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Mr. Foster: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his generosity in giving way once again. Does he conclude that if the House of Lords were to reject the proposal for a commencement after 18 months—if the Commons accepts it—so that the default setting returns to three months, any impact on dogs in terms of adverse animal welfare implications will be entirely their responsibility?
Mr. Cawsey: I suppose that is the logical conclusion of what has been said, but I really wanted to address—
Mr. Gale: The hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Foster) cannot get away with that point. The three-month commencement is in the Bill. If the Government had chosen to amend it, they could have done so, but they would have been unable to use the Parliament Act.
Mr. Cawsey: I do not want to get into that argument. I am trying to set out the findings of our working group.
I do not know how many dogs or hunt owners will be in the three categories I described earlier, but I know that there are hunt people who want time and support to do the best for their dogs. If we do not give them that chance by voting for the motion, I fear that we shall be putting them in an extremely difficult position. If we give them no time, we give them no chance. We should give them an opportunity. The Kennel Club, the Dogs Trust, the rehoming organisations and I will very much welcome that opportunity, which is why I signed the amendment.
8.25 pm
Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby) (Con): This is a shameful day for the House of Commons. We are seeing mean-minded, chippy bigotry brought into play.
Mr. Robathan:
I hear my right hon. Friend, but mean-minded, chippy bigotry is being brought into play by people who are not particularly interested in animal welfare.
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We heard earlier about miners and steel workers. Actually, I care when miners or steel workers lose their jobs, as I care when other people lose their jobs.
Mr. Robathan: But not, apparently, most other people on the Labour Benches.
We are discussing the 18-month delay. As has already been said, it is a pathetic, cynical electoral ploy by the Government. I know that the name of the Minister for Rural Affairs and Local Environmental Quality is on the amendment and that he supports it and will accept it. That is a disgraceful abuse of Parliament. Either hunting with dogs should be banned, or it should not. Surely, that is clear to even the most stupid person on the Labour Benches who supports the amendment—[Interruption.] I think I am allowed to say that, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
The measure will deliver hunting death by a thousand cuts—the lingering death of a fox shot by those alleged marksmen. As somebody who has shot more rifle bullets than most people in this place, I can tell Members that many foxes shot by people who pretend to be marksmen will die a lingering death. But of course that is part of what the Government want. A person thinking of renewing their hunt subscription would say, "Why should I bother?" If they were thinking of buying a new box, they would say, "I won't bother." If they were thinking of buying a new hunter, they would say, "It's only for 18 months, why should I bother?"
That is the Government's ploy. They will kill off hunting slowly so that there are no great protests. In particular, a kennel man or a huntsman will say, "Well, I'd better get another job." They will then be unable to claim the compensation that the Government do not want invoked under human rights legislation.
The measure is disgraceful and the Government are yet again exposed as cynical in the extreme. I wish people outside this place could see the glee on the faces of people who do not care much one way or the other about hunting. An ex-Minister—it would be invidious to name him—told me, when he was still a Minister, that he did not care tuppence about hunting, but that he would vote for a ban because between 200 and 300 of his constituents really cared about it and they were all members of his constituency Labour party.
A Liberal Democrat MP—she shall also remain nameless—
Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab): That is narrowing it down quite a lot.
Mr. Robathan: But at least I am not sexist.
The Liberal Democrat MP told me, "I really don't care, but I keep getting all these letters so I'll vote for a ban." That is the truth. Most people in the House—like most people outside—do not really care very much about hunting but they will subject the few people who hunt to the loss of their sport, and for many, of their livelihood, for petty, mean-minded reasons.
Dr. Julian Lewis (New Forest, East) (Con):
I wonder whether my hon. Friend heard the "Today" programme this morning, when Mr. George Monbiot of the
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left-wing press was boasting of the fact that the measure, if carried, would be the biggest blow of a social nature to the upper classes since the abolition of the hereditaries in the House of Lords. It is good to have that sort of admission.
Mr. Robathan: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. I did not hear Mr. Monbiot, but of course that is unfortunately what a lot of people think. [Interruption.] I wish that the Labour Members who are laughing could have listened to the farmer who telephoned me this morning. He certainly was not a toff; he was not an ex-Guards officer, unlike me. I do not hunt, incidentally. He rang me and asked, "Why are the Government doing this? How will I get rid of my dead calves? I don't hunt, but I let the hunt across my ground. Why are they doing it?" That is what many people in the countryside think. They want to know why the Government are persecuting them.
This is a misuse of Parliament. It is an abuse of democracy. Parliament is made up of two Houses, not just one, and the House of Lords was reformed, badly, by the Government. This is a complete abuse of the Parliament Acts. Frankly, this should be a day when people are ashamed of the House of Commons. Someone will say later that this is a great day for the House of Commons. It is a shameful day for the House of Commons. A majority of bigoted people are imposing their will on a minority of people who wish to do something that those in the majority do not wish to do.
8.30 pm
Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold) (Con): I am pleased to catch your eye in this debate, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I have sat here all afternoon, and I have listened to quite a lot of nonsense. As with previous hunting debates, there is a lot of ill-informed comment by Members, particularly Labour Members, who think that they know something about hunting when they actually know very little, and I want to come to one or two of those points.
One could not get a more cynical motion than the timetable that we are discussing. This is purely about saving the Prime Minister's political skin because he does not want the destruction of hounds and people losing their jobs ahead of a general election. That is what the motion is about—nothing more, nothing less. Ministers seem to think that the opposition to this dreadful Bill will go away, but this is a very sad day for my constituents. I represent more hunts and therefore more people who have jobs in the hunting world than any other Member of Parliament. Earlier this afternoon, I heard Labour Members laughing at the prospect of job losses in my constituency, and I regard that as an utter disgrace. Notwithstanding that, this is a cynical measure designed to save the Prime Minister's face, and it comes on top of an already bad Bill and an abuse of parliamentary procedures.
The debate has been interesting in one respect: the right hon. Member for Bristol, East (Jean Corston), who is a lawyer, very clearly went through the position of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. She very clearly read out article 1 of the European convention on human rights, which is about people's enjoyment of
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property rights. As a lawyer and having had advice from the Government and the Committee's lawyers, she said that the Government would be in breach of the Human Rights Act 1998, if they did not give adequate notice. So if the Government do not get the amendment and go back to the original three-month proposal, they could well find themselves in breach of that Act.
This is only a suggested amendment, which involves a totally different procedure from what we normally have in the House. If the Minister is right and if their lordships were to refuse to pass the Bill or passed amendments with which the House disagreed, the suggested amendment would fall. The Minister made that quite clear from the Dispatch Box tonight. If that is the case and the Government go back to their original Bill, with only three months' notice, they will very rapidly find themselves in the European Court of Human Rights.
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