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Mr. Gray: I wish to add a few words in support of the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Moss), to which my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter) so ably spoke. I did not have the good fortune to serve on the Standing Committee considering this Bill, or on that considering the private Member's Bill promoted by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Garston (Maria Eagle). Despite the fact that I have read the Hansard reports of both Standing Committees with care, I was not quite as up to date with the arguments as she thought I should have been.
The hon. Lady made an odd intervention that seemed to suggest that if this or any other Bill has been discussed anywhere in Parliament, it is in some way improper to discuss it again on Report.
Maria Eagle: I was not suggesting that it was improper to discuss anything that is in order on Report. I merely pointed out that hon. Members had already been given an answer.
Mr. Douglas Hogg (Sleaford and North Hykeham): It was not a satisfactory answer.
Mr. Gray: As my right hon. and learned Friend says, it was not a satisfactory answer. However, the Minister will have an opportunity to remind us of the answer, and we shall have the opportunity to scrutinise his remarks. The hon. Lady intervened on my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Cambridgeshire and suggested that his speech was a waste of time because his question was answered during consideration of an obscure private Member's Bill a year or so ago. That is a fundamental misunderstanding of the way in which the House operates.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not labour that point, because I called him to speak to the amendment.
Mr. Gray: I am happy to do that, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
The provisions are important because they appear to have a sinister undertone. If the Bill brings about the end of fur farming, we must be clear what will happen to the 100,000 mink that are farmed in this nation. If we are not, a Bill that purports to be about animal welfare may turn into one that creates a nightmare for those animals. The House must be clear what will happen if we put mink farmers out of business. What will happen to the mink on their farms? The Bill uses the phrase "or other disposal" and that leaves open the possibility that the animals will be disposed of inappropriately.
I am not convinced that the Bill applies only to mink, although they will form by far the largest category of animals affected. On Second Reading, I asked whether a flock of sheep farmed exclusively to produce sheepskins
would be covered by the Bill. The Minister may correct me later, but my understanding is that the conclusion was that it would be illegal to keep a flock of sheep purely for the purpose of producing sheepskin rugs. Indeed, under the Bill it would be equally illegal to keep rabbits solely for their fur.Given the state of market for mutton, if not for lamb, I understand why it might be possible for a farmer to decide that a flock of sheep should be kept specifically for the purpose of selling their skins. We do not want to get into an argument about the precise price of mutton, but that must be theoretically possible. If I were a farmer with a flock of sheep on the uplands that I knew would be worthless on the livestock market and I saw the Bill going through Parliament, I might declare today that my flock were being kept purely for their fur. The compensation that we hope will be available under the Bill may turn out to be a great deal more generous than the price that the unfortunate farmer would earn for his flock of sheep in the market.
Mr. Hogg: I am listening to my hon. Friend's argument, and I have heard something of the kind before. He faces one problem, of course: the word used in subsection (1)(a) is "fur". Whatever else is true of sheep, they do not produce fur. Does my hon. Friend agree, nevertheless, that that argument demonstrates the nonsense? It probably would be lawful to breed sheep exclusively for wool, but not lawful to breed mink exclusively for fur?
Mr. Gray: My right hon. and learned Friend makes a good point, but he slips up at the end. It is legal to breed sheep exclusively for the purpose of their wool, which is shorn, and the animal remains alive. If sheep are bred exclusively for the purpose of producing sheepskins, the animals have to be slaughtered in order for the sheepskins to be obtained.
Mr. Hogg: The last thing I want to do is to fall out with my hon. Friend, because basically we are in the same camp. However, the word in the Bill is "fur". Whatever else is the case, sheep do not produce fur. They may produce skins and they may produce wool, but fur they do not produce.
Mr. Gray: That is an interesting point of definition, which is at odds with what the Minister made clear on Second Reading, when he said specifically that in the unlikely event of a flock of sheep being bred for sheepskins, which would require their slaughter, that would come under the terms of the Bill. However, my right hon. and learned Friend may well be right. He speaks as a barrister and charges hundreds of thousands of pounds an hour for just such advice. He may be right that the word "fur" cannot be construed as applying to sheep.
Mr. Hunter: Pursuing my hon. Friend's recollection of the Minister's reply on Second Reading, I suppose that that could also apply to ostrich farming. The bottom has fallen out of the ostrich meat market. Now the birds are farmed for their feathers and, for tourist reasons, for their eggs. If the Minister's answer on Second Reading was correct, the Bill has ominous implications.
Mr. Gray: My hon. Friend makes a useful point. When the Minister responds, perhaps he will tell us what the Bill
intends. If it applies purely to mink, he must say so. If there is the possibility that ostrich, deer, sheep or rabbits may come under the terms of the Bill, the precise means of disposal of the animals becomes a matter of key interest to those of us who are fundamentally concerned with animal welfare.We need to know precisely what will happen to the animals. There are 130,000 mink and they are breeding all the time. People tend to forget that the animals breed like mink, and presumably the population will increase. Other kinds of animals, such as ostriches and sheep, may come within the purview of the Bill, and it is only reasonable that before we send it on its way from this place, we should know with great precision and clarity the means by which the animals are to be disposed of. It is worrying that that should be left to an open expression such as "or other disposal".
For the purpose of the amendments, it is reasonable to assume that we are dealing primarily with mink, although I look forward to the Minister commenting on other animals. Let us focus on what will happen to the mink. We must be clear whether the compensation terms that are the subject of the second group of amendments are dependent on the mink being slaughtered, or on a forfeiture order being issued against the farmer.
The winding down of the mink farms over a number of years, which seems to be the intention behind the Bill, may be sensible, but the mechanism by which that will happen has not been spelled out in the Bill or in the explanatory notes to it. The Minister may want to explain how that winding-down process will happen.
If we are to presume that the end of mink farming will mean the slaughter of the 130,000 existing mink in the UK, it is important that we should know precisely what the means of slaughter will be. Various ways of killing mink are used. The most common are gassing by carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide. Hon. Members will know that many people commit suicide by carbon monoxide gassing, directing fumes from the exhaust through the car windows. It is said to be a painless way of committing suicide. Carbon dioxide, I believe, is less attractive, but none the less can be used in some circumstances. Another method is by lethal injection, which may occur in some mink farms, although it is difficult to imagine catching the mink in order to administer a lethal injection.
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The reason for those methods of killing is that the perfection of the pelt is important. The only value of the animal is the pelt. If mink were slaughtered by the conventional means used for other animals, the pelts would be damaged. It is important that those of us who care about animal welfare should know whether the farmers will be required to carry out the slaughtering themselves. At present, most slaughtering of mink takes place on the farm, because the transportation of the mink to a slaughterhouse is considered to be a great deal more harmful to them than being slaughtered on the farm. The first question, then, is whether the slaughter will be carried out on the farm.
Secondly, will the farmers be allowed to sell the pelts produced from that slaughtering? I assume so. If that is the case, presumably the slaughtering must occur by means of CO 2 , CO or lethal injection. Will the Minister tell us which method of slaughtering he thinks will be
most appropriate? Will he consider not just adult animals, but the newly born? Will the newly born be killed by the same means? Will MAFF vets be present to supervise the process? What will happen to the carcases? Will there be proper disposal?What will happen to the pelts? Will they be sold to British fur dealers, or will that be considered immoral? It is the Minister who changed the thrust of the Bill from animal welfare to morality. If the pelts are not sold to British fur dealers, perhaps there is the strange prospect that they will be sold to foreign fur dealers. Once fur farming is abandoned in this country, foreign fur dealers will make all the money out of it.
The Minister must be specific about what he expects to happen in the process of killing and disposing of the animals. He must also be specific about whether the agreed compensation will be paid if farmers carry out the slaughter voluntarily, or only if they are required to do so under the forfeiture orders. In the latter case, presumably, the farmers will do nothing until the forfeiture orders are served on them. That will not necessarily produce the most orderly or humane way of carrying out the slaughter.
We need answers to various questions about how the animals will be killed, the means by which they will be disposed of, and what will happen to the pelts thereafter. Those are the large questions about the slaughtering process which we believe, unwelcome though it is, will be the result of the Bill. If not, the words "or other disposal" become relevant.
What else could be the fate of those 130,000 mink? We are not sure whether they will be killed by CO 2 , by carbon monoxide poisoning, by having their little throats slit or by being chucked into a ditch. We are not sure what will happen to them. We must be clear about that. If the Minister makes use of the expression "or other disposal", what does he have in mind?
When Lord Burns considers what will happen to foxhounds if, unfortunately, there were a ban on fox hunting in this country, he suggests that the redundant foxhounds could be re-homed, as he calls it. I am not sure whether that is a word. Is the Minister considering the possible re-homing of mink? I hope not. Perhaps he will require the farmers to keep the mink until they grow old and die, in which case what does he propose to do about all the breeding that the mink will do in the meantime? Maybe he is considering releasing them into the wild. That is a solution that has been put forward by a number of his friends--his past leads me to think that they are his friends--in the more extreme animal welfare lobby. They have released mink into the wild with catastrophic consequences. We see on rivers throughout the country what happens when that happens.
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