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Mr. Gray: My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point about one of the most bizarre illogicalities in the Bill; namely, that organised hare coursing events, such as the Waterloo cup, are to be banned, while illegal hare coursing will be encouraged due to the exemptions in the Bill. If someone is using their own dogs on their own
land, there is no restriction at all, but one is incentivised to carry a gun because one can use dogs to course a hare that is injured and escaping. In fact, the Bill does not reduce illegal hare coursing, as the Minister claims; I suspect that it would lead to a significant increase in that practice. It bans only organised hare coursing events, whose aim is to kill as few hares as possible, in favour of a regime whose aim is to kill as many hares as possible. The Minister simply does not understand hare coursing.
Mr. Luff: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The hon. Member for Reading, West (Mr. Salter) has been passing a document around the Chamber, which Ministers, their Parliamentary Private Secretaries and others are reading. It is clearly germane to the debate. The hon. Gentleman is taking great pleasure in it and has just refused to give me a copy. Can you advise me on the procedure, Mr. Deputy Speaker? Should not the hon. Gentleman make the document available to both sides of the House?
Mr. Deputy Speaker: I have no knowledge of the provenance of the document and I certainly have no reason to believe that it is a House of Commons paper that should be available to all hon. Members. I must tell the hon. Gentleman that he should not be taking independent action across the Floor. All order is through the Chair.
Mr. Gray: I am keen for as many colleagues as possible to be fitted into the very brief time available for the debate, so I shall finish by quoting Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster, who, in The Sunday Telegraph last Sunday, memorably asked:
- "When will we begin to debate the ethics of the future of our species with anything like the passion, and the thoroughness, that we debate the future of our foxes?"
The Bill is now intellectually and morally bankrupt; it is a parody of the Minister's original intentions. It would criminalise hundreds of thousands of decent law-abiding citizens and wreak havoc with the life and freedoms of our countryside. The Bill is a disgrace in every possible way and I hope that all lovers of freedom and of the English countryside will vote against its Third Reading.
10.19 pm
Mr. Kaufman: As I was saying before you so politely interrupted me, Mr. Deputy Speaker, at the end of the debate on Report, this is a very important day for Parliament. It is an extremely important day because, after decades of struggle and campaigning, the House of Commons is now about to pass a Bill that will end a deliberate form of cruelty, conducted for pleasure, that ought never to have been allowed to be legal for very many years. So this is an historic day.
Lembit Öpik: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Kaufman: As the hon. Gentleman wishes to intervene, I might as well inform him, as well as the hon.
Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff), that the views that he has been advancing in the House are echoed in the leaflet by the British National party.
Mr. Luff: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I believe that the Standing Orders demand that a Member who has referred to a document should make that document available to the rest of the House. [Interruption.]
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I shall try to deal with the hon. Gentleman's point of order. I can see no case for this particular matter. Members are responsible for the material on which they rely, and it is not necessary to make it available to all Members.
May I just tell the House that this is a subject of enormous contention—it has been for some time—and my constituents feel strongly on both sides of the argument, but we will do ourselves a better service if we are seen to discuss it in a sober way, even though passions are very strong? I must ask the House to keep order even at this late stage.
Lembit Öpik: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Kaufman: No, time is limited, and it may well be that the hon. Gentleman wants to make his last speech on the Bill.
Lembit Öpik: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Loathe as I am to engage in this process, may I ask that you ensure that the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) is not suggesting that there is any connection between myself and the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff) and the BNP? [Interruption.]
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. May I tell the House and the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman), who is a long-standing Member, that we do not want extreme passions to be raised at this stage of the debate? It is a subject of great importance in the eyes of many people and there are very strongly held views on both sides of the House, and I hope that, in the last minutes of the debate in the House, moderate language, which is the tradition of the House, will be maintained.
Mr. Kaufman: Yes, indeed, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I would never have referred to that document if the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire had not got himself into such a hysterical state about it, but I will now move on to the point that I wish to make in my brief contribution.
One of the reasons why I am proud of the fact that we are about to give the Bill its Third Reading is that it fulfils a Labour party manifesto pledge, which I put before my constituents at the general election two years ago. Let us be clear about what will happen after the Bill leaves the House tonight. According to any interpretation whatever of the Salisbury convention, the other place must accept a Government Bill that has been
passed by the House of Commons; it must accept any Bill that has been passed by a majority of the House of Commons; and, under the Salisbury convention, it must accept the fulfilment of a manifesto commitment. On each of those criteria—by the doctrine of leading Conservative, the Marquess of Salisbury—it would be out of the question for another place to block the Bill.What I am saying is quite simply that we are at the end of an historic process, for which many people have fought for a very long time, as far as the House of Commons is concerned. It is now for Parliament, under the conventions established by both Houses, to accept the will of the House of Commons—the will of the House of Commons, as I pointed out to the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik), as first entrenched by a Liberal Government under the Parliament Act 1911, which was brought in by a Liberal Government. It is now for the whole of Parliament to respect the will of the people, as in a manifesto commitment, and for this Bill to become law and to be implemented as soon as possible.
10.25 pm
Andrew George: I was proud to have taken on the rural affairs portfolio for my party in the autumn. What I had not appreciated at the time was that I had arrived just as the music was about to stop in the portfolio responsibility game of "pass the exploding parcel". The Hunting Bill came beautifully wrapped with two camps of dogmatic enthusiasts who held equally blood-curdling views about each other and each other's positions.
You are right, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that the problem with this debate is that too much of it has not been sufficiently measured and has been too impassioned. What we need is to have a measured and considered debate. Sadly, we have not had that fully. The right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) did not do the House a favour. To even refer to such a document that is so clearly preposterous, wrong and unfair implies a slur against two hon. Members—my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) and the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff), under whose chairmanship I served on the Agriculture Committee—who do not deserve it. Although I disagree with the positions that they have taken, I agree with you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that that has not helped in the respect that we should play down the passions and consider the issues.
Lembit Öpik: Does my hon. Friend agree that while the middle way group has been frustrated by the occasionally preposterous unwillingness of those who oppose our position to listen to the information, not once in our history have we stooped as low as the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) to imply inferences that were clearly intended to besmirch? I hope that with the benefit of reflection he will not just rue the fact that he said it, but privately apologise to us.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Before the hon. Member for St. Ives (Andrew George) says anything in addition in his speech, I want to say to him that he should not seek to draw me into the argument. All that I have tried to rule is that the debate should be conducted in good order and with moderate language.
Andrew George: I accept your advice, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I shall take those remarks no further. My hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire has put his comments on the record.
The fact is that this is a debate about a sport, and we know that high passions are felt when talking about a sport. I think that the late—and great, in some people's minds—Bill Shankly, a former manager of Liverpool, when asked whether football was a matter of life and death, said that it was much more important than that. I have also argued on many occasions that God created the world so that we could play cricket. I understand the passions that people have in relation to sport, and I understand the passions of people who support the various forms of hunting. I supported hunting myself, coming from a farming background, and I understand well the strong passions of people in country areas and why those feelings are strongly expressed.
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