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Hunting Bill
3.14 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Whitty): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
For the convenience of debate, I shall also speak to the Motion to consider the suggested amendment commended to us by the House of Commons, which would delay the implementation of most parts of this Bill until July 2006. I shall move that Motion formally at the end of the proceedings. The Motion enables the House to consider and debate the House of Commons' suggestion but in no sense to decide on the substance of the amendment today; it is tabled for convenience so that we can deal with both matters in parallel through all subsequent stages of the Bill. I shall comment further on the significance of the amendment towards the end of my remarks.
The House will be pretty familiar with the content of this Bill. Indeed, it is exactly the same Bill as the one which the House of Commons sent to this House last year. I may be being presumptuous, but I rather fear that the House will also be only too familiar with the arguments surrounding this Bill—although I am sure that the House looks forward to hearing the 50–plus speakers who will reiterate those arguments today. But I begin with a few preliminary points from me.
Hunting has been a matter on which free votes have been given by all parties in both Houses—and that includes Ministers. For the record, I therefore have to state my own position, which is not necessarily the position of all my colleagues. Your Lordships already know that I, personally, have consistently voted for a ban on hunting with dogs. That remains my opinion, but I shall park it, as it is not my own position that is important today.
I am here simply to facilitate—and hopefully to some extent to guide—your Lordships' consideration of a Bill which has been sent to us for a second time on a free vote by the House of Commons. That vote represents the view of the overwhelming majority of the Members of the House of Commons and includes
Members of all political parties. Indeed, this is a Bill the Principle of which has now been voted on—depending on how one does the arithmetic—at least seven times by the House of Commons, and every time with a very substantial majority. We could therefore, in consideration of this Bill, if this House maintains its past position, come to an issue that is beyond hunting and might bring us to a conflict between the two Houses. That has been much trailed in the media and by the comments of the various protagonists. But we are not at that point today, and we need not be at that point even at the end of our proceedings, provided that this House now takes due note of the oft-expressed opinions of the elected Chamber.Opinions about hunting are widely diverse, both in this House and outside, but I owe it to the House to explain the role of the Government in this matter. Put briefly, the Government are meeting their manifesto commitment to enable Parliament to resolve this long-outstanding issue. The Labour Party in its last two manifestos, on which it was elected with an overwhelming majority, stated its intention to allow a free vote in Parliament to resolve the issue. Here we are nearly eight years later, and the issue remains unresolved. So much for those noble Lords who sometimes argue that we are attempting to rush this through.
The role of the Government has been to seek as much common ground as possible on both evidence and conclusions. In 2002, my right honourable friend Alun Michael invited evidence from all parties. Regrettably, most of the responses at the time gave an absolute position—some 8,000 for and 8,000 against, roughly speaking. Given that polarisation of views, we then went on, with the agreement of the main lobbying organisations in this area—the Campaign for the Protection of Hunted Animals, the Middle Way Group and the Countryside Alliance—to agree the key topics for further debate and on the experts to be invited. My right honourable friend held several hearings in Portcullis House to hear the evidence and to cross-examine the witnesses. The transcripts of the hearings are already in the public domain and in the Library of this House. However, the only conclusion that one can draw from them is that each of the participants emerged to claim that all the evidence supported the view that they held rather than that of the opposition, and no consensus emerged.
The Government, however, continued to seek a compromise. When my right honourable friend Alun Michael originally introduced a Bill in the House of Commons, it included provisions that would have banned hunting with dogs, but with the important exception where it demonstrably passed two tests: utility and least suffering. These were stiff tests, enforceable through a system of registration and tribunals; but they would have given the opportunity for some hunting to continue where it could be shown to be necessary for pest control in a particular area, in particular circumstances, and that it was the method of pest control that would in those circumstances cause
the least suffering. That was a suggested way of striking the balance to deal with both animal welfare and land management considerations.As the House knows, my right honourable friend's proposals failed to find support from either the contending pro and anti-hunting organisations or on either side in the House of Commons. The Bill's opponents, including those in this House, consistently claimed that the registration system itself would effectively have banned all hunting. In other words, they were not willing for their claim that hunting was necessary for pest control purposes to be put to the test. In contrast, the pro-ban organisations and the majority of MPs felt there was a risk that the Bill in that form would permit hunting when it was not justified, and that there were no circumstances—apart from those which still exist in Schedule 1 of the present Bill—in which hunting with dogs would cause less suffering than any of the available alternative methods of pest control. The House of Commons therefore voted for a ban as in this present Bill.
When that Bill came before your Lordships, the House appeared to take an entirely opposite view. A large number of the amendments tabled to the Bill purported to reinstate the registration system which the Government had originally proposed, but in practice the amendments made changes from the original scheme and, along with other amendments supported often by the same Members of your Lordships' House, would have rendered the Bill totally toothless. They would have made the main offence impossible to prove; they would have introduced a strong bias in favour of permitting hunting to continue and they would have completely removed all controls over hare-coursing events.
Other amendments likely to have been carried—had your Lordships managed to conclude their consideration of the Bill—included the removal of the outright ban on stag hunting and the redefinition of the test of utility to include purposes so imprecise that they would have covered hunting essentially for recreation; that is, they would have allowed the causing of suffering for fun. That would not have been acceptable to the House of Commons and meant that this House was taking a virtually opposite view to that of the elected Chamber.
Despite that I was rather disappointed when this House decided to adjourn the Committee stage late last year and not agree to additional time. I still fail to understand why the House could not have completed its consideration of this relatively short and straightforward Bill in the time available, or which we were prepared to make available. However, it was already clear—I do not think that there is much dispute about that—that this House would have returned a Bill to the Commons which would have imposed no effective controls over hunting. Since the House of Commons had already rejected the Government's original proposals for registered hunting and since the majority of MPs would strike the balance of consideration very differently from the way it was struck in this House, there was no prospect whatever of the Commons agreeing what was effectively the more extreme pro-hunting view expressed in this
House's amendments. The message that your Lordships' debates sent to the Commons was therefore confrontational.When there is a difference between the two Houses and attempts at compromise have failed, the elected House must prevail. That is not only the view of the Labour Party, of the Government and of the House of Commons but also, I venture to suggest, of the British public, of the constitution, of the Parliament Acts and, indeed, of the interests of democracy itself.
In these circumstances the Government have reintroduced this Bill in the current Session because that is clearly what the Members of the House of Commons voted for—70 per cent of Members taking part in the vote supported the so-called "Banks" amendment to ban fox hunting; that is, 55 per cent of the total number of MPs. Similar votes have been recorded again and again over the past few years.
There can, frankly, be no doubt about the will of the House of Commons on this matter and that that will reflects public opinion, including the majority in rural areas as well as in urban areas.
I come to some key procedural issues. What happens if the two Houses continue to disagree? Of course, this House is fully entitled to make any amendments that it considers improvements to this Bill. Indeed, the Government throughout have sought a situation where both Houses could agree. The Government and the House of Commons will need to reflect on any such amendments which this House returns to the other place. Whether the Government could make a recommendation on any such amendment depends entirely on what the totality of amendments that this House adopts amounts to. I remind your Lordships that since the Bill is subject to free voting there is absolutely no guarantee that any recommendation that the Government made would be carried in another place or, indeed, this place.
But—this is a big "but"—this House must recognise when proposing amendments in Committee that the House of Commons has now several times called for a ban; and that by a very substantial majority it preferred a ban to a registration system. During the debate in the House of Commons my right honourable friend Alun Michael called on this House to engage seriously with the Bill. I would like to reinforce that plea and to ask all Peers therefore to take proper note of the very clearly expressed views of the House of Commons.
Your Lordships need to reflect that we are now in the last chance saloon. The ball is in the court of those in this House who have supported hunting in its present form to offer a way forward or to accept the Bill as it now stands, if we are not to provoke the use of the Parliament Acts. Amendments that go outside that recognition will almost certainly lead to a deadlock between the Houses. Of course, a deadlock between the two Houses is not the end of the world. It does not in any sense mean that we enter a constitutional crisis, as some have alleged. Disagreements between the Houses that cannot be resolved are clearly covered by the Parliament Acts.
The Parliament Acts embody the vital constitutional principle that in our bicameral parliamentary system the will of the elected Chamber must, ultimately, prevail. This principle applies to all primary legislation with the sole exception of Bills to prolong the life of a Parliament. It is right that the House of Commons should exercise its power with discretion, just as it is right that this House should exercise its delaying and amending powers with discretion. In practice both Houses have normally acted with discretion. Either the Government and the House of Commons, or more usually this House, have backed off or compromised, which is why six Acts of Parliament only have been passed under the Parliament Acts procedure in the past 93 years. However, those Acts are there to ensure that the will of the House of Commons prevails in the rare instances when there is a confrontation.
The events of last year, including, as I have said, your Lordships' debates and amendments, made clear that the difference between the two Houses on the Hunting Bill is profound, or was profound, and that there are those in both Houses who, frankly, would like a confrontation. That is exactly the kind of situation for which the Parliament Acts were written and for which they provide—if no way can be found between the two Houses to agree on this Bill.
I reiterate that the Government's clear preference would have been for the two Houses to agree on this Bill. One area of agreement could, for example, concern the timing of the Bill's coming into force. The House of Commons has by resolution suggested that your Lordships should amend the Bill so that the provisions relating to hunting come into force on 31 July 2006. The provisions relating to hare coursing could come into force, as provided in the Bill as it stands, three months after Royal Assent. The suggested amendments relating to—
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