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Lembit Öpik: The hon. Gentleman will be aware that members of the recommittal Committee had the opportunity to vote on a specific amendment that was very close to what the Minister implied, perhaps by accident, he would consider sympathetically. So we have tried it both ways, but in neither example are we able to convince those who, on the basis of prejudice, have simply set their minds against compensation to change their view.
Mr. Hurst: It is not for me to judge the minds of other hon. Members, but I should have thought that the House would be more receptive to a tightly drawn new clause than to this broad-brush approach.
Mr. Grieve: I am listening carefully to what the hon. Gentleman has to say. Does he share my slight surprise that the Minister, who is normally there to square the circle in such circumstances, has not said that he appreciates the principle and will therefore go away and consider it properly? That happens routinely on Report, when amendments are proposed that may not quite
meet the necessity of the case but, nevertheless, have a point behind them. Is it not absolutely astonishing that we are met with a blanket refusal to consider a principle that, I am pleased to hear, the hon. Gentleman understands and shares?
Mr. Hurst: Again, it is not for me to judge the mind of my right hon. Friend. He clearly hears what I say, and what other hon. Members say. We must return to the principle that livelihoods are as important as property. We need to have respect for those who will lose that livelihood in these controversial circumstances. One is put in mind of Abraham Lincoln at the conclusion of the American civil war: a gracious and generous approach is a far better way to conduct oneself than what might be perceived as being vindictive.
Alun Michael: One must make a distinction between the element of loss of equipment, which was what happened under the guns legislation, loss of business, which underlay the decision in relation to fur farming, and loss of employment, to which my hon. Friend referred. That is why I referred to the principles at the beginning of the process, and I have considered the case well. Were there an argument about such a limited element that would be affected under those principles, of course I would be willing to consider it. I have heard no propositions during the debate, however, that lead me to identify any element as one that would fit with the principles that are applied and on which we ought therefore to move. My hon. Friend can be assured that that is not from a wish not to listen to his comments or the comments of other Members.
Mr. Hurst: I am sure that my right hon. Friend will continue to listen. The example that comes readily to my mind, however, which is not an exact comparison, is that were the electorate to withdraw their confidence from any right hon. or hon. Members, and were we to lose our livelihood as a consequence and be unable to find an easy alternative trade to follow, we would be compensated with a sum in excess of £25,000 for those on the humbler Benches, and, I suspect, rather more for those on more elevated Benches. I would pray in aid that if hon. Members can be reduced in that way so can huntsmen.
Mr. Kaufman: Does my hon. Friend agree that if a proposition of this kind were to be brought forward to the House, the last people who have the right to bring it forward are Conservative Members who, during a period of eight years, deliberately destroyed 215,000 jobs in the coal mining industry, together with hundreds of thousands more jobs in coal communities. The right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), who has put his name to the new clause, was one of the people responsible for those hundreds of thousands of job losses.
Mr. Hurst: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, but that is precisely why I prayed in aid the conduct of President Abraham Lincoln. I could operate at a less historical level and say that two wrongs do not make a right—that phrase may not have such a flow to it, but it may sum up the position.
I do not intend to detain the House longer. It seems to me that this is a simple question of fairness—
Mr. Eric Martlew (Carlisle): What my hon. Friend needs to do is to compare the situation with that in Cumbria two years ago—he knows Cumbria well, as he trained there as a solicitor—when we had foot and mouth, as farmers were compensated for the loss of beasts but the farm labourers who lost their jobs were not compensated at all.
Mr. Hurst: That is the best argument that I have heard so far, and as they say on American law programmes, I shall take it under advisement as to what the proper answer would be. It does not detract from what I was saying, however, and if that was the case, I would have anticipated my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (Mr. Martlew) to have argued on behalf of those farm labourers who lost their jobs at that time. Perhaps it was a pity that that was not done. Nevertheless, it does not change my view that in this case, when the House has rightly reached a decision about what should happen about hunting with hounds, we should therefore move on to consider how to deal properly with those who will suffer as a consequence.
Mr. Gummer: I respect the comments of the hon. Member for Braintree (Mr. Hurst), who is not quite my neighbour but very close, and who understands the circumstances about which we are talking. I found it difficult to accept the comments of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman), as he will remember that many more miners lost their jobs under Governments whom he supported, and that the arrangements made were much less generous than those under Governments whom I supported. However, that is not the matter that we are discussing today, although the right hon. Gentleman will lose no moment in which to find some unpleasant personal comment to make. That is his stock in trade.
We are not talking about grand people like the right hon. Gentleman; we are talking about very simple people who have spent their lives doing a legal job. We are also talking about ordinary people who are members of a hunt who have property and hounds for the purpose of that hunt. Their case is exactly parallel to the issue that has been prayed in aid—those who were in the business of fur farming. When fur farming was legal, they had property and employment. When the House decided that fur farming should not be legal, they lost their employment but they did not lose their property. However, their property could not be used for the purpose for which they had invested their money and their time. The House therefore decided that it was reasonable to give them compensation.
I remind you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that that decision was arrived at very late. The Government discovered that they ran the risk of not complying with the human rights legislation. It is difficult to see that depriving someone of the use of their property and of their livelihood in the direct sense could comply with that legislation, unless we seek to provide reasonable
compensation with all the caveats that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) mentioned.
Mr. Garnier: Is it not peculiar that the original Bill that was introduced to the House last autumn contained the relevant certificate under the Human Rights Act and that, all of a sudden and by surprise, it is no longer there?
Mr. Gummer: My hon. and learned Friend is right, but the Minister has explained that it will be there in future. I suggest that he may have to look rather carefully at this part of the Bill, which has been highlighted by the new clause, because it is particularly, if not solely, vulnerable to the human rights legislation.
The Minister is also vulnerable on two other grounds. The first relates to what people in general would feel to be fair. I think that it is probably true to say that most people who follow these debates would think that the Minister came to the House with one Bill and that the Bill that we are now discussing is—even if I use the most considerate term to describe it—fundamentally different. I think that it is a different Bill altogether, but it must be fundamentally different because the Minister, in correspondence and in debates in the House and Committee, made a distinction between what he was proposing and what his hon. Friends, including his very hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Mr. Banks), would have liked. The hon. Gentleman and I disagree, but we each at least recognise that the other holds a proper and consistent view on this issue.
The Minister came to the House with one Bill and the House decided that it was not to its liking. It changed it so radically that, in normal parlance, it is now seen as a different Bill. In those circumstances, the Minister would find it hard to explain to anybody how it would be reasonable and fair not to give people some compensation. He must consider that normal, down-to-earth position.
Mr. Gummer: I shall give way in a moment.
I sat through the Minister's long discussion of morality in Committee, although he became significantly less willing to raise that matter as our proceedings continued. He said that he had been advised that the Government had no moral responsibility to pay compensation. I had to ask the Minister how he was able to speak about morality, given that no figure who is normally thought of as an arbiter of morality shared his view on hunting. No Church, Jewish community or member of the Judeo-Christian Church suggests that they take such a moral position. I said that if he wanted to know about morality, perhaps he should talk to those who might be able to help him.
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