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10.8 am
Mr. Douglas Hogg (Sleaford and North Hykeham): I want to begin, as I suspect many other right hon. and hon. Members will want to begin, by expressing my great concern about the circumstances in which the debate has occurred.
Let us be clear about the fact that we had for discussion this morning a very important Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith), which is designed to limit the power of the Government to act in a way that many hon. Members and people outside the House believe to be unconscionable. We are deeply concerned, for example, about the number of special advisers who are being appointed. We are deeply concerned about the politicisation of the civil service.
Miss McIntosh:
Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?
We are deeply concerned about the spin that is happening. We are unhappy about the lack of parliamentary--
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord):
Order. Before the right hon. and learned Gentleman goes too far
Mr. Hogg:
That is of course true. My point is that the first Bill deals with important constitutional questions, and we find that we are suddenly prevented from debating it so as to bring us on to this Bill. One suspicion may be that the Government did not want to hear the discussion on the first Bill. I, for one, regard that as unconscionable.
Mr. Ian Stewart (Eccles):
Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
We have seen an important constitutional debate truncated by a device.
The device was that the House should go into private session. No one on the Government Benches, or very few, voted against what most people would consider a denial of democracy. I ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he voted in the Division. He did not. We find, by implication, that Government Members supported a Division to put the House into private session. That is a scandal and a contrivance.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. I remind the right hon. and learned Gentleman that what was done this morning was strictly within the rules of the House. I must ask him now to direct his remarks--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. The right hon. and learned Gentleman must direct his remarks towards the Bill that is before the House now.
Mr. Ian Stewart:
Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
Mr. Hogg:
I have been told not to proceed on the point, so I will not.
I move on to my second point, which is also procedural, but does not touch on the first point. The Government have established a Committee under the noble Lord Burns.
Mr. Leigh:
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it not a normal courtesy that after an hon. Member makes a speech, he remains in the Chamber for the speech of the following speaker? Where is the hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone)? He has vanished. [Hon. Members: "Where is he?] That is discourteous.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
The hon. Gentleman is correct. It is the convention of the House that when one has made a speech to the House, one should stay and hear at least the response from the other side.
Mr. Hogg:
I shall come to the hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone) in a moment.
The Government have established a Committee under the noble Lord Burns, who is investigating many of the consequences associated with this Bill. The Government presumably believed that the Committee's report would be material to this discussion, yet they have allowed the debate to go forward, although they could have stopped it, without having the benefit of the view of the noble Lord Burns. That is a contempt of the Committee that they established. The only conclusion can be that the Government are displaying hypocrisy of an extraordinary kind.
My third point, on the matter to which my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) drew attention, is that the debate was prompted by the hon. Member for Brent, East in order to further his personal political ambitions. It is a scandal that the freedoms and liberties of my constituents should be pushed aside by an hon. Member in order to further his own political ambitions, yet he does not have the courtesy to stay and listen to the arguments.
The position is worse than that. We are debating criminal law, the rights of citizens and people's employment, and how many hon. Members are in the Chamber to listen to the debate? Virtually none, and the great majority of those who are present are on the Conservative Benches.
The hon. Member for Brent, East skulks in. I am sorry that he was not present when I had the opportunity to address my remarks to him.
Mr. Hogg:
No, no, I shall give the hon. Gentleman an opportunity in a moment.
The hon. Gentleman has introduced a Bill which restricts civil liberties and imposes criminal sanctions for his personal political reasons. That is a scandal, and it is a scandal that the House should be debating the matter when there is hardly anyone here, and only on the Conservative Benches at that. We are speaking of people's liberties, rights, the criminal law and offences, and there are hardly any hon. Members present to defend the interests of minorities. That is a scandal.
Mr. Blunt:
I am extremely grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for giving way; I hesitate to intervene on him while he is making such a passionate contribution. As he said, the hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone) has just skulked back in, having presumably gone out to speak to the media immediately after he sat down, and not observing the customary courtesies of the House. If by some mischance the Bill ended up in Committee, how could the hon. Gentleman be expected to guide the Bill through Committee, with all the other burdens that there will be on his time over the next few months?
Mr. Hogg:
My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. We know, too, that hon. Members who introduce a private Member's Bill which gets a Second Reading have the opportunity to choose the members of the Committee. Because there are so few hon. Members on the Government Benches, the Committee will be packed by hon. Members who have not heard the debate. That, too, is a scandal.
I have sat through many debates on fox hunting, and I have always adopted one position, which I shall elaborate at some length, but I have never attended a debate that was so poorly attended by those who wished to abolish fox hunting. That seems to show either a contempt of Parliament, or a disregard for the rights and liberties of our constituents, which is deeply shameful.
Mr. David Taylor (North-West Leicestershire):
I thank the right hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way. Does he agree that it is bogus to suggest that the number of hon. Members on the Government Benches is low, so the Bill is not worthy of support? In fact, there are equal numbers of hon. Members on the Government Benches and on the Conservative Benches. Is not the point entirely bogus?
Mr. Hogg:
No, it is not. The hon. Member for Brent, East wants to impose on my constituents the burdens of the criminal law. He wants to make what is currently a lawful activity an unlawful activity. It is a scandal to see that process happening with, at most, 10 hon. Members on the Government Benches.
Mr. Gray:
I am sorry to interrupt my right hon. and learned Friend in his full flow, but the intervention from the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (Mr. Taylor) was incorrect. There are 10 hon. Members on the Government Benches, and 14 on the Opposition Benches.
Mr. Hogg:
And, of course, one must take into account the fact that we are smaller in number.
Mr. Bercow:
I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for giving way. Is he familiar with the celebrated text by Talmon entitled "The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy", which I had the pleasure of studying as an undergraduate? Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that it is unfortunate that the hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone) had nothing in the way of a cogent argument to offer, and relied exclusively on vulgar majoritarianism, the findings of opinion polls and the research studies of focus groups? Should we not rather follow the advice of Walter Lipman, that in a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men; it administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs?
Mr. Hogg:
I do, indeed. I shall refer in a moment to minority rights. My hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) has spelled out the arguments precisely and crisply, and I know that I shall not be able to improve upon them, but I intend to try.
I began by protesting at what has been going on. I now come to the merits of the Bill or, as I see it, their complete absence. I have some experience in the matter, in the sense that for all my life I have been a shooter. I have also spent quite a lot of time watching, and very occasionally participating in, fishing. I have also seen my wife fish, which is an experience--for the fish.
Although I do not ride to hounds, I have had the opportunity on many occasions of supporting fox hunting and welcoming the participants to my house. I was very pleased that last November we held a meet at my house. I have been out with the foxhounds on many occasions.
In my younger and more athletic days, I was a keen beagler, and in my even more athletic days, I have also been the quarry for the draghounds. That was at Oxford. I was not a very rapid drag, but none the less, I was the quarry for the draghounds. I can tell the House that what we had to pull was extremely disgusting. The point is that there is no inherent difference between those country pastimes. They are intrinsically the same. Shooting and fishing probably involve more pain and less justification than fox hunting. To try to draw a moral distinction between those who go fox hunting and those who go shooting or fishing is absurd.
When we last debated fox hunting, I, like many other hon. Members, drew attention to the many learned reports that tackled pain in fish. Fish feel pain; at least, that is what the evidence suggests. Once one concludes that, it is nonsense to distinguish between angling, shooting and fox hunting.
I have shot many times, and I enjoyed it. However, we all know that many wounded birds get away and doubtless die afterwards. If we seriously claim that it is wrong to hunt foxes with hounds, we must outlaw the other activities as well. That cannot be right. As the hon. Member for Brent, East and the Labour party do not suggest that, we face deep hypocrisy.
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