|
Mr. Hall: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that information. Is he saying that if I do not press the amendment, the information that I am asking for will be on the register? Does that mean that every member of the group will be listed?
Alun Michael: Yes, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. I hope that I can satisfy him by making explicit today the way in which the system will operate. It is necessary for the names to be made public so that members of the public can tell whether someone that they see hunting is permitted to do so, but there is no equivalent enforcement need for addresses to be made public. The Bill provides the clarity that my hon. Friend seeks and also the protection that the hon. Member for North Wiltshire seeks.
Mr. Gray: Will the Minister briefly address the definition of those who hunt? There is an important distinction, in the context of the amendment of the hon. Member for Weaver Vale. Are we requiring the names and addresses of the people who control the dogs to be registered? Or will the register list every person who attends a hunt, of which there may be many hundreds?
Alun Michael: We are talking about those who are registered to hunt. If they hunt but are not registered, they commit an offence. The hon. Gentleman is returning to the discussion that he tried to raise yesterday.
Mr. Gray: No, I am seeking clarification on extremely important points. What is the definition of the word ''hunt''? Who needs to be registered? Is it simply the people who are in control of the dogs? Or is it the field? That is to say, the people who are many fields away and have no connection with the dogs, but merely observe the hunt from the road, the wayside or on a horse in a field. Are we talking about the people who control the dogs, or the followers as well?
Mr. Luff: May I help the Minister? As I understand it, the group registration refers to those in control of the dogs, specifying the numbers of people involved. Those people do not have to be listed in the register. I hope that that is the correct interpretation.
10.15 am
Alun Michael: The hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire is pointing in the right direction. It is clear that unregistered people can hunt if somebody who is registered supervises them. On the question of whether hunting is defined in the Bill, the matter got slightly complicated the other day because the hon. Member for North Wiltshire sought to use a form of words that is not in the Bill in order to define hunting. I was at pains to resist that—I think that he thought that I was trying not to answer his question, but I was simply trying to ensure that I did not mislead the Committee by using definitions of hunting that differ
Column Number: 641
from the definition in the Bill. I hope that that clarifies the matter.
Mr. Luff: I am grateful for that satisfactory clarification.
The Minister has assured us that the register will have to include names and has said that it will not have to include addresses, but I do not think that he has given the Committee a cast-iron guarantee that addresses will not be made public. If I misheard or misinterpreted him, I am sorry. I am genuinely trying to tease out the matter, because there is a real worry. Some people can be very violent and unpleasant, so addresses are a big issue. Has the Minister said that the public register will not include addresses? Has he ruled that out?
Alun Michael: The part of the Bill that deals with the way in which the register will be composed is relevant. Clause 23(2) provides that the Secretary of State may by regulation make clear what information has to be on the register and what information has to be made public. My hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale sought to make it clear that names and addresses would be on the register, not to ensure that they would be made public, and that is what the provisions are intended to do. I have given the Committee the assurance that we intend to have a register that is available for public inspection and that it will contain names, but not addresses. However, even though that information will not be in the publicly available record, it will still be on the register, which is what my hon. Friend's amendment was intended to achieve. I am sorry if my replies to hon. Members on both sides of the Committee have not taken us straight to that point, which is at the heart of the issue, but that is what I have been trying to say.
Mr. Hall: In view of my right hon. Friend's comments, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 22 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 23
Inspection of the register
Mr. Hall: I beg to move amendment No. 233, in
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment No. 234, in
Amendment No. 235, in
Amendment No. 236, in
clause 23, page 9, line 14, at end insert—
'(2A) The persons are—
Column Number: 642
(a) a prescribed animal welfare body;
(b) a person seeking to inspect the register, or to obtain copies, for the purpose of enforcement of any enactment relating to animal welfare, who—
(i) is a constable, or
(ii) acts as, or on behalf of, a person wholly or mainly concerned with enforcement of such enactments.'.
Mr. Hall: Amendments Nos. 233 to 236 deal with who will not have access to the register and whether individuals or organisations should have to pay for access. The amendments are intended to ensure that the organisations prescribed under clause 11 have full access to the register and do not have to pay for that. The reasoning behind that is straightforward. Those organisations will have a duty to advise the tribunal on the fairness or unfairness of any application to be registered under the Bill. If they do not have access to the register, they will not be able to carry out that duty properly. If an organised hunt applies to renew its registration, the prescribed organisations will be able to see what has happened on the ground and compare that with the information in the register to see whether the hunt has been compliant. That is pretty straightforward. The information that should be in the register and published is which species are allowed to be hunted, in which areas, and by whom. The prescribed organisation should have access to that information.
The second group or individual that I mention in amendment No. 236 is the police. As the constabulary will be responsible for enforcing the Bill, any police officer involved must have full and free access to the register. That, too, is straightforward.
The third category comprises any individual or body already involved in animal welfare legislation enforcement. I give as an example the RSPCA. It may not ask to become a prescribed organisation, but it will still have a proper function to carry out in enforcing animal welfare legislation. It should therefore have full access to the register.
Some people will be worried that access to the register by a prescribed organisation or, in my example, an individual working for the RSPCA creates a risk that the information on the register will be misused, but that concern does not stand detailed examination. I expect the Secretary of State in prescribing organisations to state that they are bona fide, recognised organisations that will follow the requirements of the Bill to the letter and not misuse the information. If they are found guilty of misusing it, they should be taken off the list of prescribed animal welfare organisations.
Gregory Barker: The hon. Gentleman has partly answered the question that I was about to ask. Is that the only measure that should be taken against someone who leaks such confidential information?
Mr. Hall: Absolutely not. I would expect the full panoply of the law to be used against anybody who misuses that information and I would expect criminal prosecutions to follow.
Mr. Gray: Having been mildly reassured by the Minister's answer in respect of the last group of amendments, that confidential information such as the
Column Number: 643
addresses of those who are registered and the names of supervised followers would not made be made public, I have now become extremely concerned about this group of amendments, for two reasons.
First, as we discovered during our discussions last week, the Minister has gone to great lengths to avoid giving any assurances about who the recognised animal welfare groups will be. I pressed him hard on the matter. I pressed him to rule out certain campaigning organisations such as the League Against Cruel Sports, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, the Hunt Saboteurs Association and the Countryside Alliance, but he went to great lengths to say that he would not rule anybody in or anybody out.
It is therefore perfectly possible that, for example, the Hunt Saboteurs Association, which I believe to be close to being an illegal organisation if not actually proscribed, could by some quirk—under a future Secretary of State—become a recognised animal welfare organisation. If the amendments were allowed, it could by that means gain access to the private addresses of people whose activities it hates. We must remember that by that time those activities will have been registered and will be allowed under the Bill. Nevertheless, certain organisations could take it into their heads to believe that the activities were in some way disgraceful and hateful.
We know of some of the activities that the Hunt Saboteurs Association has carried out. Huntingdon Life Sciences, for example, has suffered from its activities, as have a number of hunts, which have been attacked by such organisations quite disgracefully. I shall not bore the Committee with examples, but there are plenty around. The activities of those people are unspeakable—and illegal.
Our concern is that if the amendments, which may be intended sensibly, are accepted, sensitive and delicate information might be given—unintentionally—not to legitimate animal welfare organisations that might wish to write to the applicant, which would be a sensible and legitimate thing to do, but, either by such organisations or at second hand, to organisations whose intention was not to do anything worthwhile, sensible and legal under the Bill, but was to carry out illegal acts against those who have been registered.
The Minister should therefore tell us who he believes the prescribed animal welfare groups should be. If he can reassure us by saying that they are to be the Oxford university zoologists, or veterinary surgeons, or other legitimate organisations, we might be content for some addresses in certain circumstances to be released to them. However, given that, after debating the subject at length last week, we still have no idea at all who the recognised animal welfare bodies will be, it strikes us as entirely perverse to wish to release such sensitive and delicate information to them.
The Minister might be able to reassure me on that point when he responds, and I look forward to his answer. However, given the comments of the hon. Member for Weaver Vale in moving the amendments,
Column Number: 644
we face an extremely worrying development, because a perfectly legitimate activity under the Bill might be disrupted by the hooligans who work for some of the organisations that have been mentioned. Unless the Minister can reassure us, I hope that many hon. Members on both sides of the Committee will resist the amendments.
|
