a major omission, because the red fox has been farmed for centuries. If my two right hon. Friends wanted to include fox production, it is a most extraordinary lacuna not to have mentioned the red fox.
I am delighted that my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border, who wrote the new schedule, has returned to the Chamber. Perhaps he will tell us why vulpes vulpes was missed off the list.
Mr. Maclean:
I am sorry, Mr. Deputy Speaker; I had to leave the Chamber for a moment. I did not want the schedule to list every animal that should be included. I wanted, if I caught your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to say why I included the animals in the list. I thought that I would try the Chair's patience if I had a list of 20 animals and then tried to justify the inclusion of each one. I picked the animals that are listed to give a sample of the schedule as a means of achieving a purpose. I admit that the schedule is not complete, and I can give examples of other animals that should be included.
Mr. Paterson:
That is a most helpful intervention. It partly explains where my two right hon. Friends are coming from. I believe that their intentions are correct. I simply think that the mechanism is faulty.
Mr. Morley:
The hon. Gentleman seems to be making a case for supporting the Bill as it stands. The way in which it is worded means that those bureaucratic problems do not arise. Unlike some of his right hon. and hon. Friends, who have great skill in relation to wasting time, the hon. Gentleman has a great deal to learn, which includes not reading out long lists. I should have thought that he could have been a little more imaginative.
Mr. Paterson:
I am most grateful to the Minister for advising me on how to advance my parliamentary career. I shall listen carefully to his interventions in future, but I shall take advice from my right hon. Friends who, as he rightly says, are very skilled in parliamentary ways.
I am making the simple point that my right hon. Friends have included in the list the name "chinchilla". I have rapidly given the Minister four or five other types of chinchilla that should have been included.
Mr. Forth:
Can my hon. Friend help us--I know that he is an expert in these matters--by saying how attractive those different varieties are to the fur trade? Might there be a market for them, which would induce people to contemplate farming them?
Mr. Paterson:
My discussions have mainly been with European fur traders, one of whom said that the British Government must be "in Disneyland". That is how the European fur traders consider our deliberations this morning. They think that the Bill is completely crazy. Independent scientists in Denmark and Holland see no welfare grounds whatever for the Bill, and the Europeans think that we are wasting our parliamentary time discussing it. It is as simple as that.
The list that my right hon. Friends have drawn up is potentially an effective way of removing the danger of sweeping innocents into the Bill. I am trying to illustrate the flaws in the list and show how it could be improved.
I find it amazing that, in her speech on the clause, the hon. Member for Garston showed that she did not know what a fitch was, yet here she is, in cahoots with her Front-Bench colleagues, grandly trying to sweep away a whole industry. For her information, a fitch is from the mustela putorius species and it is a polecat. Other polecats should have been on the list--[Interruption.]
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. Labour Members must not make sedentary comments.
Mr. Paterson:
Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
Another type of fitch or polecat is the steppe polecat--the mustela putorius eversmanni. Then there is the ferret. The case of the ferret shows the nonsense of the Bill, because animals raised for fur are probably kept in much better conditions than many ferrets that are kept throughout the country for chasing rabbits. By the way, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I am a great admirer of the ferret from my knowledge of Saki, which I am sure you have heard of.
To continue with the list--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. While the hon. Gentleman is pausing to sort out his notes, it might be helpful if I reminded him that the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean) said in an intervention that the purpose of the amendment was to discuss the list as a means of dealing with regulation. It is not, therefore, an opportunity for the hon. Gentleman to go into minute detail on every single type of species that should be on the list.
Mr. Paterson:
I take that point, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I shall end, therefore, with the animals mentioned on the list, the last of which is the rabbit. We have already had some discussions this morning about the rabbit, but mentioning one latin species on the list is totally inadequate. The only one mentioned is oryctolagus cuniculus, although there are some 80 varieties of domestic rabbit and about 30 breeds of rabbit.
Mr. David Heath (Somerton and Frome):
The hon. Gentleman purports to be an expert on this matter. There is only one species of rabbit--oryctolagus cuniculus. The others are sub-species or varieties. If he does not know what he is talking about, will he kindly not bore the House any longer by purporting to do so?
Mr. Paterson:
I am charmed that the hon. Gentleman should join our deliberations after all this time; we have not seen much of him this morning. The "Encyclopaedia Britannica" says that there are 30 breeds and 80 varieties of domestic rabbit.
Mr. Swayne:
It is undoubtedly the case that Isaac was unable to distinguish between his son Esau, who was a hairy man, and Jacob, who--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. That is quite enough.
Mr. Paterson:
I am most grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for ending the intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne).
The point is simple: the list is inadequate, although it is a mechanism that could make the Bill work better. The critical point--I refer to my earlier comments--is that there is no definition of a fur-bearing animal in the Bill. I have been mocked by the Minister and the Bill's promoter for using the definition used by European customs, which is in the Official Journal of the European Communities.
There will be no flexibility in the penalties imposed on those who contravene the Bill, and no flexibility at all has been provided by my right hon. Friends the Members for Bromley and Chislehurst and for Penrith and The Border. I have a very real fear that, in a remote part of England,
magistrates will be forced to make decisions on the basis of a flawed Bill containing no definition of a fur-bearing animal.
I should have thought that it is logical to suggest that a magistrate would go to the Official Journal of the European Communities for a definition of a fur-bearing animal. Other things may get swept into that definition. As I said earlier--I will refer to only one example, because I do not want to stretch this point--tariff heading 4302 13 00 states:
"Of lamb, the following: Astrakhan, Broadtail, Caracul, Persian and similar lamb, Indian, Chinese, Mongolian or Tibetan lamb".
I cannot make it clearer than that. That is an official European definition of a fur-bearing animal. As the Bill stands, those animals could be raised for their fur, because its value would exceed the value of the meat. They could be killed exclusively for their natural covering--the keratinous material. Some people may call it wool; the European Union calls it fur.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |