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Mr. Gordon Prentice (Pendle): I have not said this before, but let me say it now: my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is a hero. The Bill is not a distraction because Labour Members speak for the vast majority of people, and that rabble in Parliament square speak for no one but themselves. Is it not the case that the real distinction is not between town and country, but between the people who relish the idea of killing for fun and those who, like me, are repelled by that? The legislation is long overdue. Is my right hon. Friend relieved to hear that, in view of what I have said, I shall withdraw new clause 5 to the Countryside and Rights of Way Bill?
Mr. Straw: I thank my hon. Friend for his compliment. In my job they are few and far between, so I will savour it. His views are very strongly held and I respect that. However, as with the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes), I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me if I do not follow up those views. I am grateful to learn--as I am sure my hon. and right hon. Friends in the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions will be--that my hon. Friend regards the proposed Bill as an appropriate legislative vehicle for the issue of hunting with hounds.
Mr. Nicholas Soames (Mid-Sussex): To paraphrase Lord Burns, in what I am sure is an excellent report, legislation to ban fox hunting will seriously compromise the welfare of the Government. Has the right hon. Gentleman seen anything in the Burns report or in any of the evidence that has been placed before him that shows him that there is either the necessity or the evidence to justify a ban on fox hunting?
Mr. Straw: Everybody in the House will have to make his or her own judgment about whether fox hunting should or should not be banned. That is a matter for a free vote by individuals. I remind the hon. Gentleman that many Conservative Members--not a majority, I accept--support a ban on hunting with hounds and some Labour Members support a continuation of hunting with hounds. This is quintessentially an issue for a free vote, but I have already explained why I and the Government think that it is important now to bring this matter to a conclusion.
Whether there are arguments in the Burns report that support the views of all sides--there are more than two sides to this argument--is a matter for the readers of the report. Again, I urge hon. Members to read the report before they come to conclusions about it.
Mr. Robin Corbett (Birmingham, Erdington): May I commend my right hon. Friend on the calm and sensible manner with which he has responded to the views of the overwhelming majority of Members of the House? Did he happen to see photographs on BBC's "Newsnight" of the Beaufort hunt terrier man, Thomas Burton, feeding foxes in man-made dens? Does that not give a lie to claims that this barbaric pastime has anything to do with pest control?
Mr. Straw: Unusually, I did not see "Newsnight" that night, but I have seen newspaper reports subsequently. There is considerable discussion in the Burns report of some of the current practices in relation to hunting. As right hon. and hon. Members will see when they read it, the report is categorical that certain practices--including, although I speak only from recollection, those identified in the "Newsnight" report--should be prohibited, whether or not hunting with hounds continues.
Mr. Roger Gale (North Thanet): Nobody in the House will be surprised to know that I welcome any move from any quarter that hastens the day when the hunting of wild animals with hounds is brought to an end. However, I find the Home Secretary's position, with one leg on each side of the barbed wire, a little inelegant. Notwithstanding the Prime Minister's selective amnesia and his continued assertion that the previous fox hunting Bill was killed in the House of Lords, when everybody knows that it did not even reach there, it is a fact that he made a clear commitment on television that fox hunting would be brought to an end by the conclusion of this Parliament. I fail to see how that squares with the Home Secretary's statement of agnosticism on the part of the Government. Will he make himself plain--do the Government intend to bring fox hunting to an end within the life of this Parliament or not?
Mr. Straw: I have made myself as plain as possible. Our commitment is to ensure that the House can come to a conclusion about the matter on a free vote. It has always been known--there is no dubiety about it--that the Government, as the Government, are neutral on the matter. What we are doing, as I have already explained, is to ensure that Parliament can come to a sensible conclusion. I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman seeks to resile from that, given the position he takes overall. As for whether there is time to do it in the lifetime of this Parliament, I remind the House that that does not necessarily expire until late May 2002.
Mr. Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton): As a Member of Parliament who became involved in putting forward legislation to end hunting with dogs from the moment I was first elected to the House 30 years ago this month, I thank my right hon. Friend for at long last introducing legislation to deal with that odious pursuit. The junior spokesman for the Conservative party--the unspeakable in pursuit of the unbeatable--said that the Bill is a distraction, so can my right hon. Friend explain why there are three times as many Conservatives here this afternoon as there were for their pension debate last Thursday? I hope that I do not have to wait another 30 years for other of my pet causes to be fulfilled--but I am ready to hang around to make sure.
Mr. Straw: I take this opportunity to congratulate my right hon. Friend on his 30 years, and I look forward to the celebration in his constituency, which I shall attend, next month. He slightly, and uncharacteristically, understates the position on Conservative attendance, because there may now be three times as many present for this statement as there were for the Opposition day debate on pensions, but there are 10 times as many
Conservative Members present as there were for what was flagged up as a major, headline debate on crime, organised by the Conservatives just two weeks ago.
Mr. Alan Duncan (Rutland and Melton): In terms of his party's policy and its purported principles, will the Home Secretary take a moment to explain to the House the basis on which he thinks it is ever right for a majority to constrain the rights of a minority?
Mr. Straw: The hon. Gentleman touches on a central issue of how liberal democracies, in the best sense of the phrase, should operate. He is, of course, right to ask that question, which has been consuming political philosophers since political philosophy first developed. Having said that, I have to say that there are many opinions on both sides as to precisely the point at which the criminal law should be imposed by the majority on the minority.
If the hon. Gentleman reads the Scott-Henderson report, published 50 years ago, he will find that it considers that issue. The committee concluded that, at that time, certain practices of hunting generally were sufficiently cruel that they should be banned, but that, at that stage, fox hunting did not come into that category. That was the test that the committee and, subsequently, the House chose to use. As the hon. Gentleman knows, those who support the ban, who include many Labour Members as well as quite a few Opposition Members, take the view that there is sufficient and unnecessary cruelty in fox hunting to warrant a ban. Others take a different view, and the Government, as I have said repeatedly, are neutral on the issue. What is clear, not least from the intense interest generated today, is that the issue can no longer be allowed to fester. Parliament needs to come to a conclusion.
Ms Chris McCafferty (Calder Valley): May I, too, congratulate my right hon. Friend on his historic statement? I should like to pass on the gratitude of the vast majority of my constituents in Calder Valley, who believe that fox hunting is an astonishingly cruel and outmoded activity that has no place in a modern society.
Does my right hon. Friend agree that drag hunting provides a popular and viable alternative to fox hunting that can help to sustain similar jobs in the rural economy? When, in 1997, I visited one of the two manufacturers of riding habits in my constituency, I was surprised and delighted to find that staff expressed more concern about whether the Chancellor would put VAT on children's clothing and how soon we would enter the euro than about fox hunting. The other manufacturer exports 95 per cent. of the clothing it makes to Europe and has won the Queen's award for export to countries that do not have the fox.
Madam Speaker: Order. Hon. Members are getting into the Adjournment debate that has been half-promised by the Home Secretary, in that they are debating the issue, not asking questions. I shall take a few, but only a few, more questions, and I hope that they will be both questions and pertinent. Would the Home Secretary care to respond to the hon. Lady?
Mr. Straw: Very briefly, Madam Speaker. I thank my hon. Friend for her comments. There is an interesting discussion of drag hunting in chapter 8 of the report.
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