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2.15 pm
Rabbit is a different--[Hon. Members: "Kettle of fish?"] My hon. Friends may have argued that some funny species of sheep have fur, or at least that Europe says they do, but I shall not try to argue that any rabbit has scales.
Rabbits are in a different category. In Spain and France, they are farmed both for meat and fur, and the value of the fur is sometimes greater. With the exception of rabbit, which I included in the schedule deliberately in order to make this point, all the species listed fall under the European convention on the protection of animals kept for farming purposes. The Council of Europe has produced recommendations on fur farmed animals under that convention, and they contain welfare rules for supervision, housing, management, breeding and slaughter of fur animals. New scientific evidence adopted by the Council of Europe is also enshrined in the recommendations.
Adopting the schedule would give the Government a chance to specify the species that they did not want farmed for fur. Rabbit is the best example before us today, but the Minister, advised by his experts or by English Nature, may decide that other species, of which I am unaware, should not be included in the schedule because they ought not to be banned as they can be farmed in conditions suitable to their welfare. The Minister has sole charge of those welfare conditions.
Two approaches may be taken. I could have said that there are two ways to skin a rabbit, but that would have been inappropriate. We could adopt the restrictive method contained in the Bill, which might cause definitional problems over fur, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire has pointed out. Or we could adopt a schedule of the species that the hon. Member for Garston wishes banned. We could also build in some provision allowing the Minister to change the schedule by regulation by adding species or taking them away.
I urge the latter route on the hon. Member for Garston. She will receive plaudits from her colleagues and others for banning the animals that she does not wish to be farmed for fur, but I am sure that if the Bill passes in its present form, we shall have to return to say, "Oops, sorry, we made a bit of a mistake on fur and we caught rabbits or other species that have been determined by Europe to have fur." We may all think that those species have wool, but if the European Union decides that they are furry, that is that.
I have been a MAFF Minister, and I have argued similar points before over such things as milk, ice cream and cheese, and over whether carrots are fruit or vegetables. The Minister may say that we all know what sheep are, but if Europe decides that something is covered in fur, we could have a problem. The schedule provides an easy escape route for the Minister, and that is the sensible approach.
Mr. Forth:
It is desperately disappointing that the Minister is not going to enlighten us further. I am tempted to divide the House to find out whether it is convinced of the arguments that my hon. Friends and I have made.
Mr. Morley:
I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman's attention wandered earlier, but I contributed to the debate by saying that because of the anomalies in the schedule--there is an argument for having such a schedule, but there will always be anomalies and the drafting of the Bill deals with the problem satisfactorily--it would cause more problems, even given the opportunities to amend the legislation at a later date, than the Bill as it stands. The Bill is better drafted now than it would be with the amendment.
Mr. Forth:
In a spirit of good will and co-operation, I accept that significant contribution as the Minister's considered response to the debate. So that we can make progress--we have already done so today and we will make further progress in a moment--I will not divide the House on the amendment. I am not convinced by what has been said and my right hon. and hon. Friends are obviously not convinced either. We have found a serious flaw in the Bill even at this late stage in our deliberations. However, to allow us to press on, on this occasion I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Mr. Forth:
I beg to move amendment No. 36, in page 2, line 20, at end insert--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
With this, it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 37, in clause 5, page 3, line 42, at end insert--
No. 38, in clause 6, page 4, line 6, at end insert--
No. 35, in clause 7, page 4, line 13, leave out subsection (5).
Mr. Forth:
This amendment concerns another matter that was raised in Committee, but has not been dealt with properly. There was a rather cursory debate on the matter, although I believe--and my right hon. and hon. Friends agree--that it raises some important and fundamental issues.
I can think of few subjects of more fundamental importance than the relationship between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. That matter arises because of the provisions in the Bill. In Committee, there was some discussion on the relationships that exist between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, their different political dispensations, the different stages of development of the political institutions in those parts of the United Kingdom and the fact that fur farming is no longer conducted in Scotland--I do not think that it has ever been conducted in Northern Ireland, a point which at this stage is of only glancing relevance. It was almost suggested that that was partly the reason for not including Northern Ireland, which may or may not be so.
Surely two more important points are at issue. One is a political point, and I make no excuse for saying so. At this time more than any other, one cannot lightly exclude Northern Ireland from the provisions of a Bill without thinking through carefully what might be read into the exclusion and what the implications might be. That consideration stands on its own, but a subset of it would rightly be the extent to which one judges that Northern Ireland along with Scotland and Wales should be dealing with these matters in their very different ways.
The irony is that the promoter of the Bill seems to have shied away from ensuring a uniformity of approach even in a matter that is so important to her. I cannot believe that anyone who feels as strongly as I know the hon. Member for Liverpool, Garston (Maria Eagle) feels about this matter would be prepared to allow it to be devolved. If that happened, it would be subject to the variations of politics in the different parts of the United Kingdom and different provisions might apply.
Mr. Maclean:
Is there not a greater inconsistency in the Bill in that the hon. Member for Liverpool, Garston (Maria Eagle) extends the measure to Scotland, which has its own Parliament and will be able to take action on it, but not to Northern Ireland, where no proper Government or Parliament is as yet in place, and possibly may never be, given the present circumstances?
Mr. Forth:
As ever, my right hon. Friend has read my mind. I was about to come to that consideration, but first I wanted to clear my mind on whether the issues raised by the Bill were sufficiently important to justify a United Kingdom approach being imposed from the House of Commons and the Lords in Westminster, or whether with our new, modern joined-up politics these days, or whatever one likes to call them, they should be left to the discretion of the voters and institutions that are being set up in their very different ways in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The Bill does neither. We are falling between all those stools--I am sorry, I should say "among" and attempt to be grammatically accurate. There is a large unanswered question about exactly what the relationship is between the matters raised in the Bill and the United Kingdom and about how we want to progress them. I would have been prepared to accept, as a matter of consistency, either that the whole United Kingdom would be covered by this Westminster legislation or that the matter should properly be dealt with by the exciting, new, modern political institutions that we are setting up in the different parts of the kingdom. The Bill does neither the one nor the other.
Mr. Morley:
Perhaps I can help the right hon. Gentleman. When the Bill was drafted, we thought that,
'(c) in Northern Ireland, to the Crown Court'.
'(c) in the case of businesses or parts of businesses carried on solely or primarily in Northern Ireland, the Lands Tribunal for Northern Ireland.'.
'(d) in relation to Northern Ireland, the Secretary of State'.
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