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Mr. Gordon Prentice (Pendle) (Lab): Is it not rich for the right hon. and learned Gentleman to talk about compensation? As Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, he specifically ruled out compensation for farmers affected by BSE.

Mr. Hogg: I introduced one of the most generous schemes to support the beef market that could have been contemplated by anyone. I should have thought that there were better criticisms to make of me than that.

My second point about amendments is desperately important. Amendments provide a way of testing the logic of any particular proposition. It is not just a case of improving a Bill; it is a case of testing its inherent logic. Amendments of that kind are often called probing amendments.

The Bill contains an express provision permitting falconry. I happen to support falconry—I think it is a glorious sport—but I am entitled to ask, by means of an amendment, why the Bill expressly permits falconry while prohibiting hunting with hounds. Where lies the logic in that? Similarly, there are provisions relating to terrier work and shooting. I am an enthusiastic, if very incompetent, shot, but why does the Bill expressly permit terrier work on foxes in order to facilitate the shooting of pheasants, but prohibit hunting with hounds? Where lies the logic in that? That is the kind of question that can be addressed by probing amendments. Such a procedure affects public understanding of a Bill and I think that it would increase hostility towards this provision.

Mr. A. J. Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD): The right hon. and learned Gentleman may recall that, in the last Parliament, I argued in Standing Committee that the Bill would prohibit ratting. The Government denied that at several sittings, but having looked at the Bill more closely they returned several weeks later with amendments to deal with the matter.

Mr. Hogg: Schedule 1 includes ratting as a permitted form of hunting. That makes the right hon. Gentleman's point: no Bill that has ever come before us could not have been improved. By using the Parliament Act, however, we are preventing this Bill from being improved, and that is outrageous.

I have two final points to make. The first relates to Third Reading. The motion allows but half an hour, which is a desperately short time for Members who will not have been able to speak earlier and who may well want to ask the essential question, "Where lies the difference in principle between shooting, hunting with hounds and angling?" They would want to say on Third
 
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Reading that there is no essential difference and that to try to distinguish between those things is profoundly and shamefully wrong.

I do not suppose that my words will prevail, but I desperately hope that hon. Members will rally round the principle that other people's freedoms are our freedoms. We cannot destroy the freedoms of law-abiding minorities without diminishing freedom itself. If right hon. and hon. Members agree with that simple and time-honoured proposition, they will oppose the programme motion and they will oppose the Bill.

1.40 pm

Mr. Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op): I shall speak very briefly, Mr. Deputy Speaker. All politicians like to remain popular with their own side, but I should point out that, on this issue, I am in a minority among Labour Members, although not a persecuted one. I hope that this debate will continue in the good-tempered way in which it started and allow a different opinion to be expressed on the Labour Benches.

In debating a motion such as this—I oppose it and will vote against it—we sometimes lose track of the issues. My interpretation of what we said in our manifesto differs from the Minister's. We said that we would have a vote and let Parliament decide, but the fact is that the two Houses profoundly disagree.

Alun Michael: I should remind my hon. Friend that the manifesto commitment was to enable Parliament to reach a conclusion.

Mr. Sheerman: Yes, but the fact is that the long-running disagreement between the two Houses has led to a conclusion: stalemate. We now have to decide whether this issue is important enough to warrant invoking the Parliament Act.

When I first heard that we were going to deal with this issue in the manifesto, I regretted the fact, because in my view it should be dealt with through a private Member's Bill. I am sorry that the Government have got so deeply involved, but I applaud the fact that we continue to have free votes.

Mr. McNamara: My hon. Friend says that he regrets the Government's intervening, but he will recall the time when the whole Tory Cabinet turned up on a Friday and voted against my private Member's Bill.

Mr. Sheerman: My hon. Friend makes a good point. Some of the arguments from the Conservatives on this issue are not very good and listening to them almost guarantees that I will change the way I vote. However, I do not like persecuting minorities and I do not want communities that have values and a way of life that differ from mine to lose them.

I have a serious worry. I was in the House during the Thatcher years, when disgraceful and dreadful things were done to communities such as mining communities, but I draw a different lesson from that. I do not want to do to rural communities what the Thatcher Government did to the mining communities; two wrongs do not make a right. They may be the minority, but there are many people in this country who take a different view from the
 
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majority on country sports. As I explained in the original debate on this issue in 1997, I used to be anti-hunting, but then I thought through why I took that view. I have never hunted and I never want to. I do not shoot. I do not ride. However, I have lived in the country, reared chickens and ducks, and had foxes take them away. As I said in 1997, if someone can prove to me that there is a more humane way of killing a fox than hunting with dogs, I will change my view, but the Burns inquiry and every piece of evidence that I have seen since then has not persuaded me that there is a more humane way.

Mr. Banks: Perhaps I might steer my hon. Friend back the procedural matter and the manifesto pledge that Parliament would decide on this issue. It has not been resolved, and a stalemate is not a decision. Does my hon. Friend, who is a good House of Commons man, not see the qualitative difference between huge majorities arrived at through a free vote on the Floor of the House and their being overturned and frustrated by an unelected Chamber?

Mr. Sheerman: As my hon. Friend knows, I have been in this House a long time, and I realise that invoking the Parliament Act is a question of judgment; that judgment is based on the importance that we attach to the issue in question. In my view, this issue is nowhere near important enough to justify invoking that Act.

It is clear that there is a strong divide between the two Houses. I am not a great supporter of the House of Lords; indeed, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Mr. Banks) may know, I voted for its abolition. But the fact is that we have it, and its current role is that of a second Chamber—a Chamber that is perhaps a little more thoughtful and which takes time to contemplate issues. [Interruption.] That has always been its role. Given our current constitution and the fact that we have not abolished the Lords, we should listen to it very seriously when such disagreements arise.

My great worry is this: after today, when will we next use the Parliament Act? Will we use it when another such issue arises? I have been in the House long enough to remember the long hours that were spent debating abortion. Many people took different views on that issue, which, I am pleased to say, was always dealt with through private Members' Bills. I would be horrified if it were dealt with in the manner adopted in the United States. I sincerely believe that it is in the best interests of this country and of the House if issues such as abortion are dealt with, as they have always been, through private Members' Bills and on a free vote.

David Winnick (Walsall, North) (Lab): But the only reason that the law on abortion was changed was that the then Government provided time to do so during what was my first Parliament, in 1966; otherwise, the Opposition would have ensured that no such law passed. As my hon. Friend knows, if there is sufficient opposition, no private Member's Bill ever gets through. Is he really saying that, despite free votes in the previous and current Parliaments producing substantial majorities, the will of the House of Commons should be
 
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permanently opposed through a permanent veto by the House of Lords? If so, what is the purpose of our debates and decisions?

Mr. Sheerman: I am sorry to disagree with my hon. Friend—we have been friends for a very long time—but we hold different views on the importance we attach to hunting with dogs. In my view, there is a range of issues, such as abortion, that this House should debate in a very different way. They should be debated through private Members' Bills, because that is a much healthier method.

I have never regarded this issue as a party political one; indeed, the voting patterns of peers—be they Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat—have been all over the place. I accept that there is less diversity among Labour Members, and I regret that the reality is that most of the Members who support hunting are Conservatives. There would be a freer exchange of views if opinions were more diverse.

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