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Lord Lucas: My Lords, does not the noble Lord think that the regulation of the hereditary peerage rather than its outright banning has been a great success?
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, time will tell—and we have all the time in the world in this House.
I come to this debate, as I did to the previous one, with a set of emotions. I asked myself what has changed since the issue was last before the House. The main change is a sense of movement from those who voted last time for self-regulation and who will now vote for the middle way. I then asked myself why this should be. When I examined the proposals for the middle way, I understood why someone who believes in hunting will cheerfully vote for it—because they will be able to continue to enjoy that which they enjoy now, albeit under some kind of regulation or bureaucracy. There will be no change.
If you vote for the middle way you will be voting for licensed hunting. When you licence a hunt you are licensing an amorphous body; you are not licensing a dog because a dog is incapable of being controlled. When you talk about a licence in normal circumstances—for instance, when someone is licensed to hold a gun—you know that the person with that licence is a responsible person. But the killing in a fox hunt is carried out not by the hunters but by the dogs—and dogs cannot be controlled. I understand the role of the whips, but it is a fallacy to believe that when you licence people to do that which they should have been doing without the need of a licence, they will comply.
Let us reflect on the extent to which hunts comply with the law as it stands today. I shall not weary the House, but my noble friend Lady Gale gave illustrations of where, despite what is understood to be legal and illegal, hunts all over the country sometimes trespass beyond the bounds. There are those who will vote for the middle way today who said in the last debate that the middle way could lead to more and more bureaucracy—they are right, but they will still retain their right to hunt.
I could take objection to some of the phrases that have been used. The noble Lord, Lord Vinson, who is in his place, said that part of the support for a ban came through social resentment. Not from me. I do not resent the lifestyle of anyone in the House. I do not have a scrap of resentment of that kind. Other noble Lords have said that this was "class prejudice". I do not know where they get this from. Which class is prejudiced against the other? One of the fallacies of the debate lies in the attempt to turn it into a town versus country argument. That is a nonsense.
We should reflect on the picture in the other place last night, where a majority of what are recognised as rural seats are represented by Labour MPs. Those MPs stood up to be counted, as they did at the previous election. They not only put their votes on the line but their livelihoods on the line at the previous election, and they were elected. I do not say that everyone who voted examined every line of every manifesto, but they were returned, through the democracy of the general election, with a manifesto which stated that we wish to see the banning of hunting with dogs.
Let me read, very briefly, two unsolicited letters I have received—one from someone living in the country and one from someone living in a town. The first one comes from a lady who lives in north Devon. She said:
- "Here in the west country there is great opposition to a ban but in the 21st Century there should be no place for the 'sport' of hunting with dogs. It is cruel and unnecessary and is not effective as a means of control ... They also argue that jobs will be lost and hounds will have to be destroyed but there would be no need for this to happen and the Hunts could still carry on their sport by following a man made trail and not by chasing a terrified animal to an horrific death.
- I think that a Press Report of a statement by a senior politician's wife at the time of Michael Foster's Bill, that banning stag hunting would ruin her social life reflects more accurately the true feelings of people who are members of a Hunt".
I have a letter from a lady who lives in Palmers Green, north London. She writes:
- "Please may I count on your vote to 'Outlaw Hunting with dogs' on Tuesday 19th March 2002.
- This bill would cover the hunting of more than the Fox, also the Deer and Hare coursing, and other animals. No animal should be subject to this carnage. There would be a change of jobs for people, as happens in many places of employment, and help would be needed".
People are, I use the word advisedly, threatening the debate by calling in aid the possibility that there will be a mass march against proposed legislation for a ban. I simply say that they will kid themselves that they are arguing to protect their countryside; the foxhunters will know that they are using the march for their own purposes. I have marched over the past 30 years to protect the health service, to protect jobs, to protest against the closure of post offices, to argue that affordable housing should not be sold. Not a peep; not a word. Country life apparently does not exist in such mundane ways. Country life exists only when it comes to this kind of issue.
Baroness Byford: My Lords, the noble Lord will be aware that only two or three weeks ago we had a debate in the House on social housing. I was the only one in the debate to raise the issue of social housing needs in rural areas. It is untrue to suggest that we are not concerned with those kinds of issues as well.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, where was the noble Baroness when the legislation was going
through to enable deprived villages and towns access to affordable housing? The point I am making is that these matters do not stand in isolation.
Lord Vinson: My Lords, I should remind the noble Lord that on that particular evening—I think it was about 12 or even 15 years ago—he and I voted together. Thank you.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, I did not understand a word of what the noble Lord said—but I agree. He is a gentleman.
Let me remind the House of what Ann Widdecombe said in the debate in the other place last night. She said:
- "it has always been the purpose of the law to curtail liberty to do something that is believed by the democratically elected body of this House to be wrong. We eliminated cock fighting, bear baiting and badger digging . . . we curtail liberty when we believe that something is wrong".—[Official Report, Commons, 18/3/02; cols. 80-81.]
Of course there will be consequences, damage and danger. A great deal has been said about the effect on employment. I refer to the Burns report on this issue. The report estimates that somewhere between 6,000 and 8,000 full-time equivalent jobs depend on hunting, although only around 700 of these jobs, involving some 800 people, result from direct employment by the hunts. In the event of a ban, short-term job losses,
- "would be limited, and extend not much further than those employed by the hunt and some employed by those hunt followers who immediately reduced their use of horses".
I believe that there has been gross exaggeration, perhaps on both sides of the debate. We ought to recognise that the Government will have a difficult job to do. I say to my colleagues on these Benches: remember what your colleagues in the other House did last night, by an overwhelming majority. They put their livelihoods and their jobs on the line. If, as we are told by those on the other side of the Chamber, people will rise up, my colleagues went into the Lobby in that knowledge.
We should recognise that when the vote is cast tonight, the most difficult job facing anyone will be that of Alun Michael and his ministerial colleagues, who will have to implement the Government's decision after this indicative debate has provided an opportunity to resolve the matter. It will not be easy. We know that there are deep divisions. I cannot see a clear way forward at this time. I appeal to noble Lords to follow their conscience. Once we have done that and have resolved the matter by means of a vote, let us await what Alun Michael tells us before Easter and what is proposed thereafter.
The noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, is a dear friend of mine. I am always happy to say that some of my best friends are hunters. She, too, recognises that there is still an opportunity to try to reach a solution. I stand by my view that the middle way is a licence to carry on as before. You cannot compromise on cruelty. When the matter goes to a Division, I shall vote for a ban; I shall vote against the middle way; and I shall vote
against the status quo. I urge not only my colleagues but the whole House to follow me into the Lobbies tonight.4.52 p.m.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, there are several common themes running through the debate, one of which is the argument of those noble Lords who would ban hunting with hounds. It has been echoed by many speakers and goes along the lines: "We think hunting is cruel and so it must be banned. There must be a more humane way". To this, many noble Lords who favour the continuation of hunting in one form or another have replied that there is no more humane way of controlling foxes, and that hunting is in fact humane.
There seems to be widespread agreement in this House that foxes need to be controlled. There has been widespread agreement also that the alternatives of trapping and poison are much less humane than hunting. If that is so and there is common agreement, it leaves us with our old friend, shooting, as a way of controlling foxes.
For some reason those who want to ban hunting seem to think that shooting foxes will be less cruel than hunting. There has been much talk of "marksmen"—so effectively demolished by my noble friend Lord Willoughby de Broke, who reminded us of the horrors of the cull during the foot and mouth crisis, when many so-called marksmen—and one must presume that these are the same people whom those who favour a ban on hunting will use against the wretched fox—failed to hit a much larger and more stationary mark than the wily fox.
I want to make a slightly different point which I do not think has been made in quite the way that I want to make it; namely, that even for good marksman—and there are not many of those—the fox is a very difficult animal to kill cleanly. It is tough, wiry, resilient; it has very good eyesight and a keen sense of smell; it moves incredibly quickly. It can turn and run between your decision to fire and the bullet or column of shot reaching its target.
It is at this point that I have to confess that I bring long personal experience to this subject, which is usually a good thing in debates in this House; but I say "confess" because the fact that I have shot dozens of foxes in my life does not endear me to noble Lords who hunt and who on the whole do not approve of people who shoot foxes. My excuse to them is that the terrain of Rannoch Moor, where I live, is too boggy to permit riding to hounds, and we do not have a competent foot pack within striking distance; and so we do have to shoot foxes.
When I was child, we used to poison them too. Some of my early memories are of shooting desperate foxes which had been caught by a limb in a gin-trap for several hours; or of dragging their bodies from the pool of water in which the trap had been set and in which they had drowned. Thank goodness such practices have been illegal for some time.
So I have to ask noble Lords who believe that they would prefer foxes to be shot rather than hunted to think again. If a fox is shot with a shotgun containing normal shot, it has to be very close—perhaps 15 yards; which is about as close as the Minister is, if I could have his attention. If it is that close, unlike the Minister, it is almost certainly moving extremely quickly and therefore becomes an even more difficult target. I admit that if buckshot is used, a fox can be killed somewhat further away, but it is still difficult to kill instantly. Most foxes are shot when people are shooting other things—rabbits or pheasants—so the shot is small and the range has to be extremely close. Of the foxes I have seen shot with a shotgun, nearly all have needed a second barrel—and even then the wretched animal is often finished off by a dog.
The noble Lord, Lord Burns, in his excellent report, preferred shooting by rifle: specifically, lamping at night. But that is not safe either. I am privileged to have one of the best rifle shots, or marksmen, working for me in Scotland. Every winter, he shoots 200 female deer, most of them in the top of the neck. The larder records, the records of the carcasses, are available for noble Lords to inspect, and indeed he has won the prize for being the best shot among stalkers in Scotland for three years in a row. So he really is a brilliant marksman. Yet even he lost a fox last winter, lamping at night. The fox was clearly hit, but we never found it. I shudder to think how it died.
I suppose that most people who oppose hunting do not hunt, but nor do they shoot. The trouble, therefore, is that they have no experience of how difficult it is to kill cleanly. It may be that many who oppose hunting are influenced by what they see in films or on television. That is not helpful to this debate. We all remember the cowboys in western films who had only to lift their rifle, squint briefly down the barrel and fire, and the bad man dropped dead several hundred yards away. In most violent films nowadays—and that seems to be a good many films—people are shot dead with an ease which never ceases to amaze me. It is really not like that in real life, and it really will not be like that for the many thousands of foxes which at the moment are hunted to a swift and certain death by hounds, but which opponents of fox hunting would rather submit to a death by shooting.
So before noble Lords go down the road of believing that shooting will provide a comparatively and acceptably painless alternative death, I humbly submit that they should ask themselves one question—perhaps among many. That question is: have they ever shot a fox? Have they ever even seen a fox shot? If they have not, I suggest to them as gently as I can that they should think again before causing such pain to be inflicted upon thousands of innocent animals.
5 p.m.
Lord Walton of Detchant: My Lords, my contribution to this lengthy, often emotional, but nevertheless outstanding debate will be brief. Like the noble Lord, Lord Rees-Mogg, who wrote an excellent
article in The Times yesterday, I have never hunted. The last time I was on a horse was in Egypt while serving in the Army just after the war. I was bodily lifted into the air by a series of dragomen and deposited on the back of a poor animal in order to visit the Pyramids. The dragoman who was my guide said, "My horse very good horse, sir. He called Charlie Chaplin". Charlie Chaplin was a little slow, so I gave Charlie Chaplin a slight tap on the rump. "Oh Mister, you no hit Charlie Chaplin. He pregnant". My last equestrian experience before that had been as a small boy in a mining village in County Durham when some of my schoolmates and I used to ride the pit ponies bareback when they were released from the pit.I must declare an interest. My son is the chairman of the Lothian and Borders branch of the Scottish National Farmers Union and his wife is a keen hunter, as is their son. They are deeply distressed by the effects of the recent Scottish ban on hunting. I have studied that legislation and in my opinion it is one of the most deeply flawed measures to have been enacted by any legislative assembly. It has major defects. It is not clear to me whether the members of the Berwickshire hunt would be acting illegally if they were to pursue foxes over the nearby border into Northumberland and whether, vice versa, a Northumbrian hunt would be acting illegally if it pursued a fox over the border into Scotland. No doubt those matters will be clarified in the months to come.
I have heard much today about the importance of continuing with the licensing of hunting under the middle way. The Burns report was clear. There is no doubt that it came to the conclusion that hunting with hounds is not cruel. Secondly, as many noble Lords have said—and I do not propose to labour the point—there is clear evidence that if a ban were enacted it would drive an increasingly vital wedge between the town and the countryside. At this moment, the countryside is suffering from the after-effects of BSE—I speak with authority, having been a member of the Southwood working party on BSE—and from the devastating effects of foot and mouth disease on the rural economy. As the Burns report made clear, if a ban is enacted, the effects on the rural economy will be extraordinarily intense.
What would be the effect if a ban were enacted by law? How could the provision be policed when the police have many more things to do? They need to deal with urban street crime rather than those who are following what in the past has been a legal pursuit.
I accept that a few of those who have spoken today hold a sincere opinion that hunting is cruel and should be banned. I venture to dissent from that view. It is almost 13 years since I had the privilege of becoming a life Peer in your Lordships' House. Many noble Lords today have spoken about the ultimate authority of the other place, the fact that the elected Chamber will and must have the ultimate say on matters of this nature and the fact that the executive has a powerful voice. I wholly accept that and I do not in any sense deny the strength of the democratic principle. However, I can think of innumerable occasions over the past 13 years when Bills coming from the other place have been
extensively and very properly amended by this House. On many occasions, this House has invited the other place to think again.When I have talked to people about my experience in your Lordships' House, I have said repeatedly that one of its great strengths is that there is virtually no topic on which there is not an expert present. This is a House with an enormous repository of experience, authority and expertise in a wide range of different activities.
Many years ago, the great English poet, William Cowper, wrote:
- "Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one,
5.7 p.m.
Lord King of Bridgwater: My Lords, yesterday's debate on this subject in another place started exceptionally late, because a very important Statement on a most important development in the deployment of troops in Afghanistan took precedence. Nothing could bring home more clearly the fact that in the world and country in which we live, there are issues facing the Government and Parliament of far greater seriousness than the issue that we are debating today.
When the debate in another place started, the Minister said that he would make a Statement at the completion of the two debates. I was pleased to hear the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, say that careful consideration would be given to the contributions made in this House and in another place before the decision was taken.
In an outstanding speech, the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, was concerned as to whether the decision has already been taken. Those who have looked at yesterday's Hansard will have seen that Mr Alun Michael has promised to make a Statement on the Government's decisions before next Monday. If that is truly the situation, and knowing the processes of government, I hardly imagine the he is going to be allowed to go into a padded cell with two copies of Hansard and quietly make up his own mind. I imagine that there will be some consultation with colleagues. If he has given a pledge that by not later than Monday he will be making an announcement of the Government's decision, some of us will be suspicious that the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, is indeed right and that in a sense the decision has been taken. I hope that that is
not true. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, is not in his place at the moment. I understand that he will be responding to the debate. I shall be grateful if his colleagues ensure that he responds to that point.I come with certain credentials to speak in this debate. I took part in 17 debates on hunting in the past 22 years in another place. In that time I had the honour to represent a constituency that has been frequently mentioned during the course of this debate because it encompasses a significant part of the Exmoor National Park. It encompasses two packs of staghounds and five packs of foxhounds. It also encompasses a significant amount of the town and country which has been referred to today. While the noble Lord, Lord Graham, can refer to one letter that he has received for one side and one on the other, I cannot think how many letters I have had over 30 years from people in my rural constituency. Some are passionately opposed to hunting and a considerable number believe that it is their right and freedom to follow a pursuit of their choice.
What I do know from my experiences in these debates is that it has been a dialogue of the deaf. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Graham. He reminded me of what debates in the House of Commons used to be like. He said, "I know nothing about this subject. I approach these things in an entirely emotional way". He then proceeded to lecture the House with various details that he had picked up from various people. I know the noble Lord well and he knows the spirit in which I say this.
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