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Mr. Nicholls: The polls show that between 65 and 80 per cent. of the British public want capital punishment to be reintroduced. Does the hon. Gentleman agree with that?
Mr. Baker: I agree that Parliament must always give weight to public opinion; it is not the determining factor, but it must be taken into account when decisions are taken in the House.
I understand that Britain is not alone in introducing such legislation. Switzerland effectively ended fur farming in 1978, bar allowing animals such as mink and fox to be kept only under zoo conditions. In 1998, the Netherlands began a 10-year phase-out of fox and chinchilla farming. The last mink farm in Austria closed following a ban in 1998. If that is the case in the Netherlands and Austria, I should be interested to know--I hope that the Minister will tell us--whether the bans in those countries have been challenged by other member states. According to the Conservatives, there is a plethora of objections to the United Kingdom proposal, so it is odd that we have heard nothing about the situation in the Netherlands and Austria, where bans have already been introduced.
There is slight inconsistency in the Conservatives' approach to the EU--there generally is--in that they suggest that other EU countries are clamouring to register objections to the Bill, presumably because they want our fur farms to continue. However, they also said that the Bill will provide a wonderful opportunity to take our business, which is a slightly odd juxtaposition of arguments.
Mr. Gray: It may be worth clarifying the precise position of foreign countries. The hon. Gentleman may not have realised that Switzerland is not a member of the European Union, so it does not come into the argument. No other European country has banned mink farming. The only exception is the Netherlands, which has banned fox fur farming. A number of provinces in Austria and Germany have banned mink farming, but I think that I am right in saying that no country has banned it outright.
Mr. Baker: I have explained the advice that I have been given, and I shall wait for the Minister to give us his version of events. Even if provinces of Austria and Germany have banned mink farming, they are subject to
the same EU rules as the country as a whole, so that is a red herring. Fox and chinchilla farming are covered by the Bill, so that is also a red herring. Nevertheless, I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention.I mentioned the philosophical dimension to this issue, which is perhaps the most important, but there is also an animal welfare aspect. That is why interest in this matter has built up over the years. It is accepted by both sides that mink are wild animals and should not be kept in cages. No one has defended that, but perhaps someone will do so tonight. They are solitary animals and should not be kept in groups. They defend their territories through patrolling, scent marking and aggression, and unfamiliar adults put in the same cages have exhibited that aggression.
In the wild, mink reside in a large territory and have a larger range in which to hunt: it can be up to 22 acres. The best animal welfare conditions in our mink farms have not provided solitary mink with 22 acres each, or anywhere near that. They have much less territory, so their natural behavioural patterns have been severely curtailed by farming.
Mink are semi-aquatic and need water in which to swim, as the hon. Member for City of Durham (Mr. Steinberg) said. Studies show that they spend much of their time in or close to water, and they often hunt and play in water. They have semi-webbed feet, which shows that as they have evolved they have spent a significant amount of time in water. They have no opportunity to swim in fur farms, so that environment is hardly ideal for their welfare.
By all means let hon. Members have the philosophical debate, but the welfare conditions in which mink are kept are clearly out of line with their requirements, and it is difficult to see how even the most conscientious mink farmer in the country could change them to make them satisfactory. That is probably one of the thoughts underlying the legislation.
Other aspects of fur farming must be considered, including the strains of mink. Captive mink can display a wide variety of pelt colours, including rarer colours that reach a premium price. The colours are controlled by a sequence of 18 genes that can be manipulated by selective breeding. It is possible that financial pressure on mink farmers has led them to produce rare colours. Breeding has concentrated on the colour of the coat and not on the other implications, including the health of the animal. The white coat is produced by a line of mink who are congenitally blind.
Killing methods also leave something to be desired. Animals are harvested without spoiling their pelt. The most widely used method of killing them is by gassing. Carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide is supposed to reduce the availability of oxygen to the animals, and lead to unconsciousness followed by death. Carbon dioxide is a colourless gas, but has an acrid smell. It is claimed that 100 per cent. carbon dioxide can kill mink in 19 seconds, but it is also shown that the mink react to its presence and suffer extreme stress by being forced into such an environment. Being semi-aquatic, mink can hold their breath for extended periods, so it is not a particularly quick death. Of the 15 mink farms in the United Kingdom in 1997, 14 used gassing--10 of them with carbon monoxide and four with carbon dioxide--and one used barbiturate injection.
When we consider animals, we must bear in mind their five freedoms and consider to what extent existing and proposed future practices conform to those accepted freedoms. They have been proposed by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and I think that they are generally accepted without dispute. They are freedom from thirst, hunger and malnutrition, freedom from the need for appropriate comfort and shelter, the prevention or rapid diagnosis and treatment of injury, disease or infestation, freedom from fear, and freedom to display most normal patterns of behaviour.
Those conditions should be met in any activity that we permit involving animals, and we should measure existing practices against them to see how far they are met. If they are not being met, we should raise standards. If they cannot be met, as I am not sure they can be in mink farming, we should ban mink farming. There is also a debate about whether it is right to use animals at all--or, as some might say, exploit them--if they are not being reared for food purposes. The Minister made that point at the outset.
The Liberal Democrats believe that fur farming and trapping animals for their fur cause unnecessary suffering, and we shall therefore support the Government if there is a vote.
5.46 pm
Maria Eagle (Liverpool, Garston): I am particularly pleased to speak. As the Member in charge of the Fur Farming (Prohibition) Bill presented in the last Session, I have more than a passing interest in the fate of this Bill, and am even more determined than usual to ensure that the Government get their business through as soon as possible.
I congratulate the Government on their wisdom and good sense--although I would say that, I suppose--in supporting the arguments put to them by me, and by a number of my Bill's supporters, at the end of the last Session, when it became clear that the Bill would not proceed beyond Report. It would have been easy for the Government then to think of it as a small measure, and to let it drop. I am grateful to them for picking it up and turning it into a Government Bill. Let me say in parenthesis that I am even more grateful that it will not be my job tonight to protect the legislation, and to ensure that enough Members turn up to vote it through.
I appreciate that it is never easy to persuade a Government that an essentially small measure such as this, affecting a limited number of people, merits their full attention and deserves to be included in their legislative programme--especially, I suspect, when it requires public expenditure. I am glad that my small Bill has survived those pitfalls, and I am certain that that is partly due to the eloquence and persistence of my hon. Friend the Minister in arguing against doubters who must have suggested that other measures should have a prior call on both parliamentary time and public spending.
I believe that the fact that the Bill is before us again constitutes a recognition of the essential argument of principle, and of the moral case that can be made that seemingly small Bills can be symbolic, important and worth pursuing. The argument that I think goes to the heart of the Bill is the animal welfare argument, namely
that it is unjustifiable, cruel and obnoxious in a civilised society such as we purport to have to allow wild animals to be kept in extremely small cages that prevent them from exhibiting their natural behaviour, to their evident distress, merely to collect the commercial value of their fur, which is something that we can all do without.I believe that that practice is so obnoxious and repugnant that it should be stopped, and that it is appropriate for the law to be used to stop it. That is why I support this Bill, and why I presented my own Bill. I am sure that the strength of the argument helped my hon. Friend the Minister when, along with the rest of the Government, he claimed that the Bill should constitute a priority.
Mr. Nicholls: On Second Reading of her Bill, the hon. Lady said that she had not had time to visit a fur farm. I think we all accept that that is fair enough, but, given what she has said about animals' inevitably being in deep distress and therefore presumably being incapable of being handled, has she yet had an opportunity to visit a farm?
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