| Hunting Bill
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Mr. Tony Banks (West Ham): Vice-president, actually. Mr. Gray: The hon. Gentleman says that he is vice-president. I am so sorry. He might know a little more about deer if he were president; however, he is only vice-president, and that explains his ignorance of the subject. The fact is that a deer eats three times as much as a sheep. [Interruption.] I think that the hon. Member for West Ham wants to intervene.
10.15 amThe Chairman: Order. I have tried to guide the Committee away from interventions—particularly sedentary ones—in which words such as the one that Column Number: 929 I think I just heard are used. We should refrain from that.Mr. Gray: On a point of order, Mr. Stevenson. Am I right in thinking that the words ''Piss off cretin'', which the hon. Member for West Ham used, are unparliamentary? The Chairman: I am sure that those words, if used, would be unparliamentary. I did not hear them, personally, but I assure the hon. Gentleman that if I did, I would take firm action. Mr. Gray: Further to that point of order, Mr. Stevenson. I take great personal offence at being described, while making a serious speech on deer hunting, as a cretin by the hon. Member for West Ham. I heard him and it would be reasonable of him to apologise. The Chairman: I try my best to listen carefully to every contribution. I honestly did not hear those words. If I had heard them, I would have taken the necessary firm action. Can we please have less pickiness from Members when other hon. Members are making contributions? Mr. Gray: I am most grateful to you, Mr. Stevenson. We are talking about something very serious: the pest element of red deer on Exmoor. The truth is that deer eat three times as much grass as sheep—a deer eats the equivalent of three sheep—and that is a huge problem. On Exmoor, we are talking largely about livestock farming; there is relatively little arable farming. The fact that a deer eats three times as much as a sheep is of great significance. One can often see as many as 100 deer in a field at any one moment, which is equivalent to 300 sheep. There is great depredation of the forage for cows and sheep. Farmers are legally entitled to kill deer with a shotgun or rifle, both in and out of season, if they are doing damage. However, the collective interest in the deer herd, which hunting fosters, means that farmers tend to refrain from shooting large stags in particular, which would otherwise have the most value for venison and trophies. They leave the large stags alone because the farmers support the hunt and want it to hunt them later in the season. To keep numbers stable, approximately 20 per cent. of the population must be culled each year. That figure is far in excess of natural mortality. Hunting with hounds also distributes the deer and moves local deer populations away from the areas where they are causing unacceptable damage. There is no question but that that happens—a utility acknowledged by the Minister. The forced movement of deer discourages inbreeding and the spread of disease among the herd. The hunt carries out those extremely important utilities. In addition, the hunt provides an efficient service by locating and culling deer that have been wounded in road accidents. That happens all the time. The hunt operates a 24-hour call-out service and if there is a road accident, it goes out and dispatches the injured deer. Deer sometimes get entangled in wire or fencing Column Number: 930 and often are injured as a result of inaccurate shooting. The three packs deal with some 80 deer casualties each year. In some years, that is almost as many deer as they hunt.Gregory Barker (Bexhill and Battle): As a result of his dialogue with the Minister, does my hon. Friend have any idea who would perform those important animal welfare functions in the event of a ban? Mr. Gray: To do the Minister justice, he has talked about whether there should be a deer management society of one sort or another and about alternative means of pest management and dealing with injured deer. If hunting with dogs is banned, he and the Under-Secretary will doubtless try to tackle that very problem. So far, however, the right hon. Gentleman has not done so. It is at least theoretically possible that the Bill could become law by this summer and that there would be no more stag hunting, although I hope that that will not be the case, yet no alternative deer-management or casualty-management procedure has been put in place. Mr. Swire: Does my hon. Friend share my belief that if the driving force behind the Bill were the welfare of animals, the Minister, his officials and all those who have been lobbying him for a complete ban on stag hunting, would by now have enacted legislation that would mean that deer herds were looked after in the event of a ban on stag hunting? Mr. Gray: My hon. Friend is right, but I am keen to be as generous as I can to the Minister and I hope that he will take action and that his officials are, at this very moment, considering alternatives. My experience of the civil service machine is that such problems tend to be considered. I hope that officials are working on precisely the problem that my hon. Friend describes. When the Minister replies, perhaps he will let us know how he intends to replace the casualty-management service that is carried out by the hunts on Exmoor and the Quantocks. I have my doubts, as we say in Scotland, but let us hope that the Minister is ready to spell out precisely what will be done. That is not a major part of our attack on the Government's proposals. If we said that this Government are awful and that they are going to allow deer to suffer in the way that my hon. Friend describes, it would be easy for them to demonstrate that that is not the case. That should not be our main attack on them; the main attack is on the fundamental illogicality of removing deer hunting and hare coursing from clause 8. We are easily able to prove the utility of hunting deer on Exmoor with dogs. They are pests and I have demonstrated a number of different ways in which there is utility in using dogs to hunt them, even under the narrow definitions of utility as it now appears in the Bill. I can do no better than quote the Minister. On Second Reading on 16 December, he said:
This is an interesting admission from the Minister. He went on: Column Number: 931
In the other place, his colleague Lord Whitty said:
Both the Minister and his noble Friend in the other place said that it is possible that there is utility in the use of dogs in controlling deer on Exmoor and in Devon and Somerset, but there are less cruel ways of doing this. Both these statements imply an acceptance that there may be utility, but that the incontrovertible evidence that he describes relates to cruelty. He and his noble Friend both admit that there is definitely utility in the use of dogs for the control of deer on Exmoor, even under the narrow definition as amended in the Bill. To return to our registrar, who is considering the reply of the Devon and Somerset stag hounds. The Minister said that there is incontrovertible evidence why they should be banned, and the registrar wants to know what it is. It is clear that there is utility and that the Devon and Somerset stag hounds would pass the utility test even as he has redefined it in the Bill. If we take his letter of April 10 at its face value, using hounds would certainly pass the wider definition of utility. Dr. Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test): I understand that the total number of deer that are culled by the hunt on the utility argument is some 15 per cent of the total required. I also understand that the Burns report observes that the pattern of deer herds suggests that when they are hunted the dispersal of herds is slight and temporary. Can the hon. Gentleman explain how those two points fit in with the notion of utility that he is pursuing? Mr. Gray: The hon. Gentleman asked two extremely good questions. On his first question, hunting is a selective cull. The harbourer selects the stag or the hind that is to be killed on the principle that its death will improve the herd. He selects the older and weaker deer, the ones with less good antlers, and so forth. Stalking is by definition far less selective, although the stalkers try to make it selective. I have experience of stalking in the highlands of Scotland. It is extremely unlikely that one will be all that selective, as the likelihood of getting a good clean shot at a stag is reasonably remote, especially if one is not a particularly good stalker. I was always getting into trouble for banging things against stones and scaring the deer. One does not get that many clean shots and the likelihood of being extremely selective by choosing a stag from the herd the day before and deciding to take it out is frankly remote.
10.30 amThe hon. Gentleman made a second point about dispersal. As I said, Lord Burns talks in favour of Column Number: 932 dispersal, but was concerned about the notion of fathers breeding with their daughters. An important aspect of dispersal is spreading the deer population across the moor, and seeking by that means—
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| ©Parliamentary copyright 2003 | Prepared 11 February 2003 |
