Hunting Hearings - Minutes of Proceedings
DEPARTMENT FOR ENVIRONMENT, FOOD AND RURAL AFFAIRS
MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS
at a
PUBLIC HEARING
on
HUNTING WITH DOGS
held in the
Boothroyd Room, Portcullis House, Westminster, SW1
on
Monday 9 September 2002
SESSION A
DAY 1
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Rt Hon Alun Michael, MP, in the Chair
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(From the Shorthand Notes of:
W B GURNEY & SONS LLP
Westminster House
7 Millbank
London, SW1P 3JA)
In attendance:
MR DOUGLAS BATCHELOR, Campaign for the Protection of Hunted Animals.
MS PHYLLIS CAMPBELL-MC-RAE, Campaign for the Protection of Hunted Animals.
DR ARTHUR LINDLEY, Campaign for the Protection of Hunted Animals.
MR JOHN ROLLS, Campaign for the Protection of Hunted Animals.
BARONESS GOLDING, Middle Way Group.
MR PETER LUFF, MP, Middle Way Group.
MR LEMBIT OPIK, MP, Middle Way Group.
MR SIMON HART, Countryside Alliance.
MR JOHN JACKSON, Countryside Alliance.
MR RICHARD LISSACK, QC, Countryside Alliance.
MR CHRISTOPHER BRAUN, Defra.
MR NIGEL LEFTON, Legal Directorate, Defra.
DR PETER ROBERTSON, Defra.
MR ANDREW SHERROTT, Stewardship Advisor, Defra.
ANNA WALKER, Defra.
THE CHAIRMAN: I am delighted to be able to welcome everybody here this morning. Can I say two things before we start on the question of the process. Firstly, the hearings are being broadcast live via the webcast on www.ukonline.co.uk. Secondly, obviously information about the hearing's process more widely is available on www.defra.gov.uk.
There is one other thing I think people would like to know is that on Wednesday, which is the anniversary of the tragic events in New York, we will be starting very promptly in the afternoon session in order for there to be a few moments silence in commemoration of those events. I am sure everyone would wish to participate in that. Can I ask you to be particularly prompt in returning after lunch on Wednesday. I mention that now, but I will remind people on Wednesday, but that would be an appropriate preparation.
As I say, I am delighted to welcome everybody here for the hearing of evidence in relation to hunting with dogs. My name is Alun Michael, I am the minister for rural affairs. My role in this whole process is to help to enable Parliament to reach a conclusion on the contentious issue of hunting with dogs. The aim is to develop legislation which will be reversed and stand the test of time.
Before we go any further can we please deal with one issue, that is to switch off any mobiles phones or pagers. I am going to lead by example by checking mine because I do not want to repeat the embarrassment of somebody who at the concert in St David's Hall in Cardiff on Saturday had their mobile phone go off just as they started the cadenza of the Schumann concerto. We simply do not want to be interrupted in any way by the singing of electronic gadgets.
The purpose of the hearings this week is to hear evidence on the principles of preventing cruelty while recognising utility and how those principles can be applied in practice and legislation. The hearings form part of the process which I announced in the House of Commons on 21 March.
Views on this issue remain deeply held and strongly polarised. The test of a democracy is the extent to which mature debate is possible on the most controversial issues of the day. These hearings provide the opportunity to have an open and frank debate on the evidence, exploring possible areas of common ground and exploring the differences and exploring any issues not resolved by Lord Burns' Committee.
The panel on my right comprises of representatives of three organisations, themselves representative of a much larger number of organisations, the Campaign for the Protection of Hunted Animals, the Countryside Alliances Campaign for Hunting and the Middle Way Group.
I want to make it absolutely clear from the beginning that none of those three groups have in any way compromised their views by joining in this process, nor am I seeking a compromise to stitch together some sort of deal. I am seeking evidence on the basis of the principles which I spelt out on 21 March in my statement to the House of Commons. I wish to bring forward proposals for legislation which will be soundly based and stand the test of time. That is my responsibility, and I want to get it right in order to enable Parliament to reach a conclusion on the issue.
During the sessions over the next three days we will hear evidence from a number of expert witnesses and each will make a short representation and then respond to questions from the panel. Each witness has produced a paper, which will be available outside the door at the end of the relevant sessions.
I want to conduct these hearings on the evidence in as open and as transparent a way as possible, that is why they are being broadcast live on the internet, they will be shown on the Parliamentary Channel and videos of the proceedings will be available after the event and will be placed in the library of each House. Transcripts of the session will be available and will be published on the Defra website.
I also ask that we observe a Parliamentary convention, which is to listen with respect to what is said without interruptions or loud comments. Some of you may not recognise that convention observed during Prime Minister's questions but I promise you that most of the time parliamentarians behave themselves, and I want the parliamentarians confirmation that we will be on our best behaviour during these hearings.
I would encourage members of the public to let me have any comments they wish to on the hearings. There is a comment sheet provided in your information pack or you can write to me separately if you prefer. I will read the comments after the hearings have concluded.
Finally, this is a hearing not a contest. We are not here to listen and for one side to win, we are not here to act as inquisitors. We want to engender discussion to which our witnesses will help us to be evidence based in testing the application of clear principles. I hope that is helpful as an introduction and to set the context.
I am now pleased to welcome Lord Burns to the opening session of the hearing. Lord Burns chaired the Committee of Inquiry into the Hunting of Dogs in England and Wales. I have made it absolutely clear that Lord Burns Report is my starting point for this whole process. Similarly the purpose of these hearings is not to reopen the conclusions of the Report produced by Lord Burns' Committee but rather to build on that work by exploring any issues not resolved by the Committee or new evidence which has come to light. It is fair to say that the Burns Report has been subject to the sort of critical exegesis previously given to the Welsh non-conformist sects, explaining to each other why the Old Testament showed that they were right and the other lot were wrong. I found it more helpful to go back to the original text than the way people describe what you said. Can I now invite you to say a little about the conclusions that your Committee reached.
LORD BURNS: Thank you very much, Minister. I am very happy to give evidence to this hearing and I wish you very well with your attempts to resolve this contentious issue. I think I know as well as anyone by now just how much of a problem that is going to be.
I have to say I am not sure that I can help hugely beyond what is in the Report of the Inquiry, although I will do my best, and I have come with the best intentions of being able to help as far as I can. My involvement with the hunting Inquiry was an enormously stimulating experience and I learned a great deal. It was a very challenging experience. I should emphasise that for me it was a relatively temporary experience, because whilst many people on both sides have a continuing detailed interest in this debate my life has, to a substantial degree, moved on and I have not attempted to monitor closely the subsequent contributions to the debate, so you may find me a little bit rusty on some of this.
The second point I would like to make is that the Report is very much driven by the terms of reference that we had and I remain reluctant to go beyond that. I said at the time that I did not plan to vote in the House of Lords on the question of whether or not hunting should be banned and I have stuck to that so far. Apart from a speech in the House of Lords I have not contributed to the dozens of invitations, indeed maybe hundreds of invitations, that I have had to participate in one forum or another on this.
I would say that whether or not there are omissions in the Report the starting point in reflecting on that should probably be that it was in fact intentional and that it reflects either our interpretation of the terms of reference or the particular timetable we had and the limitations that were there on how much we could do. Similarly, I should say that where there are ambiguities it is very possible that is because there were issues that we could not resolve.
I would like to emphasise the issue of timetable when we were doing the Report, we had a very short few months in order to do that and we were not able to engage in new research. Our task was to really try and assemble the research that was there and take evidence from people about what was available. There were a number of areas where we would have been very happy to have seen further work done, but it was simply not possible in relation to the task that we were given.
My final point in terms of introduction is that today I can only speak for myself. I have not made any attempt to contact other members of the Inquiry to see if they have any further views they would like to provide. As you know, when these inquiries are over so is the committee and we go our separate ways. We do stay in touch socially to sometimes reflect on some of the experiences that we had and some of the things that have been said about our work. We are not a standing body and we make no attempt to monitor this and to attune our views as life has progressed. On that basis and with those introductory remarks I am very happy to do what I can to answer any questions that any of the groups may have.
THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. I think from the period in which I have been listening to views on all sides I am very conscious how much you achieved in that short period of time and it is a credit to you and to the committee that you did, indeed, the fact that so much is pointed to as important evidence by people on both sides of the debate. I know that people want to pose a few questions to you.
MR BATCHELOR: Thank you for the opportunity to start these proceedings. Lord Burns I would like to take you to chapter 9 of your Report, in which you said there were a number of aspects of the way in which hunting is carried out that gave rise to particular concern. My question really is, was it the view of your Committee that all of those concerns could be addressed by legislation?
LORD BURNS: We went through a number of concerns, if I remember, we went through the issue of trespass, disruption and disturbance during hunting. We talked about a bit about the openness of the whole process of hunting and whether it was appropriate to monitor it. We had some concerns about autumn/cub hunting, stocking up, the use of artificial earths and the interfering with forest flight. We also raised the possibility of a closed season for hares. They were the things we culled from the evidence we had and were put together in a series of issues that we thought whatever direction this debate went it was something which deserved attention.
What I would say is that for most of these issues they would be resolved by a ban, subject to exemptions or exceptions, so most of those are issues that relate to the conduct of hunting.
What we were arguing was not so much that they could be addressed by legislation but if there was not to a ban - and we were not taking a view on whether or not there should be a ban - then we said it was for consideration as to how it was that one might be able to take these issues forward. In some cases there was some possibility for legislation, I think we mentioned the issue of the protection of badgers, we talked about the question of a closed season as far as hares were concerned and we also mentioned the question of removing some of the exemptions from the Wild Mammal Protection Act. For the bulk of the issues we saw them as things that might be addressed either through licensing, a regulatory approach or by changing the rules of the hunt, ending in the case where there was not a ban.
There was a mixture. Some of the issues could be addressed by legislation and some of them would have to be addressed in other ways. Of course the bulk of them do not arise if there was to be a ban.
MR BATCHELOR: Thank you.
MR OPIK: Your report used the famous phrase, "seriously compromises the welfare of the animal". It also goes on to say in paragraph 6.59, "None of the legal methods of fox control is without difficulty from an animal welfare perspective. Both snaring and shooting can have serious and adverse welfare implications."
In the light of this statement did your team find any evidence that would support the view that hunting with dogs in all its manifestations was significantly and necessarily worse in terms of animal welfare than the other legal methods of control?
LORD BURNS: I do not know. I am not in a position to draw any general conclusions on this. What we did basically was to try to measure how far the different methods of control fell short of what one might think of as humane killing. As far as foxes were concerned we came to the conclusion that lamping came quite close to humane killing when it was practised in the right circumstances but we also pointed out that it was by no means available in all circumstances and in all places. We emphasised the extent to which there was were problems with snaring. We also emphasised problems there could be in terms of shootings with shotguns, on some occasions it might be humane but it also had the capacity to ruin and injure without killing. As far as deer was concerned we said that a skilled stalker probably had the edge over hunting from a welfare point of view but we also pointed out that not all people who stalk necessarily fall into that category.
We also said that in quite a lot of these cases there was really a striking lack of scientific evidence about being able to bring those issues to a conclusion. Quite a lot of work has been done on the subject of deer, and based on that argument we have a large section in the Report and we had also some research done for the Committee which looked at that.
When it comes to the issue of foxes I was particularly struck - considering the emotion that was generated by this whole debate - of how really very little science has been done, either in terms of the welfare effects of hunting or indeed of the other methods of control.
We made some observations and they were observations that were derived from the evidence we had received. We were not in a position to be decisive about it. What we tried to do was to point out where we thought there were problems and we also tried to point out the occasions where we thought that the emerging evidence did point more clearly.
This is the area that for me was the area where we could have done with really a good deal more time and where I think it would have been quite interesting to pursue some of those issues. There are no firm conclusions that I would want to come to on that other than pointing out some of the difficulties that there are in actually reaching a conclusion.
MR HART: Lord Burns, picking up on that last answer, could you expand a little bit on those areas, if any, where your Committee felt it unsafe to reach conclusions because of a lack of evidence?
LORD BURNS: This depends, I think, a lot in terms of what conclusions you are seeking to reach. I emphasise again that we were not seeking to reach a conclusion on the subject of whether or not hunting should be banned, that was not in our terms of reference, nor were we seeking to reach a conclusion on the question of whether or not hunting was cruel. Those words do not apply in our terms of reference. What we were asked to do was to look at a number of aspects of hunting. When I started this and when I took on the job the implication was that the issues that we were going to address were issues about economics and some of the social issues, because there had been a big debate about how many jobs would be at stake.
As we got the terms of reference and as we got into them what emerged was that about, it was not so much the number of jobs or the economics that were the real areas that people cared although they were gone into, but then of course we moved into some of the areas that basically these hearings are concentrating on, which was the whole issue of animal welfare which, of course, relates to the question of population management and control.
I think in some of those cases what we did was to try to take the evidence that we had received and we tried to see just how far it was possible to make any firm statements about these issues. I think it is important for us to say that what we were doing was addressing a sequence of issues that were being put to us and the terms of reference rather than addressing some of these very big questions which are now having to be addressed as one moves towards the issue of legislation. What we were trying to do was to inform the debate and not try to come to big conclusions. Therefore the phrase "unsafe conclusions" is not one that I feel terribly happy with in this context.
What is evident from the report is that in almost all of the issues we address - and this is what life is like - there are always a range of uncertainties about whatever it is that you are dealing with. There is a range of uncertainties about the implications for jobs will be, there is a range of uncertainties about what the social implications will be and there are a lot of uncertainties about some of the animal welfare implications. A lot of these issues are to do with population management and just what kind of damage is done by the various species.
I felt as we went through the process we did actually manage to begin to draw out some strands where there was probably a greater degree of agreement at the end of the day about some of the issues than there had been at the beginning. Where we may not have resolved some of the issues what we did in quite a lot of cases was to narrow the gap that there was between people on those questions.
THE CHAIRMAN: Can I just probe that point. If it was a question of narrowing the viewpoint, do you mean in terms of the sharing of information and the sharing of a belief about what problems need to be addressed?
LORD BURNS: Take the case of the economic issue of jobs, there was not agreement in the end about what that would be because, of course, the answer is unknowable because it depends on a whole range of things. I think what we did do was to narrow the areas on which the debate was taking place. When it came to the issue about what the impact would be as far as population management was concerned, the extent to which hunting played a part in population control as opposed to other methods of control, again I think we began to narrow the gap in terms of how important it was. In terms of animal welfare issues we made some progress on that but not as much, obviously, as one would have liked. In some cases we could point to there was a degree of agreement.
To me the differences in the end on this debate are about balancing the various factors, there are both uncertainties in the individual areas you are trying to look at but what a lot of the debate in the end boils down to is to how you balance and weigh the different factors, and that was not what we were in business to do. That is not what I have sought to do. Indeed I almost consciously tried to exclude myself from that final balancing process. It is not one I am afraid you would be able to exclude yourself from, Minister.
THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you for that observation, I am well aware of that.
MR BATCHELOR: It is very interesting to hear what you have said and obviously reflecting back on what was said in your Report one of the things that was particularly striking, and what your Committee did say, was that nowhere have they said that either hunting with dogs or killing with dogs was the only way of addressing a particular issue. As you have covered a lot of the questions I was going to ask in relation to research I was going to take you specifically back to chapter 9 and those issues of concern about some of the practicalities of hunting with dogs. I use the example of terrier work, where dogs chase animals underground and kill them or can kill them, not always, but they can certainly injure them. I wonder if you can give us the thoughts that were behind your reservations in paragraph 9.20 about digging-out foxes using terriers. It is on page 149, 9.20.
LORD BURNS: As we say at the beginning of that paragraph the issue of digging-out and bolting foxes it is a complex issue and it is seen rather differently in different parts of the country. We received some evidence and we looked at the whole question of welfare and I think we came to the view that there clearly was adverse welfare consequences from digging out.
On the face of it - and in one way you might have thought this was an issue that was relatively open and shut - this was a practice where the fox, and possibly even the terrier, would be subjected to quite a lot of stress. On the other hand, I think it was also put to us to that where as in some parts of the country whether or not you had digging-out may be, in a sense, a choice, something that people who were organising the hunts may wish to make a decision about, there are some parts of the country where digging out becomes, as I understand it, more or less the only way of killing foxes using dogs. There are parts of the country where I think it is something like 90 per cent of the killing - west Wales is an example - is done because the foxes will always go to ground. This was an example of something that struck me as being one which in the early stages of the debate seemed a relatively clear issue and as the debate went on it became rather more complicated. Very different practice is used in very different proportions in different parts of the country.
We came to the conclusion that it was something that needed to be addressed and looked at and I think the question needed to be asked really in the circumstances of the particular area was it really necessary to have this practice because there were some quite severe welfare implications. We did not come to the view, if I recall, and I dig back in my memory, in all circumstances that this was wrong and it was therefore an issue that should be necessarily banned, but it was one that one wanted to look at according to the area and according to the needs of the area as to how the welfare aspects balanced against the needs for control.
MR BATCHELOR: Thank you.
MR LUFF: The Minister referred in his introduction, and I do not want to labour this point, that your document was similar to a critical exegesis of various Christian sects and what you are now saying is it is not as definitive as they are all taken to be. In your last answer you talk about as you come into the complexity of the subject more and more unknowns actually emerge, and yet in your previous answer to the Minister you said you said you want to narrow the areas of controversial conditions.
LORD BURNS: On that issue, though. You cannot always narrow an issue but sometimes what you can do is explain it in a way and you can define the circumstances under which one set of conditions arise and the circumstances under which a different set of conditions arise which can all go towards narrowing the area of disagreement. I was not by any means saying this issue became simpler and simpler. There are few things in my life that as one digs into them they become simpler. Most issues that you have you cope with and they tend to become more difficult. The more you know about an issue the more difficult it becomes, and this is no exception.
MR LUFF: You do list in paragraph 9.55 the areas of further research you think are necessary, particularly in relation to fox hunting, how important do you think it is that research is conducted about a proper understanding, particularly in relation to cruelty, before legislation is introduced?
LORD BURNS: I would be surprised if the Report says that this research was not necessary.
MR LUFF: "It might benefit from being pursued..."
LORD BURNS: This is not an issue for me. I think there always comes a point in life where you can never have all of the information that you want to make a decision. Decision-making is a process which is always conducted under conditions of uncertainty and in some stages you want to narrow the uncertainty more than is currently the case and in other situations you find that you have to make a decision even though the position is uncertain.
What we were pointing to was if this debate carries on and people wish to be able to resolve it, and some of the underlying issues to a greater degree, then this was the list of things that we suggested that more work could be done on because they were the issues that from our point of view remained issues that were uncertain. I do not want to get into a position of saying resolving these issues is a precondition for making a decision about this subject, because it is getting beyond what I regard as my terms of reference. You are trying to lead me in a direction - surely not intentional - beyond where I have drawn the line as to what I want to say about this.
THE CHAIRMAN: I am tempted to say that years of select committee experience meets years of experience of the Civil Service.
MR HART: Lord Burns, what evidence, if any, did you receive about the involvement of rural communities and hunting as a part of wildlife management and conservation and the importance of it to those communities?
LORD BURNS: We received a great deal of evidence, if I remember, on this. The whole issue of wildlife management and habitat management are issues which matter a great deal to rural communities and a great deal of effort is put into them. We received some evidence that in some cases shooting had played an important part in issues of habitat management. There were also issues that were very much in people's minds when it came to management of the population of the species.
Of course there are lots of other reasons why people care about these things as well and other ways in which they do it. It was very striking to us the extent to which the rural community is heavily engaged in these issues, not surprisingly they regard them as a very important part of their life. I think it goes for the whole question of habitat management and the whole question of the management of the populations.
MR ROLLS: Lord Burns, did you believe at the time your Committee produced its Report that that Report gave sufficient information for Parliament to be able to make a decision on hunting with dogs, just to clear up any confusion round that issue?
LORD BURNS: Let me say two things about this, this is a very difficult area. The first is that given what I know about the debate on this subject I would have been astonished if everyone had said, that is the end of that, that is resolved, it is now perfectly clear, we all know which way it is that we need to go forward on this subject. Life is not like that.
If you ask me the question, do I think that having done a report contributed and made it easier for Parliament to begin to work its way towards a solution on this subject then I would hope that it has done that. Much of what I have read from the various sides of the debate encourages me to think that it has made some progress, but I have also spent a lot of hours listening to the debate and reading the debate, both in the House of Commons and in the House of Lords and there are still some pretty big gaps. There are still some very big differences in terms of the interpretation of these things and there are some very big differences in the various parts of the report which people quote. I hope that we have helped in this process, but it is by no means the last word.
MR BATCHELOR: Might it be fair to say that in your report you deliberately did not attempt to address the moral question - because it was not part of your terms of reference - but bearing in mind that Parliament will presumably legislate on some moral judgment, I think what my colleagues are saying in essence is, bearing in mind that the need to balance the morality of the decision and the information, which, as you point out, the longer you leave it the more you can gather is there not enough information for Parliament to take a decision on a moral basis?
LORD BURNS: I think when we come to the subject of morality I would not always was like to count myself out of the debate but I think on this particular one I must. That was not part of the terms of reference. I consciously stayed out of the whole question of the moral aspects of hunting. I have restricted my attention to the issues of, as far as possible, fact and analysis and tried to deal with the different components that are usually raised in the debate. As you know the debate about hunting for some people may be an issue that is simply wrong, or to somebody else this is perfectly all right. It does not usually stop there, what usually happens is that people bring into this debate a whole series of factors and the factors which they usually introduce are the ones that we were asked to look at, which to a greater or lesser degree are capable of objective verification or analysis. That is where our work was engaged.
I have now sat through, as I mentioned, a lot of hours of listening to debates in both chambers and I am as aware as anyone both of the strength of feeling about that and the fact that there are people who go, in terms of making their decision themselves, well beyond the issues that we were asked to look at. Most particularly you get issues about morality, you also get issues about freedom and liberty and what is down to personal conscience and what is down to the conscience of Parliament to decide for individuals. That is another issue that we stayed out of, and I have stayed out of. I have made no comments at all on the issues of the implications of all of this for personal freedom and what it is that should be decisions for individuals and what should be decisions for Parliament and nor have I attempted to make any contribution to the debate as to whether sporting activities using animals is morally right or not.
MR BATCHELOR: Thank you for that.
THE CHAIRMAN: I am tempted to ask the question whether you find yourself better informed as a result of listening to those debates?
LORD BURNS: I am better informed both about how people use your material of course and also about the factors that really determine people's views, which were not factors we were asked to talk about. What one finds is that although many of these factors we were asked to deal with are important in people's contributions very often you can see that a thing which has determined them to move one way or another are some of the other things I have mentioned which are not here.
BARONESS GOLDING: Lord Burns, on the question of the welfare of animals when you consider the various species, rats, rabbits, minks, et cetera did you consider at all whether banning hunting with dogs for any of the species would improve their welfare?
LORD BURNS: We tried to look through each of the types of hunting and we tried to look at each of the species and ask what were the welfare implications of hunting and what the implications might have been of not having hunting. The welfare argument is not the end of it - because as we know these hearings are also going to go into it - there are also whole issues of utility. At the margin I suppose one has to say as far as coursing was concerned the animal welfare was clear in what direction it had an adverse effect. On the other hand we also pointed out there are 250 hares killed in this process a year and there are some arguments on that.
I think in terms of stag hunting we were able to make some provisional statements there about the welfare effects of stalking - as I said in my introductory remarks - by skilled stalkmen versus hunting. The difficulty is as to whether or not that would be the only stalking that would take place or whether you would have unskilled stalking, which then changes the balance.
The most complex one is the issue of foxes, where we do not know a huge amount about the welfare implications of the hunted fox, although we were able to draw some conclusions based on some of the post-mortem evidence we had we had virtually no evidence about the welfare implications of the alternative methods of killing foxes.
BARONESS GOLDING: Did you consider minks in depth, where there is no other animal that hunts a mink?
LORD BURNS: In some ways the issue of the minks was the most straightforward of all because the population control arguments were clearly in favour of trying to eliminate minks. The alternative I would give is trapping.
There was another adverse consequence, which is pointed out in the Report, for minks hunting in terms of disturbance to rivers and old wildlife that are round. That, you know, means that although there are no other animals which - and you may be right about that - kill minks trapping is the alternative method of trying to control them.
THE CHAIRMAN: In your comments you referred to the need to balance the animal welfare consideration and the management considerations, and Baroness Golding's question was about the different species, one thing that struck me in your comments in paragraph 9.55 were that in relation to foxes you refer to the role of the disbursement of fox populations and you talk, particularly in Exmoor, about the red deer population, where the issue of dispersal has come up again and again over the last few months and yet that is not one that is commented on. Is this something that did not come out strongly in the evidence that you received or is the reason that dispersing is referred to in relation to foxes but not in relation to deer?
LORD BURNS: I cannot recall that, I am afraid. With deer, if I recall the issue, we spent much more time on the population management of deer, which is something that I am not quite sure how much further one could do by research because much of this relates to the question of how it would be managed and handled in the absence of hunting.
We received a lot of evidence which impressed me of the extent to which the fact that there is stag hunting gave the community an important interest in managing the number of deer and in the absence of hunting there was some danger that the numbers might be reduced faster that people wished because of the value of the carcass and the fact that people then suffered the problems in their own individual farms that there was no collective interest in the management of that process.
We had quite a lot of discussions about what kind of population management process would need to be put in place if hunting was stopped because of the important part that hunting played in that deer management process. That was the issue, if I recall, that took up much more of our time than the issue of dispersal. I am beginning to feel like someone whose revision work has not quite been finished when the examination took place!
THE CHAIRMAN: We all know that feeling.
MR HART: Changing tack a bit, did your Committee form the view, ban or not, as to whether the present law relating to the welfare of wild animals is in a satisfactory state?
LORD BURNS: We did not spend a huge amount of time on this but, if I recall, we did make some tentative suggestions, in particular there were some of the exemptions that are in the present legislation for hunting, I think it occurs in the wild animals and in the badger legislation. It provided exemptions for hunting we were a bit uncomfortable with. We felt that given the attention that hunting has and given the questions that are asked about this these were issues that were probably better resolved by the courts rather than by giving exemptions in the legislation because in some cases there were issue raised as to practices that were taking place and whether or not there should be a ban in order to deal with some of those issues. We felt that there was a case for a more level playing field here and hunting should not have exemptions up front and it should need to be able to make its case along with any other activity in terms of whether or not it was meeting the standards of the legislation.
MR HART: Thank you very much.
MR ROLLS: McDonald et al to the Burns Inquiry section 5.3.3 made estimates of substantial financial benefit from fox predation on rabbits. We have estimated this at about œ100 million to arable farmers, why did the Report ignore this finding?
LORD BURNS: I was not aware that we did ignore it. What we set out in the report is that the whole issue about the economic aspects of the pest control was a complex one. I think we also pointed out that people are not just wishing to reduce the number of foxes ad infinitem there was a recognition that it was a question of managing the total size of the population.
However, I think it is mentioned as one of the issues in here that does need some further work. We did not come to a strong view about all of that but what we did was to set out that this was an area where there was a good deal of debate about it and there seems to be a difference between some scientists and the views of farmers. We certainly did not consciously neglect that and indeed had we done so Professor MacDonald who sat with me throughout the final stages of writing the Report would have pointed this out to me if this had not had its due mention.
MR ROLLS: You would agree that it is an important aspect of the debate?
LORD BURNS: Yes, I think that it is. No one is saying simply that foxes are a thoroughly bad thing and that as many as possible should be eliminated.
MR ROLLS: They are the farmer's friend in many cases!
LORD BURNS: What I took from the debate, and indeed Professor MacDonald has argued about some of the benefits that come from it, was this was an issue of balance, that indeed people were very happy to see foxes at a certain level of population size but that beyond a certain level they were determined to reduce them.
Indeed it is one of the striking issues of the debate, and not one that we were able to resolve, as to just how firmly the view of the farmers is that they need to have a capacity to control numbers. Indeed they will control them. What we said quite clearly in the Report and nothing has happened subsequently to change my view about it, is that farmers will control the number of foxes by one means or another whether there is a hunting ban or there is not a hunting ban. I think we make the case in the Report that whether there is a hunting ban or not it is unlikely to change very substantially the number of foxes that die. What we are talking about is the alternative methods by which they die.
MR ROLLS: You would agree that in upland areas this damage is more perceived than actual. I refer to the paragraph 35 in the summary, page 12.
LORD BURNS: I think that is probably the case, as I have already alluded to. The views of farmers generally are firmer and are more severe than is the evidence that tends to come from science about this in relation to the ---
MR BATCHELOR: You use a lovely phrase, "the need for control is more perceived than real".
LORD BURNS: The only point I would make about it is that what I felt we had to deal with here, and I think the Committee agreed here, is when we were looking at the issue of welfare that it was important to take into account what it was that farmers were likely to do whether they misperceived this or not.
We had it in a chapter that deals with the discussion of population management and all of the conditions and uncertainties are set out there. It is a very brave person who, in my position who spent their life on the streets of conurbation, or others, turns round and tells a farmer what is good for them or not in relation to fox control. That is what we say. In a number of cases it is. I think the evidence does suggest that the problem is not as great as farmers often think of it and there is, you do see in some farmers, that the only good fox is a dead fox. Having said that everyone agrees it is a question of the right level of the population, not a question of eliminating the fox as far as the evidence I recall.
The only point I would make, and I do not want to labour this, it would given the impression, it may give too strong an impression, it is important not only to ask the question of what the impact of fox is in terms of damage to the farming community but it is also important to ask the question what do formers think about this, because they are the people who are going to determine how many fox die. They are one of the people, not the only people, and they are going to have an impact on this. An awful lot of fox die by motorcars and by accidents.
MR ROLLS: Would you agree, if possible, our starting point should be based on actual fact rather than the perception.
LORD BURNS: The question of whose starting point depends upon which question you are asking. If you are asking the question should farmers be quite so worried, then there is a debate to be had about that. If you are asking the question what are farmers likely to do in the absence of hunting, it seems to me there are another set of issues that arise about that. I am sorry if it sounds slightly Sir Humphreyish, but, you know, most of these things depend upon the circumstances in which the question is asked.
THE CHAIRMAN: Remembering that Sir Humphrey was not wrong all the time! I shall now turn to Lembit.
MR OPIK: I would like to pursue this. Paragraph 35 on page 12 says in its brief entirety: "In upland areas, where the fox population causes more damage to sheep-rearing and game management interests, and where there is a greater perceived need for control, fewer alternatives are available to the use of dogs, either to flush out to guns or for digging-out." It sounds to me as if the assumption within that paragraph is that it is indeed the case that foxes do cause more damage there, so briefly can I just establish that you would accept that there is a degree of predation of sheep, of lambs, by the foxes? It sounds like an obvious thing to ask, but there has been some debate in the press about it. Your assumption was that there was at least a degree of predation, without putting figures on that?
LORD BURNS: Yes, what the economic cost of it was remains uncertain, and whether it numbers more or less I think remains uncertain, but I think the evidence we received clearly points to some economic cost. Otherwise it is very difficult to explain why the issue should be quite so important to the farmers in those areas, and we have not sufficient evidence about that.
MR OPIK: So frankly, having established then that there is a degree of predation - and we shall not go into the numbers today on that - you also were quite clear in the Report that there was a variability in the need, in the usage of hunting with dogs, to control foxes. You mentioned West Wales already, which is obviously an area I am quite familiar with. For my clarification, your Report was quite clear that the usage of hunting with dogs varied very wildly across the country. To be quite clear about what you said before, it was your finding that in a number of areas the local agricultural population did regard hunting with dogs as the most effective and necessary way of controlling the fox population. Is that a correct understanding?
LORD BURNS: We did visit Wales as one of the many visits that we made. The use of dogs, of course, is evident both in terms of traditional types of mounted hunting, but also in terms of gun packs. The gun packs, in my observation, kill a large number of foxes, particularly foxes that are in dense woodlands which are in the uplands, which border upon farms. Indeed, we spent a day with a gun pack in Wales observing that process where, of course, the dogs were a very important part of flushing the foxes from the rather dense cover that they would have been in. Of course, taking some of the other methods, lamping which we talk about in the Report as being probably closer to humane killing than any of the other methods that are deployed in dealing with foxes, is not really available in terms of rocky mountainous areas. I do not think it would be regarded as safe to take rifles out in those circumstances, even if you could actually get a Land Rover and all the equipment to the place that you wanted to get into.
MR LUFF: I would like to ask a question which follows on directly from that answer, and invite some exegesis on your own Report and two sentences from your own Report which seem to me to be important, unless I have imperfectly understood them. Paragraph 27 concludes: "One possibility, therefore, would be for the legislation to contain a provision which would permit hunting to take place in certain areas under some form of special authorisation." Then in paragraph 10.31 you say: "Unless there was a good reason on objective grounds, we do not think it would be satisfactory to have different legislative provisions in force in different regions of the country." I want to try to understand what you meant by those two separate comments.
THE CHAIRMAN: I think that question should be described as a Cadenza. If anybody else has to check their mobile phones, would they do so now, please.
LORD BURNS: What we were trying to get at here was that we saw some difficulties in saying that the same activity was legal in one area of the country and not in another, unless it could be clearly distinguished on objective grounds. Simply saying that hunting is wrong in some parts of the country and should be banned, but in other parts of the country it should be allowed to continue, we saw some problems with. Therefore, of course the legislation should not be different purely in terms of the geographic location, but should be based on good objective reasons for why there should be a need for exemptions or differences. I think that is an issue about how you frame the legislation; that it is important that if you want to take care of this you have to design it in a way which allows for some objective measures which distinguish whether or not the practice should continue, rather than simply having a Bill which said that hunting is banned in certain geographical areas, but it is permitted in other geographical areas. We saw some difficulty in having legislation in that form.
MR LUFF: Define the activity, not the location, in other words?
LORD BURNS: Yes, that the activity has to concentrate on an activity and the exemptions to the activity, and it should not be defined in terms of location. A location should then, in a sense, derive from the conditions that you have set out.
MR JACKSON: Lord Burns, you have touched on the question of balance of control, and we have talked about farming and abrogation and shooting. There has not been a reference to licensing. All this suggests quite strongly that circumstances vary from one part of the country to another. The one point where you did depart from your terms of reference was where you said that in the absence of a ban consideration might be given to some form of licensing. We are not the only country in the world which has this or is faced with this situation. Did your Committee look at all at the way in which this is tackled in other countries by means of licensing or any other way?
LORD BURNS: We did, but it was relatively briefly. As you say, the issue of licensing was not part of our terms of reference. I was quite anxious at one stage not to get into a position of making it look as if the Report was actually promoting a licensing option. I was concerned that if we had a discussion about licensing in the Report it would make it look as if this was a preferred outcome of the Committee. That is why it is framed in terms of saying that if hunting was not to be banned, how is it that it should be taken forward? The result was - this came quite late in the day - we did not have the opportunity to look at it in huge detail elsewhere, but we did look at some other countries. I think I said in my speech in the House of Lords, I find it quite surprising that one is allowed to be engaged in an activity like hunting, where you are in control of a large number of dogs that are not always under very close control; they go to a lot of places where maybe they did not intend to go when they started. I find it surprising that one can engage in this activity without having a licence and actually demonstrating that you have the skills to do it. There are lots of other things that we do that are probably not quite as potentially dangerous, where we invite people to demonstrate their skills. It was in that context that we were looking at it, but it was not an attempt to say that this was the way forward - that, I hope I have made clear, is for others - but we did feel that it was important to point out some of the ways, if there was not to be a ban, of how this could be taken forward and how some of the worries and some of the problems might be taken care of.
MR JACKSON: So is it fair to say that you were somewhat constrained by your terms of reference?
LORD BURNS: Well yes, we were constrained by our terms of reference, but most of the time I have to say that that was actually, from my point of view, a very good thing because it meant that there were some areas that people tried to push us into that we did not wish to go in, and therefore we could plead the defence of the terms of reference. In this case it was an area where we were constrained and we felt we would have liked to have done more. In the end I think we did find a satisfactory way of dealing with this, but if it had been in the terms of reference from the word go we would have done more work on it. But I emphasise, I am not complaining about this, because the terms of reference were my protection both from an intellectual and maybe all sorts of points of view.
MR JACKSON: Thank you very much.
THE CHAIRMAN: You have referred to one specific figure which is the Macdonald research figure of £1 million benefit from fox predation on rabbits. There was a figure that came out some ten years ago from the previous MAFF, which suggested that there was something like £100 million per annum cost of rabbit damage. Now that may have to be scaled down in view of the drop in commodity prices, which I do not think we want to investigate too deeply today, but there is a contrast between those figures, and I wonder whether that leads you to any conclusion about the value of the contribution?
LORD BURNS: I am afraid you are now pressing me beyond again my memory bank. I do remember that David Macdonald did write an article about the whole question of the sum of the benefits that came from foxes to farmers as well as some of the problems. If I recall, he pointed out how in some areas the balance may go one way and in other areas the balance went the other way. But I am now plumbing the depths of what I can be drawn on. I think it would probably be best to ask those who are more expert on this.
THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. We are coming to the end of this session. You quite properly wanted to stay within the terms of reference, as a Committee, in the conclusions that you came to. In my view - and I think this will be shared by the other groups here - it helped to cast more light than heat, and therefore to improve the quality of discussion amongst people who are willing to engage in debate, even if they remain of different views. I wonder, as a result of writing that Report and the conclusions you came to, whether you have any advice that you would like to offer Parliament about the process by which we seek to reach conclusions? I might find that helpful, if nobody else does!
LORD BURNS: I think, if you do not mind, Minister, I will decline that invitation. The biggest question to me by a long way about this is whether one wants an early resolution of the whole thing or whether one wants a gradual resolution of it. I think that if one wants an early resolution of the question, it is very difficult to find one in which there is any hope of common ground. I say this simply as somebody who has observed this process now for the last two or three years. I think that if people were prepared to have a gradual resolution of the issue, then there is the potential for a greater degree of meeting of minds, although the end point may not be that on which people can be agreed about. I think a lot here depends whether it is simply a yes/no, on/off type of issue or whether it is to be an issue which is addressed over a period of time, and whether behaviours change, the things that people wish to do change, whereby the standards that are required in terms of engaging in certain types of practices change or not. It may be that there is a better chance of getting agreement there. So I think Parliament has got to decide whether it wishes to carry as many people with it as possible in bringing this issue to a conclusion, in which case the only way I can see of doing this is to do it over a period; or whether Parliament wants to have an early resolution of the matter, it is tired of talking about this, it wants the issue dealt with now, in which case I am afraid my personal view is that there is unlikely to be very much in the way of meeting of minds on this subject. But I do not really feel that I wish to be drawn very much further on that.
The only thing, if I may say - and this is almost for the record - is that if I have said anything today in terms of detail or facts which are not the same as are in the Report, I hope people will bear with me, because I have not been through a detailed process of revision about this; I simply have not had the time to do that. What I have tried to do is to give a more general view of where it was we came from and the processes that we went through, and why we reached some of the conclusions that we did. So if there are areas in terms of either statistics or some of the words that were used, I hope that you will be sympathetic to that and not say that I must have changed my mind or I have lost all memory.
THE CHAIRMAN: The suggestion that nobody will misinterpret anything you have said this morning shows you to be an optimist, I think, if nothing else! We are also used to being misinterpreted. What we are trying to do is to build on the work that you and your Committee undertook, by examining that evidence, that starting point, and then to move forward from it. I am grateful to everybody for the questions they have asked, but I am particularly grateful to you for being here this morning and being willing to do this, while making it clear that the Report is the Report and that you do not want to move beyond either the Report itself or its terms of reference. I think you have probably helped to underline the importance of that Report and why it is the starting point for this hearing and for wider discussion. So I am very grateful to you for being willing to submit yourself to yet more pressure to go beyond the original Report, and I should like to thank you for the contribution that you have made.
We will start promptly with the next session at 11.30.
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Page published: 10 December, 2002