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Mr. Keith Bradley (Treasurer of Her Majesty's Household): What did you do? Did you do anything?
Mr. Hogg: We did, in fact. We pushed forward within the European Union and secured a new regime on the size of cages and the conditions. The point is that in regard to the keeping of chickens in battery cages, which I have always found a rather disagreeable practice, the approach that the House has taken in the past, and the approach that the European Union has taken, has been not to prohibit that but to require a higher standard of husbandry.
We are entitled to ask why this distinction of principle is being made as between, for example, the keeping of chickens, which is the example that the Parliamentary
Secretary chose, and the keeping of mink. It is not good enough for the hon. Gentleman to say that questions of welfare go to the questions of public perception of morality, because in one sense they do but it is not his primary argument. Had the issue of welfare been the primary argument, that is what he would have advanced as the primary cause. In fact, he and his colleagues do not like keeping mink for the purposes of fur wearing. I suspect that they do not like individuals wearing fur--I am pretty agnostic about the wearing of fur, save that I do not want endangered species to be eliminated.People who take that view should try to persuade people not to do it. That is persuasion. They should not use the criminal law to impose on their fellow citizens their own moral prejudices, which is wrong. [Interruption.] I hear wails, moans and groans from the Opposition and I am not in the least surprised. One of the characteristics of this Labour party is that it fails properly to weigh up the rights of fellow citizens. The Conservative party stands for freedom and liberty--[Interruption.] Oh yes it does, and the jeers and the restrictive measures--the proposed fox hunting Bill--come from members of a party who want to impose on their fellow citizens a narrow morality.
I am against the Bill and I hope that in another place it will be deeply amended and--even better--thrown out.
10.26 pm
Mr. Gray: My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) made a powerful and unanswerable libertarian argument. The catcalls and grins from Labour Members demonstrate that they do not understand libertarianism. They do not understand freedom of the individual; all they understand is central control and imposing their view of morality on the rest of us.
I hold no particular candle for fur farmers. I have none in my constituency. I am sorry to say that I think that I own no fur and neither does my wife. I have no reason to believe that fur farming is necessarily a good thing. My opposition to the Bill is based not on the principle, but on the Bill's sheer illogicality.
I see the hon. Member for Liverpool, Garston (Maria Eagle) returning to her place. [Interruption.] I was not implying that she had left it. I was about to, but then realised that she was delivering a note to the attendant, so I forgive her. I did not intend to impugn her attendance record. She has been here throughout the debate and has diligently pursued the matter for about three years, so I was not suggesting that she was slacking in any way.
When the hon. Lady brought her private Member's Bill to the House, her primary argument was animal welfare. She said that it was the wrong way to bring up these animals, it was disgraceful and it should not happen. That may well be a powerful argument. I am strongly committed to improving the standards of animal welfare wherever we can. However, that being so, there are many ways to do it by regulation: improving the way in which these animals are brought up.
There are about 8,000 mink farms in Europe. We have 12 or 13 in this country and, by banning them, we will not be improving the lot of the 500,000 mink, or thereabouts, in Europe. It will be a politically correct gesture within these shores that will achieve nothing for animal welfare. Indeed, one could argue that we are
harming animal welfare, in that we are exporting the production of fur. We are saying that we do not want it here, but will be happy for it to continue in Russia, which is one of the biggest producers of mink--mink produced under some of the worst conditions. One might argue, as I think my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham did, that if we are concerned about animal welfare, we should encourage good practice here, where we can control welfare standards on the farms, rather than exporting them to Russia, Mongolia and elsewhere.An interesting change came about between the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Garston and this Bill. It was first raised by the Parliamentary Secretary during a MAFF press conference on the issue and he has raised it several times today. We have got away from the animal welfare arguments. I think that the Government realised that they were not sustainable. If one is talking about animal welfare, this measure is not the way to put that right.
All of a sudden, the Government raised the issue of public morality. Let us think for a few seconds about that. First, what is public morality? Their arguments on this Bill, on fox hunting and on other measures of the sort are that the practices that should be banned on the grounds of public morality are practices that the majority of people dislike. They constantly talk about polls and say that 80 per cent. of people in the United Kingdom dislike fur farming. They also use that argument against fox hunting, saying that the majority of people in Britain dislike it.
I would argue that true public morality is about looking after the interests of the minorities--the small battalions--and the people who cannot look after themselves. For the Government to ban something because most people say that they want it banned is to abdicate their responsibility and to say that they are unable to make decisions on behalf of the people, so they will govern by opinion poll.
The Bill puts the Government in a peculiar position. We know that the business of the House and the other place is in the most appalling logjam, and all kinds of rumours are circulating in the Corridors as to whether or not the Government will be able to complete the passage of their important Bills. Even my constituents are asking why, if that is the case, we are wasting our time dealing with this Bill. There are only 13 fur farms left in the United Kingdom. Even if the Government hate fur farming, we should be dealing with health, education, law and order, and defence. [Interruption.]
If Labour Members will listen, I will suggest a reason why we are dealing with this Bill. It has nothing to do with animal welfare or public morality, which the Government have not got around to defining; it is about political correctness. They want to demonstrate that they are friends of the cuddly animal, but the Bill is the enemy of the cuddly animal. If they raised the standards of UK fur farms, they would be friends of the cuddly animal.
There is a further fundamental illogicality in the Bill. The Government could come to the House and say, "We hate the wearing of fur. We believe it to be immoral. Fur is a disgrace. We shall ban the sale of fur in Harrods and the wearing of fur in public places. We shall ban the international trade in fur." Most of that trade is conducted in London. If the Government said that, I would wholly disagree with them and think it an absurdity, but it would
be an intellectually honest thing to say. The Government have introduced such bans on ivory and on the importation of certain animals. They have said that the trade concerned is immoral and disgraceful and that they will not have it--but they will not do that in this case.The Government know that the wearing of fur is on the increase in the United Kingdom, as are the sales of fur in Harrods and elsewhere. Fur is imported from Russia and sold to America, but the trade is conducted here in London. The Government are not banning that. They do not have the moral courage to say that it is a disgraceful activity and that they hate fur. All they say is, "We know a group of 13 farmers and we believe that, politically, we would achieve an awful lot by coming down heavily on them. Despite the fact that there are 8,000 other fur farmers in Europe, we can demonstrate that we are hard on such people. We are politically correct, wonderful new Labour and we will sort out the ills of the world by wasting parliamentary time dealing with something in which the people are not the slightest bit interested." [Interruption.]
Once again, we see new Labour for what it is. All that Government Members can think about is whether or not it is time to go home. We are ready to discuss these matters for as long as it takes, and if we divided the House, as one Member has constantly suggested we should, Third Reading would take considerably longer than it otherwise would. Before he leaps to his feet, I should say that I have not discussed the matter with my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Moss), but as far as the Conservative party is concerned, this is a matter of individual conscience and there is no Whip on it.
I, for one, will not seek to divide the House because it is important that we should make these powerful arguments, and I am confident that noble Friends and peers from other parties will want to develop some of them in the other place. They will want to point out the illogicality in the Bill and its incipient and unpleasant political correctness. They will want to try to sort out compensation for the victims of that political correctness. They will seek to correct this badly drafted Bill, which was introduced not for reasons of animal welfare or public morality, which the Government have not defined, but simply to try to brush up the Labour party's rather tarnished credentials. It is an attempt to extend the Under-Secretary's career of political correctness and to achieve what he has sought throughout his life, as an animals rights activist, and to ban something--
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