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Mr. Gray: If all the Minister wants to do is to get rid of the fur farmers in the United Kingdom and if he is prepared to pay compensation in order to do so, why does he not just offer that to the fur farmers without passing the Bill? He would then stamp out fur farming at a stroke in this country without any need for the process that we are going through at the moment.
Mr. Morley: There are one two tiny technical problems with that approach, one of which is that one may obtain the agreement of existing fur farmers but, without a Bill to prohibit fur farming, others might set up.
Mr. Ian Cawsey (Brigg and Goole): Without a Bill to outlaw fur farming, what would my hon. Friend be compensating?
Mr. Morley: That is a good point. Without the prohibition of fur farming there would be no grounds for
compensation. We are delivering a pre-election pledge. I recognise the impact of the measure on British fur farmers and that is why, throughout the Committee stage, I tried to incorporate as much detail as I could on compensation. I have tried to be genuinely helpful, almost to the point of bending over backwards, both in Committee and today, to take such matters into account. We intend to do that. I want a scheme to be established as quickly as possible after the Bill receives Royal Assent.9.45 pm
Until the Bill becomes law, there is no basis for a compensation scheme. I therefore hope that the Bill has a speedy passage through both Houses and that I have dealt with the points that the hon. Member for North-East Cambridgeshire made so reasonably.
Mr. Hogg: Will the Parliamentary Secretary give way?
Mr. Morley: I am afraid that I am about to conclude. I hope that I have answered many of the points that were made.
9.45 pm
Mr. Moss: I thank the Parliamentary Secretary for his response, but he did not cover all the points that I made. For example, he did not consider the proposed new schedule in any detail. He talked about special advisers, including a few accountants, but he mentioned no other professionals. I am astounded that even at this stage, he does not consider including other professional advisers in the team that he will send out to undertake the consultation and make the assessment. It will take more than accountants to reach a sensible conclusion.
Who will the accountants be? Will they be Treasury accountants? In Committee, the Minister said that the advisers would not be MAFF people. However, I begin to fear that if the advisers are only a few accountants, they may be from the Treasury. What hope would fur farmers have in that case? I should be grateful if he elaborated on the likely identity of the accountants, and whether he believes that, in the spirit of the proposed new schedule, there should be a balanced and professional team. He did not mention numbers. Does that mean that two, three or more people will be special advisers? A little more detail would have been helpful.
The Minister dismissed the main thrust of the amendments on the basis that they were too restrictive. However, I believed that I had covered that point in amendment No. 7, which proposes setting up an independent advisory body
- to advise the appropriate authority--
- on all aspects of the scheme.
- all aspects of the scheme.
Any compensation scheme could be cash limited. The Treasury has suggested ball-park figures, of which the Ministry has taken account. The Treasury will not be happy if the upper limit of £1.6 million is exceeded. However, that upper valuation of the 13 fur farms is light years away from the industry's view of the real value of their businesses.
We have heard the example of the Austrian compensation scheme. It is the only one that we currently know about. Its compensation equates to approximately £400 per breeding female. That makes the total value of the United Kingdom fur farming businesses approximately £8 million to £10 million. The Minister assured us that the £1.6 million mentioned in the explanatory notes was not set in stone. We take that assurance with a pinch of salt.
If the Minister simply sends out a few accountants, and the ball-park figure remains the Treasury figure of £1.6 million, not much consultation will take place. The pre-ordained sum will simply be carved up.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: Since I spoke, a document containing the compensation scheme for the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997 has come into my possession. It took eight months to produce after the Bill received Royal Assent. Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be intolerable if it took eight months to produce the compensation scheme for this Bill, when it will be illegal to keep the animals after 1 January 2003, roughly two and a half years after the Bill receives Royal Assent? Clause 5 will come into effect two months after Royal Assent, and the compensation scheme could take eight months to produce before anyone could start working on a claim. That is unacceptable.
Mr. Moss: My hon. Friend makes a valid point, which he also made in Committee. The Minister has not answered it directly, although he has given some indication of the likely time scale for setting up the scheme and the consultation that will accompany it.
The Minister should respond to some of the detailed points that I have put to him. No guarantees have been given, and the whole purpose of the amendments was to seek clarification and guarantees that key areas of the compensation scheme would be taken into account in the consultation. If the Minister intends to send out only a few accountants, with a ceiling for the scheme of £1.6 million, I fear that the fur farmers will be sold down the river.
9.51 pm
Mr. Morley: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
I am sorry that the hon. Member for North-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Moss) did not feel that I gave enough assurances about the compensation scheme, which is, in many ways, at the heart of the Bill, because I tried
hard to do so. This is an enabling Bill and will give powers to bring forward a scheme with full consultation, during which all the points can be raised. In Committee, I also gave a detailed analysis of how we can achieve those objectives.I thank those hon. Members who have made constructive and thoughtful contributions on the Bill, as well as my hon. Friends--not least, of course, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Garston (Maria Eagle), who piloted a private Member's Bill on the issue and did much of the preliminary work on prohibiting fur farming in this country. She was very influential in shaping the Bill in its final form. We took account of the representations that were made and tried to address the legitimate concerns that were raised.
We have had a response from the European Union to the Bill, and it did not object to it. I wish to make that clear. Therefore we are within our rights to proceed with it, taking into account our obligations under human rights and other legislation. We are confident that it meets all the requirements that we are obliged to address.
I must say to the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson)--or perhaps I should say the hon. Member for Denmark, Central--that the Bill does not seek to impose our views on other member states. The treatment of fur farming in other member states is, rightly, a matter on which those countries must make their own decisions. Several other member states share our views on fur farming, the moral issue of how animals are treated and whether animals are being killed unnecessarily. We do not seek to impose our views on other member states, so we are within our rights to say that we do not appreciate it when other organisations and countries wish to impose their views on what we, through our democratic processes, do. I hope that the hon. Member for North Shropshire takes that into account.
In conclusion, I think that the Bill is important. Many people feel strongly about as it deals with an issue of public morality. I am sorry that the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) referred to it as an odious measure.
Mr. Hogg: I said that it was an odious little Bill.
Mr. Morley: I stand corrected. Frankly, I think that the political philosophy that justifies the abuse of animals is odious.
The Bill addresses a real issue of morality concerning the way in which we treat animals. I am grateful for the support that it has received from many hon. Members on both sides of the House and I certainly hope that we have addressed the legitimate concerns that have been raised during its passage through the House.
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