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
Wednesday 11 September 2002
SESSION B
DAY 3
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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-MCRAE, 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 BERNARD BENNETT-DIVER, Defra
MR CHRISTOPHER BRAUN, Defra.
MR NIGEL LEFTON, Legal Directorate, Defra.
MR DAVID PRITCHARD, Defra
MR NICHOLAS ROBSON, Defra
DR PETER ROBERTSON, Defra.
DR MATT HEYDON, Defra
(After a short break)
THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much indeed. Can I ask everybody to kindly speak up and speak into the microphones. I am told a number of people in the public gallery are finding it difficult to hear. The second thing is can I ask everybody to be as succinct as they can, both in questions on this side and in the answers that are given - not because I want to curtail the discussion on what people are saying but the more ground we can cover the better. Finally, we will be finishing this session at about a quarter to one order to start back here at twenty to two, so that we are ready for the silence to commemorate the events of September 11th last year before continuing with the evidence session.
We have heard evidence over the last couple of days on the principles of cruelty and utility. In the second session we are going to be having evidence on how hunting might be affected if the activity was subject to tests on the basis of those two principles and how activities might be moderated to eliminate cruelty. I am very pleased to welcome the following expert witnesses: Professor Stephen Harris, Professor of Environmental Sciences at Bristol University, David Jones, a professional huntsman to the David Davis Hunt in Montgomeryshire, Mike Huskisson, who is a Hunt Monitor for the League Against Cruel Sports, and Patrick Martin who is a professional huntsman to the Bicester hunt in Bicester.
Can we start with Stephen Harris?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Thank you, Minister. In my paper on this I have dealt with the four current quarry species as asked. When we first looked at foxes I have argued in my earlier evidence that I have shown that hunting makes no contribution to regulating fox numbers, there is no case for widespread fox control, there is no evidence that widespread fox control has any significant impact on fox numbers and that problems caused by foxes are best addressed by local culling of those animals causing the problem.
So I argue that hunting failed the test of utility and that since unnecessary suffering is central to the definition of the offence of cruelty, and fox-hunting makes no useful purpose, ipso facto any suffering associated with hunting is unnecessary. I also go on to discuss how it would be possible to modify hunting to eliminate cruelty. Terrier work is generally either illegal or not practised in many countries and it is difficult to know whether we could actually have modified terrier work in any way in Britain, particularly because roughly half the foxes killed by hunts are killed underground by terriers and it is difficult to make that activity humane. It is also difficult to see how it could be compatible with other legislation that makes setting dogs on other mammals illegal. I also talk about the problems of actually hunting foxes above ground but there are limited data on the stresses that this caused to foxes, but those data we do have suggests that the pattern of a fox being hunted just for five minutes by a single dog produces physiological changes more extreme than being held in a gin trap for two hours. Gin traps were made illegal in England and Wales in 1958. So we set standards then that we considered the suffering that was unacceptable to foxes.
I also see problems in trying to understand if the law was changed so that there was some system of monitoring foxes - how this could actually be applied. We have special provision made for fox hunts in the Badgers Act that allow them to block badger setts, a privilege granted to no other interest group. Yet submissions made by the National Federation of Badgers Group show that there is widespread abuse of this provision, it is very hard to police and particularly because the Act actually gives no right of access to land to investigate abuses. So it is very hard to monitor how often this provision is abused or bring prosecutions when abuses occur.
The other point I make is that it is difficult to see, if we modify hunting to eliminate or reduce cruelty, whether hunts could still continue to operate because the argument made is that they are only allowed access to the land to kill foxes and any activity that reduces the number of foxes they kill seems to underline the arguments they have given for being allowed access to farm land.
For hares, I have shown again that the hunting of hares with packs of hounds fails the test of utility as I presented it. It does not play a role in population control and in fact many packs of beagles and harriers operate in areas where hare numbers are declining. I also say that I do not find it very easy to see how that pattern of hunting with hares equates with their normal defence mechanisms when hunted by natural predators.
I also identify similar problems with coursing. A review of coursing in terms of coursing under rules, commissioned by the British Field Sports Society, states that sport is the sole purpose and therefore it is not a utility. It is also difficult to see how those forms of coursing could be modified. I talk about park coursing as operated in Ireland and again that does not eliminate cruelty and it causes other significant problems in having to capture and hold large numbers of hares prior to the meet.
Similarly, we have already talked briefly about muzzling greyhounds for coursing. It does not reduce the stress of the chase and also fatalities still occur because the hares are bowled over by the greyhounds and pummelled with their legs.
Finally, of course, the final problem is the most widespread form of coursing uses lurchers. The aim is to kill the hare. There is considerable population pressure on brown hares as a consequence. I do not see how that activity could be modified to meet the tests of utility and reduce the cruelty level and I do not see how that would address the problems posed by gangs of coursers.
If we look at deer, the work that has been done by Professor Bateson and Dr Bradshaw shows that the physiological disturbances of deer, many of which they described as maladaptive, rose rapidly from the onset of the hunt, and so it is very difficult to see how you could modify the hunt to prevent those maladaptive changes. I point out that the longest pursuits by natural predators were considerably shorter than the shortest hunts that led to a kill. It is very rare for a natural predator to pursue a deer for any distance. Again, there is no parallel with natural behaviours and I could not see how this activity could be regulated to eliminate cruelty.
Finally, mink. Again, I think I have shown that mink hunting fails the test of utility. I remind us that mink hunting is unique to Britain. It is not done anywhere else in the world. The first pack was formed in 1977 and Otter Hunts converted to Mink Hunts in 1978 when otters were protected. The same happened in Scotland in 1981.
Throughout that period since then, the number of mink hunts has more than doubled and yet mink are continuing to increase in numbers. They have spread throughout England and Wales and there is no evidence that mink hunting has played any role in controlling mink numbers; nor is there any evidence that mink hunts reduce the global problem caused by mink or even the regional or national problems.
I have already shown that the better way to address these problems is by habitat management and mink trapping operations. I have already made the point about the disturbance factors caused by mink hunts both to animals and to habitats and I note the basic point that I made before that mink hunts find it very difficult to control the species they are hunting. This is recorded in the history of the hunt and I have quoted that example. That is the way mink hunting arose. People were out hunting otters and they could not stop the hunts hunting mink. It is very difficult to regulate that activity so again I do not see how it could be satisfactorily regulated.
Perhaps I could make two further, brief points, Minister. I have already dealt with the four species that were in the session title, but we have to remember that there are other species hunted with packs of hounds in Britain. We currently have packs of unregulated hounds hunting roe deer. We have in the past had pack hunting of fallow deer. We have also in the past had packs hunting both stoat and pine martins and there is the potential to hunt virtually any species in Britain with packs of hounds. We ought to consider the range of species that might be hunted and perhaps also in relation to the red deer on Exmoor.
We have heard a great deal about the role of the hunt in maintaining that herd of deer. We have to remember that, like many other parts of Britain, there shortly will not be a herd of red deer there at all. We have seeker deer very close to that herd of red deer and we have seen in big areas of Scotland and in the north of England the seeker deer move into the area where red deer are; they hybridise rapidly with the red deer and soon you have a hybrid red deer/seeker deer herd in that area, certainly probably within my lifetime. What we are looking at here is a herd of red deer that soon will not be.
MR JONES: I am a practical man and I will give you a true and honest account of what goes on in the hunting field. I believe that traditional fox hunting is the most humane method of controlling foxes for the simple reason that it is either dead or it is alive.
The other methods of controlling foxes which are used an awful lot in Wales are gun packs where they drive foxes to guns. There is a high degree of cruelty involved in this because a lot of foxes get away and are not killed outright. I believe this to be a cruel process compared to traditional fox hunting.
Then we go on to rifling at night which has been discussed an awful lot here. I have some evidence which I will submit to you on rifling at night and this has huge implications, not only for the fox population but for the rest of wildlife. I have evidence on that as well.
Then you have the farming community. One thing the farming community does not want is people going about with rifles at night. For instance, this June there were 200 applications for firearms in our area for high powered rifles. As far as the police are concerned, I think that is serious.
Then we go on to snaring which I think again is a very cruel form of controlling foxes. I have some evidence on that.
Then we go on to poisoning which I know is illegal but it does happen. It is very indiscriminate because you kill all sorts of birds and mammals. Listening to everyone in the last two days, I have been hunting in many parts of the world and everything is done under licence. I have a paper here from West Virginia where they hunt all sorts and it is all done under one umbrella where you have fishing, shooting, hunting with dogs. It is done in conjunction with the DNR, the Department of National Resources.
We have scientists in this group over the last three days who are working against hunting people; whereas in the rest of the world they all work together. Surely, if we all work together, we can go a lot further than we can by fighting one another.
MR HUSKISSON: Good afternoon everyone. I am grateful for this opportunity to give first hand evidence about the pastime of hunting our wildlife with packs of dogs. I do so after some 31 years of close observation of this form of entertainment.
These amusements are both inherently cruel and entirely unnecessary. The cruelty exists at several levels. At its core is the choice of dogs that are bred, not for the speed that might produce a quick kill, but rather for the stamina that guarantees the lengthy chase that supporters seek.
In hare coursing, where the greyhounds are bred for speed, the fleeing hare is given a start. This ensures that supporters have the fun of watching the dogs work their hare.
There are specific cruelties associated with each pastime. In fox hunting there is the cruelty of digging out. The delayed death. It may take 30 minutes, an hour or longer. For the terrier enthusiasts, it is their sport. That it usually occurs out of sight of most hunt followers does not make it any less cruel, nor them any less responsible.
A dig-out often leads to an underground dog fight. In the damp and dark tunnel, the fox is fighting for his or her life. Evidence of the ferocity of the combat is proven by the injuries suffered by the terriers.
I have witnessed a dig-out that lasted nearly three hours. It was actually more like fox baiting as the fox battled with either one or both terriers. It was long after dark that it finished, long after the riders and car followers had left.
In fox hunting I have witnesses some outrageous cruelty. I have seen a fox, bleeding from terrier bites inflicted when it was dug out, bagged and then released for the dogs to hunt. To help them follow the scent, the huntsman when holding the fox, before it was dropped in the sack, bowed its head to its brush to make it soil itself with urine. That was at the Dulverton West Foxhounds.
I saw the Quorn Foxhounds hunt a fox cub to ground.
THE CHAIRMAN: Can I advise you please not to refer to specific organisations or individuals in giving your evidence?
MR HUSKISSON: Yes, Minister. It was eventually dug out and I saw the terrierman holding the fox. He could have killed it quickly but he did not. He released it; the hounds were summoned; the fox fled, was chased and killed. That all took place behind a hedge in open view of watching hunt followers.
In stag hunting, which is actually a misnomer as hinds are hunted as well, there is again the cruelty of the delayed death. The hunt, that can last all day, may end 25 miles from the start. Only a few hunt followers carry guns to put the exhausted and terrified quarry out of its misery.
I recall the end of one hunt. I saw the stag swimming in a small pool. There was one dog on his back and some 16 others baying close by. He was grabbed by his antlers and dragged to the bank. The supporters tried to stop the dogs from tearing at his flank. The sound of the baying dogs and whoops of glee from the watching crowd was deafening. There was no one with a gun nearby and the dense vegetation made access difficult.
The stag was dragged out and his head pressed into the mud to restrain him. We then waited. This was a terrified animal just waiting to die. It was pitiful. After some minutes, a chap with a pistol arrived and the stag was at last killed. The whipper-in then roused his dogs to a frenzy by banging the head of the lifeless stag onto the ground. Warm blood sprayed everywhere. The stag was beyond caring, but I mention it as an example of how these pastimes bring out the very worst in human nature.
To appreciate the cruelty in hare coursing, you just need to hear these harmless creatures screaming with pain and terror when caught. It is shocking. It ends when the picker-up reaches the scene and can release the hare and break her neck but sometimes in the tug of war with a live hare between two dogs one dog wins and runs off with the squealing hare. You try catching a coursing dog running with such a prize. I have seen it take several minutes.
There is also the cruelty inherent in the netting and transportation of hares to restock areas for coursing.
As for utility, let us consider first fox hunting. I think of all the artificial earths I have seen in England and Wales. I have seen 31 in the country of one hunt. In another hunt, I have seen three artificial earths in just a single wood that they hunt. The largest artificial earth complex that I have seen lies in an area hunted by a lakeland fell pack, right in the heart of the sheep rearing up there.
Artificial earths are built for foxes to breed in. In my experience, farmers are neither stupid nor the sort to be meekly put upon by outsiders. That they allow hunt supporters to build artificial earths confirms that they do not regard foxes as any real pest.
There is also the feeding of foxes by hunters. I have found hunted woods stinking with the putrid smell of rotting flesh from animals dumped as food for foxes. I have seen chicken, lambs, adult sheep, calves and even boxes of bacon rinds dumped. Fox hunting as fox control is a farce.
I recall the shameful sight of two fox cubs held captive in an artificial earth in a wood owned by a hunt in Yorkshire. They were held in what amounted to a stinking cesspit. They were being given food and water and were destined to be released to be hunted at a later date.
With the help of the RSPCA, they were removed and given the veterinary treatment they desperately needed.
Finally, there is the cruelty associated with hunt dogs running riot, an inevitable consequence of the pursuit of live quarry. I have seen hunt dogs chase just about every creature. They will of course hunt anything they are taught to. They could easily be trained to hunt something incapable of suffering. Some already are.
This is the crux of the matter. For as long as man contrives an interface between two species of animal with the purpose of killing one for entertainment, there will be cruelty. To replace the live animal quarry by a scented rag or by a willing human removes that cruelty.
MR MARTIN: I approach this session in the firm belief, based on my practical experience, that hunting is humane, useful and necessary. It is humane because it never leaves an animal injured. The alternatives do. It is useful because it helps to manage the quarry species at a farmer's or land holder's request and it is necessary because populations of wild animals need controlling.
Hunting has shown its ability to answer the question of utility not only with wildlife management but also with the conservation of large areas of natural landscape, the fallen stock collection service which showed its benefits during the foot and mouth disaster last year, the passion and feelings of a close knit community and finally the jobs, houses and businesses in rural areas. In my experience as a practitioner, I am of the belief that hunting is useful and that I would not be allowed onto private land if I was not useful.
With regard to the test of cruelty, in my experience this is an unacceptable term. Hunting does not cause the intentional infliction of unnecessary suffering. This is wholly misleading. In my experience of hunting and observing foxes for 23 years, I am of the opinion that foxes, when found, take flight as a natural reaction and that they are in control in their own environment.
The issue of cruelty in hunting and its alternatives was tested in 1951 by the Scott Henderson Inquiry, in 1997 by the Phelps Inquiry and in a different context by the Burns Inquiry in the year 2000. As a practitioner with a pack of fox hounds, my perception of the potential to cause unnecessary suffering refers more to the alternatives than to my own. When examined against their welfare consequences, hunting can be seen to have answered the question. I agree with the opinion of vets for hunting when they state that hunting is the natural and most humane method of controlling foxes, hare, deer and mink.
Certain concerns were raised in chapter nine of Burns which I will take questions on later.
With regard to modifying the activity, hunting throughout its history has always had to modify and resolve. All activities which take place regarding hunting are open and accountable, particularly as they involve the management of landscape and animal populations. To be justified, any modifications must be based on two principles: one, that they lead to an improvement in animal welfare standards by reducing provable suffering; secondly, that they take into account the changing landscape or land use, including the needs of other users of the countryside.
Why modify or compromise if it is proved inappropriate by leading to worsening of animal welfare standards, by putting pressure on those responsible for land and wildlife population management? As the activity does not cause cruelty, it is therefore shown, in my eyes, to cause the least suffering when compared to the alternatives.
As an indication of modification, I was with the Scottish Hunt on Thursday 15 August this year that went out and started a new role as a gun pack. They had an experienced gun out. The hounds were hunting and a fox came out. This experienced gun shot the fox. It fell over, hit hard and ran on. Hounds were stopped from hunting the other fox, taken to where this fox was last seen and they ran into a patch of wind. The hounds started seeking what was the injured fox, went out for a fresh fox and were brought back and they spent several hours trying to find out where the injured fox had gone. They never found it.
As far as I am concerned, this is a classic example of modification gone badly wrong when it is forced on people who are quite capable of doing it without injuring an animal. The idea of that fox going away wounded, to me, is abhorrent.
The intention of a gun is that the animal is shot. The reality is that it is shot at. There is not always the potential for a clean kill.
More seriously is the reality -- I stress the word "reality", which I hope we can bring to this room -- a most important word in this consultation, that a hunting ban would result in a completely unaccountable regime of pest control, unaccountable to this room. Anybody hearing what goes on behind closed doors is accountable.
Shooting with either rifle or shotgun, snaring and illegal methods of gassing and poisoning being practised by inexperienced practitioners would, in my opinion, be totally unacceptable. These apply to all quarry species and I personally defy anybody in this room to tell me that these methods would not seriously compromise animal welfare.
There have been numerous modifications made to hunting which address changing landscape and the need for accountability. The only justification for further modifications would be if there were proof that such moves were based on irrefutable evidence rather than speculation, unfounded assertions and personal prejudice.
Minister, we cannot expect to put our heads -- and this is being very simplistic -- into the bucket of mud that is the countryside and get a clear view. How can an issue that can involve so many intelligent people in this room, having so many different views, be resolved by tossing this whole thing into the abyss of a ban?
I see what happens out in the countryside in the fields and woodlands. I am not told. I do not research. I do not presume. Utility, cruelty and modification. Who for? People or animals? This bucket of mud, I am afraid, is not clearing.
THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Can I remind all our four witnesses today that our job is to try to take our heads out of that bucket of mud and try to look objectively at evidence. I have heard from the witnesses a degree of passion and feelings, as one person described it, and that is understood. The whole point of trying to examine this topic in the way we are is because we know people feel so passionately on both sides of the debate.
However, what we are trying to do is to look at the evidence and search for common ground where it exists, but certainly to look at the evidence. Having heard the views expressed, some of which took us back into the discussions of yesterday and the day before where we explored the issues of utility and cruelty, I remind everybody that this session is about how hunting would be modified if subject to the tests of utility and cruelty and how activity can be modified to eliminate cruelty.
I hope that the questions and the answers will focus on that. Having got personal opinions off your chests, perhaps each of the witnesses will help us in focusing on those questions.
MR JACKSON: Professor Harris, in your evidence in writing, you say, "It is also difficult to see how hunting could be modified to eliminate cruelty. In North America ... it is generally pursuit only and hounds do not kill the foxes ...". That is not true. They do kill them when they catch them. "... the limited data available on this issue show that being pursued by a dog for five minutes (roughly half the average hunt time) led to considerably higher heart rates and body temperatures than recorded during any other activity ... In fact the parameters they recorded were considerably higher than those recorded in foxes caught in leg-hold traps ...".
THE CHAIRMAN: I am sorry but this is really going totally against my request for simple questions so that we can spend time on hearing the evidence.
MR JACKSON: This goes to the evidence. This has come up before and I ask Professor Harris if he is aware that the researcher, Dr Kreeger, wrote an open letter which was published on the website for the purpose of the inquiry, complaining that his data were being used incorrectly. In the interests of time I will not read out his letter but it is available. I think it is very important that it is on the record that this important bit of evidence has been directly challenged in the way it has been used.
THE CHAIRMAN: This definitely takes us back into previous days but I will ask Stephen Harris to respond briefly. I suggest that perhaps you should supply that letter to me and to Stephen Harris and perhaps Stephen might be given the opportunity to respond to you and to me outside this session.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I have read the letter. There are two issues. The first is quality of evidence. I think there is a big issue here that has confused me from day one because the tone was set in the Burns Report and in Lord Burns's opening session when he talked about quality of evidence. He seemed to accept that local perceptions were acceptable on that basis and then he went on to talk about the need for the minutest levels of scientific detail and high levels of precision on the issue of cruelty.
It seems to me from the outset in the way that the whole of these three days have developed that there has been a wide dichotomy in the expectation of the standard evidence when dealing with utility on the one hand and cruelty on the other. That is something you will consider further, Minister.
In relation to this piece of work specifically, if I remember Kreeger's letter correctly, Kreeger objected to people using his data to talk about the impact of those data on the fox itself and other assertions that have been made about his data. I have simply quoted to you exactly the data he published and he shows quite clearly that for that very short activity he tested -- and he was trying to look at the cruelty involved with the use of leg-hold traps -- being chased by a dog caused much higher levels in the parameters of body temperature and heart beat than being caught in a leg-hold trap for two hours. That is quoting directly from his paper. That is published information and you can have it. I have not drawn any other comparison beyond that and I have said in my paper, "... the limited data available on this issue ...". I have been quite honest. The data available on this issue are limited.
THE CHAIRMAN: I have indicated on a number of occasions that there are some issues where there is a volume of evidence that has come in and where there are comments on it. Most of this is in the public domain and I am happy to look at the evidence and the comments on it, but that is the way to deal with it.
MR LISSACK: I refused to abandon hope of finding consensus. I hope I am not proved to be wildly optimistic. Can I ask the panel this: do they not consider that there would be potential for benefit for the quarry species of the hunting of them by all means and manners being subject to the ordinary laws of cruelty in this country?
MR MARTIN: I find the word "cruelty" does not apply in my situation regarding hunting foxes but obviously this inquiry is into hunting with dogs, which is much broader. I am not expert enough to answer but in relation to fox hunting I have already accepted that the cruelty angle of it does not define what happens and that, in my case, looking at the alternatives, the alternatives cause more suffering and have the potential to cause more suffering.
I believe that if it has to go any further we have to look at the whole picture rather than just banning hunting with dogs and leaving the quarry species to what is left. Very few people ever look at that.
MR HUSKISSON: I would expect that the best situation for our wildlife in this countryside would be to remove unnecessary suffering across the range.
MR JONES: I agree. Fox hunting is the most humane method. The other methods need looking at. I have kept terriers for over 40 years and terrier work is a very humane method, done properly. I agree with Mr Lissack.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I do not think I can find a simple answer to that question. The point I have made over the last two days is that there should be consistency in the way the law is applied. If it is cruel to set a dog on a badger or a dog on a dog, I do not see how it could be justified that it is not cruel to do it to a fox.
As a scientist, I cannot do certain things, quite rightly, to a wild mammal because ethics committees would say that is not acceptable, but if I want to do it on my days off I can do it willy nilly. I have argued that there is inconsistency here and we should have those inconsistencies removed.
DR LINDLEY: Professor Harris, in the evidence you have presented here, you have already summarised your view of the evidence so far in regard to both utility and cruelty. In the context of this session, where we are talking about modifying activities to eliminate cruelty, perhaps having in mind the first session this morning, I would be interested in your views on the relevance, necessity and appropriateness of a regulatory body or a local tribunal system for dealing with these issues of utility and cruelty which we have addressed at a national level in the last two days.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I do not see how that could be done at a local level. As far as I am concerned, issues are looked at on a national level. Particularly when you start looking at some of the issues of utility and cruelty, you have to have quite a clear understanding of what these will achieve and that to me seems to be a national process. I do not see how that could be done locally.
MR JONES: It has to be done at a national level because how can you say it is right to hunt in the hills but wrong to hunt in the lowlands? If you are going to kill a fox in the hills and say it is right, how can you say it is wrong in the lowlands?
MR HUSKISSON: I would think at a national level.
MR MARTIN: I would agree. It is no more cruel at 3,000 feet than at 1,000 feet.
MR OPIK: When Stephen Harris said that it was cruel to set a dog on a dog, on the basis of the formulation that we have already defined, did you not mean it would cause suffering, but there is the utility debate on whether it causes cruelty?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Perhaps I have not quite understood your question. I understood utility and cruelty were being judged as separate issues.
MR OPIK: I am assuming that we have really defined cruelty as unnecessary suffering and we are defining unnecessary suffering as the situation when the utility does not exceed the suffering, accepting it is very hard to make that comparison.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: That is a discussion that has gone beyond my own expertise because I thought I was here as a scientist rather than perhaps trying to do the legal definition. I feel my view on it is not based on expertise.
MR LUFF: I expected not to agree with much of what Mr Huskisson said. You are a man of conviction -- no pun intended, I can assure you -- and yet I found in your evidence a great deal that I can agree with because many of the practices in the hunting field which you identify are ones which I think are unacceptable. You talk about giving deer an extra chance. If that is true, I find that unacceptable. You talk about the need to define breeding seasons properly and we do need to do that. You must hunt at the right time of the year. Climate changes change breeding seasons. Also, you talk about the nuisance the hunt can cause, disturbance, public safety orders, trespass and so on. I agree with all those points but surely we can deal with these issues by regulating so that those specific things should not be done and, when you agree that, you make hunting less cruel.
MR HUSKISSON: You are not that uncommon in being from the hunting side that agrees with me because in debates I have had hunting people come up to me and say afterwards, "If I had seen the sort of things you have seen, I would come on your side of the fence." I say, "It is a pity you have not. You will have to look a little bit harder because it is there. You just have to get off your horse and have a look."
There has been regulation within hunting for years and years. When the fox was put in a sack and tipped out, that was against the rules. When the fox was held alive and released, that was against the rules. The rules and regulations are there but they seem at times to be only there in the book, not in people's minds. That is the problem. As long as there is this interface for sport between man and animal, setting one animal on another, things get out of hand and they do.
People have said to me, "You seem to be remarkably unlucky" because it is almost like I can get my hand in a barrel of apples and come out with a rotten apple. I am the person who finds the rotten applies but how many rotten apples come out of the barrel before you start thinking: hang on, maybe the whole barrel is rotten. This is perhaps the problem: that there is a lot more to hunting than just the meet on the village green and the gallop over the fields.
THE CHAIRMAN: Can I ask the other witnesses to comment on the question of dealing with things that go wrong when they go wrong, essentially when things are done against the rules?
MR JONES: In Wales, the fox is classed as a pest. It is public enemy number one to the farmer. We have to kill the fox. If the fox goes to ground and the huntsmen catch it, which they rarely do because it is prone to rain in our country, the majority are dug out, put in a net and shot.
I heard a scientist say yesterday that the only humane way of controlling the fox was shooting it in the head and that is exactly what we do. If we put it in a net, we shoot it in the head again. To me, that is a humane method of doing things because the scientists agreed yesterday it was the only way you could kill properly.
MR MARTIN: I can only refute everything Mr Huskisson says.
THE CHAIRMAN: I was asking you to address the question. I understand that you would disagree but we are trying to explore the way forward.
MR HUSKISSON: Since Burns, we have ISA now to independently regulate things that go wrong in the hunting field. I was at the Burns Inquiry and Lord Burns asked what happened when things went wrong and who was accountable. With the strict rules and regulations that I have to work under, I am accountable and people within the hunt are accountable.
If I did anything wrong, I would be accountable to ISA and I think it is a good thing that that has come into the modern way of thinking, whereby we can be seen to be accountable, but I think it is important to move forward on that so that ISA does get involved in hunting so that the public can perceive that we are not going round in dark, leafy woodlands doing things we should not. People can come to the kennels at any time and speak to me. They can come hunting and that is the most important thing, for me, about fox hunting, that it is open and accountable. ISA now can deal with any problems that arise and the people I have spoken to have said that it is a good thing we have done that because the public perceive that we are making ourselves accountable.
MR LISSACK: Can I build on this emerging comity of views between different combinations of members of the panel? If cruelty is to be judged against a nationally set standard, cruelty in the sense of cruelty to all wild mammals in all activities, I would like to look at the impact on hunting.
If an activity, in the course of hunting, constitutes cruelty it will be a crime and therefore dealt with accordingly. What I would like to focus on is what is below that line, which is one of the things that you, Mr Huskisson, are passionate about and which you, Mr Martin, in your paper, address as areas that could be looked at. I would like the panel to discuss, if you would, how you would suggest, if that which is above the line and cruel is dealt with in the way which we have already discussed, that which is below the line can best be dealt with?
May I explain? You have cruelty and that is to one side now, but you have lots of other parts of a day's hunting of all different quarry species that cause you, Mr Huskisson, for example, concern and cause Lord Burns concern. I would be interested to know how the panel would suggest that those issues could be dealt with.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: If I understood your question correctly, there is a false premise there. You started at the beginning saying something on the lines of all methods of cruelty need to be put on the same legal basis as far as wild mammals are concerned. First of all, I do not think I have argued that because I have raised issues that say that other methods of population control are cruel and I raised the issue of anticoagulant rodenticides as an example. I do not think we can put all mammals at all levels of cruelty under one piece of overriding legislation. That is clearly impossible and clearly improbable.
I am not working from that premise. I am working to try to standardise existing rules relating to hunting with dogs. You may be working from a slightly different premise. On that basis, as far as I can see from what data we have, from the basic onset of beginning the chase, that is where the cruelty begins and therefore I do not see how you can move beyond that.
MR JONES: I do not see that there is any cruelty in hunting with dogs. On the chase, we are saying it is cruel to chase a fox. The fox is frightened by us doing it. If that is the case, why is it many times I have seen a fox when hounds are perhaps 300 yards behind it stop and cock its leg at a tree? If he was panicking, why would he stop and cock his leg at a tree? He would run at 100 miles an hour.
The only time I have ever seen cruelty is when people are shooting with guns and then the fox panics. It does not panic when hounds are hunting it.
MR MARTIN: Talking about the Burns concerns, there are certain areas which have been highlighted: hunting in built up areas. Obviously, with the changing face of the landscape, hunting tries to modify. We have tried to deal with the setting up of ISA and we are strictly regulated anyway.
Various concerns were put in about the artificial earths, earth stopping and the length of the hunt but I do not know whether you would like me to give my views on those now. We have always tried to address any concerns that were put to us. We have tried to modify. We have done everything in our power to change and adapt to the modern environment. At the end of Burns, which was funded by the government, we had a satisfactory conclusion for us.
Moving on from there, every day of my life I am open and accountable. What I do people can come and see. In the last seven years what has changed in my profession and my way of life is that we have had to realise that we are accountable for all the actions we take, which perhaps in the past was not evident. I would be the first to admit that improvements have been made and I hope they can continue to be made.
My biggest fear is that even though we are going to address all these concerns and we talk about them in this room, at the end of the day, if a ban on hunting with dogs in its totality came into place, as a practitioner and somebody involved with animal welfare every day, it would have a negative welfare impact on all the animals, all the quarry species.
I am quite happy to justify what would happen with foxes. I know you have been through all the unnecessary suffering aspect of it but I think it is important that people realise that. At the end of the day, not a single fox life would be saved and it is the implication of what would happen after.
MR HUSKISSON: This is rather too clever a line of questioning for me but obviously I have been on hunts where one would be hard put to see any cruelty because they never found anything. They took the hounds out and they did not find a deer or a fox. Therefore, it would be hard to say that any cruelty had been inflicted. Perhaps the only thing that was there was boredom which was, if anything, cruelty on the participants. You could even take that away by saying, "Let's get someone running in front of the hounds and they can chase after him. We can have a gallop. We can have a jump and a ride and some fun." That is the point we seek to make. If you take the animal off the quarry list, you will do away with the cruelty and that is what we are after. We are not seeking to take away hunting as such; just the cruelty in it.
THE CHAIRMAN: I ask for everyone to be back at 20 to two so that we may all properly observe the commemoration of the events of 11 September last year.
We will be continuing the same session and I would like to say something both to the questioners and to the witnesses. We started off with expressions of view which might be described as polarised in that there is a great deal that is wrong, which leads to the conclusion that hunting should be banned. On the other hand, everything is fine or has been improved and therefore there is no need for anything to change.
The question that we are seeking to address in this particular session is that in relation to those activities that might continue to be permitted -- and that could be almost anything right down to a small number of activities because that is an open question in these hearings -- how can situations be improved? How can bad practice or cruelty be eradicated?
Unfortunately, in the first part of this session, we have not really got to grips with that. There is an hour's gap and I would ask people to think how they might best pose the question and how they may respond to assist with that particular question.
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After a short adjournment
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A minute's silence was observed
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THE CHAIRMAN: Very simply the events of twelve months ago were the sort of events that have put everything else in political and private life into context. Nevertheless it is important for us all to get on with life which is what we will now seek to do.
Can I just remind people please to speak clearly into the microphone and also remind people that we are continuing with the section where we ask the question how hunting will be affected if the activity were made subject to tests of utility and cruelty, and the question of modifying activity to eliminate cruelty. It is clear that people throughout these sessions have very strong and polarised views. Those are accepted and I think each of our panellists made their views clear on the overall issue but I hope we can explore these issues constructively in this session.
Can I also remind people to switch off their mobile phones particularly if they have been using them during lunch time, or have the maverick phones that switch themselves on without invitation!
DR LINDLEY: If I may, Minister, I would like to address the issue which you have just mentioned of modifying activity to eliminate cruelty. Mr Martin and Mr Jones I think in both their presentations made statements to the effect that fox hunting is humane because the fox is either dead or alive but cruelty, which is what we are addressing, is really defined as unnecessary suffering, not dead or alive, and in yesterday's session I think Professor Webster said that death is not a major welfare issue; the level of suffering in the chase and the kill and the unpredictability of the kill is the issue. So the question to Mr Martin and Mr Jones with their practical experience is what modifications of activity are possible that would eliminate the unnecessary suffering, the cruelty, that would be involved from the chase and unpredictabilities of the kill?
MR JONES: I do not think there is any way you can for the simple reason I do not believe that the fox suffers when you chase it because I have never seen a fox suffer when you chase it. If it gets away it is always there to run another day.
Coming to when you put a fox to ground, the objective of the terrier is to bark at the fox not to attack it as it seems everyone has portrayed so far in the last two days. We put nets on and if it comes into the net then it is efficiently dealt with.
MR MARTIN: I think to start off with you need to understand that Mr Jones and myself are obviously professional huntsmen and you have to observe the animal in its wild and natural state to understand how - if you are going to put it into terms of suffering, obviously cruelty does not apply but in terms I think of least suffering. Having watched foxes for 23 years, when found by hounds they do not exhibit any sign of suffering; they immediately leave the cover. They do not during the chase as some people call it, when hounds are hunting as I would call it, appear to me - and I am not a scientist, I can only say what I see, and again, when it comes to them being caught it is over so quickly that, in my opinion, this idea of cruelty and causing unnecessary suffering is not there because at all times when they are above ground specially, they are in control of the situation and whenever I have observed them they appear to be quite confident with that situation.
Now, that is my opinion taken from 23 years of observing foxes but I have no scientific proof of that. Sometimes the scientific proof can tend to go beyond what I actually see in the hunting field. You can only observe something but you cannot do a test on it. But on observation and relating foxes which are wild animals to hounds, dogs, which are domesticated I have never seen any sign of suffering within the dog that is chasing the fox, and again I do not see a reverse in the same thing with the fox. I think we would be expert enough to be able to see that in a day's hunting. Signs of distress in animals I have seen in my job dealing with fallen stock and putting down animals that are sick and suffering but again, I am not qualified enough to relate this in scientific terms as to what you go by. I just believe that hunting with a pack of hounds is causing the least suffering in that form of control and I believe that if you take away that form of control, ie, hunting with dogs, and take it on to other levels, they have the potential to cause more suffering. We have found foxes in the countryside that have been injured. When a fox is shot with a rifle it causes a massive injury to it and to be graphic it can actually take its leg off but does not kill it. With a shotgun the pellets will turn a hare inside out and a fox gets gangrene and dies a very slow death. Snaring is not as quick as a hound's instantaneous bite, or a crushing injury. Poisoning and gassing - barbaric comes to mind.
In terms of control, and as everybody agrees foxes are going to be controlled, if hunting with dogs were banned it would not save the life of a single fox or any other quarry species because they would be controlled. I think as far as I am concerned, the land owners whose land I go across, if they thought I was going on that land to intentionally inflict suffering on the fox they would not let me. They are involved in animal welfare with their stock on a daily basis and I do not believe that these people who have lived and worked in the countryside for generations would tolerate that sort of cruelty on their land. They accept it as a form of control: it is their decision to have the hounds on their land as the form of control and I think that, if they were not happy with it, this is where the utility comes in. We are only welcome on land because we do a useful job in managing that wildlife population.
I can say no more but as far as I am concerned with a fox I never see a fox where you could say that fox is suffering in terms of other animals I have seen that have suffered that I have put down.
THE CHAIRMAN: The question was directed to the two huntsmen but perhaps I could ask the other members of the panel if they wish to add anything.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I think the problem is we are still hearing anecdote and we can talk about whether foxes show displacement behaviours or not but I think that is perhaps not particularly helpful. I think the data we have in looking at some of the other things that are described like the use of poisons in the countryside - well, your own department runs the Wildlife Investigation Incident Scheme looking at all cases of poisoning in a variety of wildlife across the year and there is a handful at most I think of foxes each year. Poisoning is not used in the countryside. There is a good observance of that law, as far as we can see, and there is no basis to assume that suddenly land owners and farmers are going to start breaking the law in a big way. That is the case.
As for gassing we are told it is "barbaric". Well, actually, gassing is the method of humane slaughter that is approved in a variety of animals. Technically it is not illegal to gas foxes. The only situation at the moment is there is no approved agent for doing it and gassing may be feasible at some stage to approve an agent that is humane and so it may be that that will happen in the future. I think you have to bear in mind what the facts are.
MR HUSKISSON: I think looking at these issues of cruelty within these various activities you have to consider them one by one. If we look at fox hunting first it is sometimes said, "Well could we end the digging out and stop that? Would that be a good way of ending cruelty"? Undoubtedly it would. People talk about the hunting seasons and the practice of cub hunting that is going on now. Should we stop that and take that away and make it less cruel? Then there is the question of the other end of the season where the pregnant vixens are hunted in February and March, shall we do away with that? That undoubtedly would alleviate some suffering, yes. We could also do away with the hunting of nursing vixens and that pushes the season for pregnant vixens back into December. Nursing vixens is of course later in February and March.
There is also the matter of hound riot and should we take out some of the cruelty by changing the location so they cannot hunt within close proximity of people's houses so you have not got the scenario of dogs going into people's gardens killing their pets. One can make all sorts of attacks on these activities taking off various levels of cruelty but at the end of the day you are going to end up with one day's hunting on the Beaufort Estate in a year and that is it; it is going to be so squeezed down. Surely the better solution is just to take the animal off the quarry list and put a person or a scented rag or something capable of suffering in its place. In stag hunting there is a lot of talk of removing some of the cruelty there by stopping the practice in autumn stag hunting of hunting the best deer, the ones with the big fine heads of antlers, and that goes to the management of the herd of deer. Because they pick out the best deer to hunt it is not that good for the species as a whole.
Also we talk about stopping the hunting of stags during the rut in October. When the stags have been up all night with their hinds, to then run in front of a pack of hounds might in most people's minds involve a particular level of cruelty. You could also talk about stopping the whole practice of hind hunting because the hinds are pregnant throughout the time they are hunted and often running the previous year's calf by their side as well so one can take that off. And looking at hare coursing, you could say how one can one make that more humane? Let us have longer slips, give the hare more of a start, but the greyhounds will still catch them up and be pressing them.
What about muzzling the dogs? Would that be less cruel? Well, that has been tried in the Republic of Ireland and I have seen muzzled dogs maul a hare and batter them on the ground to the point where the hare has been killed. So it does not stop the cruelty and with hare coursing there is a humane alternative. You can run the dogs on a lure that is winched up across the field and the dogs chase after it. It removes a lot of the cruelty not just to the hare but also to the dogs because the dogs are running in an area that is chosen to be good running conditions; they are running on grass so they are not going to be cutting their feet. Often out in East Anglia where they are running on flints they get bad cuts and gashes on their feet and that does not happen in the humane alternative of drag coursing. So you can pick at these activities and take out various grades of cruelty but at its core, as long as there is a live animal running, there will be problems of cruelty.
THE CHAIRMAN: I am not surprised that that is your conclusion because that fits in with your initial evidence but thank you for addressing the question. Is the supplementary very short?
MS CAMPBELL-McRAE: Very quick. Going back to this issue of modifying activity to eliminate cruelty, I take it from the answer, Mr Martin, that you gave to the previous question you do not see any scope for modification and you feel that current practices meet the need to eliminate cruelty. In relation to that you made a statement that your own hunt has now adopted ISAH guidelines. Could you explain to us whether and in what way this has modified your activity and in particular modified activity to eliminate cruelty?
MR MARTIN: To start with I did not say we were not able or capable of modifying. I think again after Burns, which was the starting point for this, every hunt in this country has felt they are even more than before under scrutiny. We have always been publicly accountable and by taking on the ISAH protocol we have more kennel inspections to make sure the welfare in the kennels is proper; we have more field inspections which has meant more people coming out and inspecting what we do, and I think the feeling also now is, because this is so much in the public spotlight, this whole issue, we have to be seen and I am not condoning anything in the past but I am talking about the present and the future, we have to be seen to be openly accountable and I think we are being openly accountable.
Regarding modifying the activity to eliminate cruelty, we have been through that all before and I wish you would not use that line of questioning --
MS CAMPBELL-McRAE: It is the question posed for this session so I am afraid it is the question I need to refer to.
MR MARTIN: Okay, but we have already been through the cruelty and I said about the least suffering, not the intention of infliction. That is the difference I would like to make when answering that question rather than answering the question with cruelty in it because I believe that what I do causes the least suffering. Again, in a previous statement, if you are taking the animal out of the whole equation of hunting, if you take it away, what are you left with? Okay, you have this whole thing with hunting with dogs, taking all forms of dogs from stag hounds to fox hounds to bassets to beagles, everything is encompassed, the idea of drag hunting for some people is totally unacceptable or impractical. You then have the huge issue of the welfare with the hounds as well and it comes back to all right, take the animal out of it, go drag hunting, but that is not possible in places where farmers do not want it. At the end of the day drag hunting only exists because the farmers and landowners allow it on their land, as does hunting with dogs. It is the same principle, and the idea we can all suddenly change is a complete non starter. Take the animal out of the equation, what happens to the animal? I think the most important thing with this argument is that, Okay, publicly you say take the animal out of it but what happens to the animal, and that is always forgotten in these arguments with animal welfare issues. I think it is vitally important that everybody realises that the alternative methods would seriously compromise animal welfare. I live and work in the countryside; I am not making this up. This is not my excuse as to why I can go on hunting foxes. This is what is going to happen and nobody in this room apart from the landowners will have any control about what happens. They are going to be controlled. We have been through the alternatives and I have seen the foxes walking around our countryside in a hell of a state because of the alternatives. Now we are only one form of control. The fact that people do not like that form of control does not take into consideration what happens afterwards. Sometimes in this argument what happens in the countryside if a ban was put in place is never addressed.
MR JONES: I think there is one thing you could modify. A lot of people do not realise that there are an awful lot of packs out there that are not resident and do not come under any organisation and if you brought them all under one umbrella it would cut a lot of cruelty. If you did ban hunting then all you would do is create more cruelty.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Again, we are back to anecdote. We have addressed all those issues as far as we can work out. We have provided data for you to show how people would react in the countryside to a ban on hunting and you have those data. It is the same for level of wounding, as far as we can do. I do not know how I can take that forward for you.
MS CAMPBELL-McRAE: Thanks for answering the question but what you gave me were answers in relation to inspections of kennels and field. What I really wanted to know is what changes to your practices have you made as a result of joining ISAH? Are there any specific changes to your activities?
MR JONES: There is no reason to change anything.
THE CHAIRMAN: I think that is what we are exploring.
MR OPIK: I want to pursue the same thing on the basis that after two and a half days I am beginning to see a picture of maybe something we can do to affect hunting in a positive way. Can I describe the scenario and ask the view of the panel?
We have already made some landmark principal points of consensus in the last two and a half days. For example, it seems pretty clear to me that the cruelty equation here is cruelty equals unnecessary suffering and that is when pretty much by the definition of the inquiry the suffering exceeds the utility, accepting there is an issue of how you measure that. If that is right, we also have made some other principal points. For example, it is not wrong in principle to hunt with dogs, ratting and rabbiting being I think with unanimous consensus acceptable in some circumstances. So given that it is not wrong in principle to use dogs, the real question is how can we create some sort of a structure which meaningfully applies the utility versus suffering equation, and how can that be applied in the countryside? The question, therefore, is how do we make sure that the stuff that Mike Huskisson so dramatically described to us before stops happening but the stuff that David Jones and Patrick Martin do and they believe is not cruel can continue to happen if, on the basis of these assessments between utility and suffering, it works out in that equation that it is not unnecessary suffering? I will stop there.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I think obviously everyone has their own interpretation of what has been achieved during these days. I am not sure I quite agree with Lembit's premise because he says people have agreed in principle it is not wrong to hunt with dogs. Well, I thought the people looking at the moral and welfare arguments argued quite strongly that there was a moral reason not to hunt with dogs. I was not sure that had been agreed.
Also, looking at the situation where I tried to address the question of rabbiting and ratting, I did make a case to say there could be clear water in biological terms between hunting those species and the other species. I did not think there was a very strong case for either of them on utility grounds and I was not arguing it should happen but simply that there was potential to see some distinction between those processes and hunting other species with packs of dogs. So I think there is a slightly different interpretation of premise under which Lembit might have been working.
MR OPIK: I must be rigorous on this. As you said, I am absolutely not trying to put words in your mouth and stop me if I am. I was quite clear that you said you were not advocating ratting and rabbiting but I understood we did reach an agreement that there may be some circumstances in which killing a rat or rabbit with dogs would be acceptable in your judgment.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: If that is the impression given I was simply trying to say to you there are circumstances where there may be a utility function for it. I was not advocating it. I do not think we disagree in principle.
MR OPIK: Accepting you are not advocating it, the principal point I am making here in trying to make progress is if there may be situations where we all agree that dogs could be used, the debate is not a qualitative one saying it is in principle wrong to kill animals but quantitative saying these are the criteria that make the cruelty equation acceptable for rabbits and these are criteria that make the cruelty equation not acceptable for other mammals. Certainly it is not the time to try and convince you that killing with dogs is right but, if that is right, then perhaps the answer to the question in this section is, is there some system of regulation or statutory authority which could go through the list of things that Mike Huskisson has described and look on a case by case basis, perhaps even location by location, and say, "These ones satisfy the cruelty equation and these do not".
I am not trying to advocate the Middle Way Group policy here; I am trying to add together what I just heard, but if there is something here maybe this is the kind of thing the Minister could find useful to make progress in an objective way.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Taking that on, ultimately then you are actually asking that side of the table to answer that question and I guess it is the various interest groups that might want to sit down and say what aspect of each process is or is not acceptable rather than ask us, because that may be the more useful way to address that because each person on this side of the table has already said what they think is and is not acceptable. I am not trying to duck the question but --
MR JONES: Roger, I am sure if ISAH had been in place at the time when Michael Huskisson reckons these things took place then it would have been dealt with.
MR HUSKISSON: I would like to pick up on the question of utility and these sort of issues. Surely, going to the heart of that is the evidence that is out there of artificial earthing and the feeding of foxes. How can we talk about the means of controlling foxes when people are encouraging them? Artificial earths are there for foxes to breed in and they are putting out food for foxes in large amounts. I am far from naming hunts but I believe it exists in nearly every hunt in England. We are told that that is the scenario. It seems a strange case that we are talking about different means of killing foxes when people are doing their level best to encourage them. Only recently I was in North Wales where there is an artificial earth with dead sheep dumped nearby as food for the foxes that would have taken up residence there.
MR MARTIN: On artificial earths, I can only talk in my experience. In our country I think everybody knows that are artificial earths and they were all built prior to me and probably some of them over 100 years ago. They are there, they are part of the cover and in the cover. In the last few years it is very interesting because artificial earths are all put forward as being the hunter's way of dealing with foxes which I totally refute, but in the last few years they are being more and more used by badgers. Since the Badger Act came in, obviously badgers are getting over populated in their setts. There is no control on them; they are moving out. We are finding more and more badgers in these artificials so you are establishing in these artificial earths where the badgers are.
Everybody has this idea that the hunt is bringing the fox. The sheep may have been dumped near the artificial because it died. People know with the flesh collection service that a lot of people are not picking up sheep. Now presumptions are being made. Foxes eat dead sheep wherever they are dumped or die and I totally refute the idea that we are breeding foxes. I certainly am not and I do not think it is happening any more or I do not believe it is but if you go in the past tense it happened in the past. The artificials in our country are now being occupied by badgers so I presume they are now badger setts.
MR OPIK: I understand Stephen Harris's suggestion that we talk to each other and I am sure we do all the time --
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Nicely?
MR OPIK: I do not question your evidence, Mike Huskisson, I am just suggesting that there may be some kind of regulatory approach, gradualist approach, and if that does not work then maybe we should tighten up on some of the principles.
MR JACKSON: Minister, we want to move this on a bit because this is about good hunting being done in better circumstances or a better way, and Simon Hart actually hunted a pack of hounds in Wales so we have asked him to formulate a question to other huntsmen.
MR HART: Minister, it is a two-parter to the two professionals. Obviously we come from the point of view that hunting is not inherently cruel, but if we are realistic there are probably some claims and suggestions that there are parts of the process of hunting that some people consider might be cruel and there has been a couple of references to those.
For example, an activity already prohibited by hunting's governing bodies is the bolting of a fox once hunted to ground for the purposes of rehunting it again and again. That is clearly something in the rules as that is not allowed but if we were realistic there are probably some people who occasionally engage in that activity. What we need to do to move this on and have help from you is really hear how you would see those kind of contraventions of existing rules being enshrined in such a way as to prevent them happening?
Secondly, we are talking about modification Lots of people have lots of different ideas about how modification of hunting practice could be implemented in a way that is perceived to improve or minimise suffering.
If, for example, your hunt decided to carry guns as part of a modification idea or if your hunts were prevented from using terriers as part of the process of hunting that you engage in, what would be the outcome in animal welfare terms?
MR JONES: On the first question the difficulty we have looking at the terrain of Britain is it would be difficult to carry out what you want us to do. In our country, yes, it would be possible and, yes, we do it. If we run a fox to ground we bolt it in a net and shoot it. The only thing our farmers are interested in is their fox but in the Lake District and other areas it is very difficult to do anything with that fox once it goes into the rock there. You have no other choice but to bolt it. It is a rough terrain.
MR HART: Minister, the rules of the Central Committee of Fell Packs are specifically different from the rules of the other governing bodies of hunting to account for precisely these differences.
MR JONES: Coming on to shotguns, we do it at Lavington and I do not consider it to be a humane method. The reason we do it is because the farmers want to do it. It is not my preference: it can be an effective way of doing it obviously because if somebody has a gun then we have an extra chance of having it than we have with hounds. It does not always work that way.
MR HART: There is wounding you are suggesting?
MR JONES: Yes, which I said earlier on, and a high degree of wounding.
MR HART: What if you could not use terriers?
MR JONES: Well, then if you run a fox to ground the farmers would just kill it anyway and there would be more suffering. The farmers would take it in their own hands in one way or another.
MR MARTIN: In answer to the first part of the question, you need to have in place a good regulatory authority that has the full confidence not only of Parliament, government and politicians. We obviously have to be seen as I said on a daily basis to be accountable. If a good regulatory authority was in place the public would have confidence in it and if somebody did something wrong, best practice, then they should be accountable. I think hunting people realise now that there is no way in any way we cannot go forward without becoming embroiled in that and if you do something wrong you pay for it because we are accountable.
Regarding shooting, again it is the negative welfare. That is all I see and the idea of not using terriers - as the west country farmer told me, if he had no terriers he would gas them, and I do not think gassing is an ideal way of doing it because it is totally non selective and it is a horrible death, I believe. As regards that you need the terrier work; it is a form of control in itself; and it complements what I do hunting foxes when a fox goes to ground. If you take away the recognised terrier work within hunting, you will leave it to somebody else. You are not going to get rid of terriers. You cannot tell me that because the law is passed no one will use terriers. You will leave it to a completely unaccountable form of control. Our terrier men are all licensed, all experienced men who carry fire arms. I will ask the people in this room, how is that fox going to die when you have the man from the village with his dog digging down to it? He has not got a gun; he will kill it by whatever means and there is a system in place at the moment which deals with this. Foxes are going to be killed; that is the form of control; and I believe that should remain in place.
THE CHAIRMAN: The question was posed specifically to the huntsmen but as with previous questions I am inviting other members of the panel to comment.
MR HUSKISSON: I would make a comment about the issue of bolting. There is a tendency to sit and talk about hunting as if it was some precise science. It is not like the construction of a new car with precise engineering tolerances and that sort of thing. We are talking about a pack of hounds running off the lead, ahead of the huntsmen, not always in his close control, pursuing the fox. They put him to ground and, whatever rules come in, it does not affect that interface between the hounds and their quarry, and there is often a case where they will bolt the quarry themselves. This notion that there should be no bolting was brought in because it was felt to be particularly cruel to hunt an animal until it became so exhausted it sought sanctuary either in a rabbit hole or an earth or straw bales and then recuperated and was chased out in the open and hunted again. So they tried to stop that but it happened anyway because the hounds can come on the scene, they are there ahead of the huntsmen and they can bolt it themselves. They can push it out and hunt him again. It is imprecise. We are not talking about precise engineering tolerances but about wild animals chasing other wild animals often out of control of human beings.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I guess to build on what Mike said about terrier work is absolutely right. I do not say it with great pride but I am an extremely experienced terrier man in my own right and it is not a precise activity. I do not do it now because I do not think it is acceptable practice but when we had to catch a large number of fox on a MAFF contract that was one of the ways we did it but it is not precise and I do not think it is a good practice and I will give you written supplementary evidence on why I think it is not comparable to trapping foxes in terms of welfare.
The other issue is about the regulatory body. One of the two gentlemen at the end talked about public confidence and I think this is where I do not see a way forward here either because we currently have a test of how we can apply the regulations effect of fox hunts through the interpretation of the Badgers Act. It does not work because of problems of access to land and getting evidence. I am frequently asked by policemen to look at setts where there has been an accusation of impropriety. You are not allowed access to inspect them; it is very difficult to do anything; there have been many cases where although hunts are supposed to keep a register of their sett stoppers they refuse to pass on the names of them to the police and the prosecution fails because there is no legal right for policemen to demand that name. So when we have evidence of how a simple regulatory system fails and the interest groups in British mammals have no influence in it I cannot see how we this regulation body will get that public confidence we are told we need.
MR LISSACK: I would like to try and grip with the panel the issue of helping the Minister decide, and Parliament thereafter decide, how we can work forward from where we presently are and the question is predicated on the basis that some form of activity will continue.
Mike Huskisson gave us a wish list of things that could be moderated and changed and it was a very comprehensive and interesting list. It was picked up and I would like to develop it.
I would like to know what the panel think is the practical way in which issues of the sort without getting lost in the detail that Mike Huskisson listed can be resolved in the future because they are going to still be taking place in one way or another perhaps, unless there is prohibition on everything, and I would be interested to know from the practitioner's point of view and from other perspectives if we can get to the bottom of how this can be done.
MR LUFF: I want to ask about terrier work. We heard from Mr Martin about the consequences of a terrier ban on hunting but he also said that all the terrier men they use in their hunt are licensed. Now that implies a code of conduct. Has that licensing process toughened over the years at all? Have things been changed, and could, in the experience of our two huntsmen, there be other things in which terrier work could be improved by changing?
I think we all know that many huntsmen have reservations about terriers but are forced to use them as a utility, so could terrier work be improved?
THE CHAIRMAN: Those supplementaries are both about saying that you may take a view that everything is perfect or that everything ought to go. However, the likelihood is that legislation will lead to some things, however large the scope or small the scope, continuing. In those that Parliament legislates, which may not be your view that Parliament should, that some things continue, what can be done to change for the better the eradication of cruelty? There is a consistency between the two and can you help us on any of those points?
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I guess I do have trouble with that. The trouble with terrier work is that when you put a terrier to ground that dog is no longer in your control. Most terriers will not come out to call and once it is down there you have no idea of what it is doing. If you are in a shallow earth you can get down to it in a few minutes but if you are in several feet of rock or soil it may take you two hours to even work out where the thing is. What is going on down there is beyond your control, therefore taking a crude welfare equation like whether the dog is under your control - the answer is no. Some terriers refuse to come out - they stay there till you have dug down. From that point of view I do not know what you can do to get to the situation where you control what is going on underground. I do not see how you can do that. I am sorry to be unhelpful.
As I say, terrier work is a bloody activity. You have this image given to you that they sit there and yap at the fox and it comes out or it sits there and you dig down. Well, we can send you hundreds of reports in various terrier magazines that say the opposite. It is not like that and I can confirm that and I will send that to you subsequently.
The other issue was relating perhaps more specifically to fox hunting itself and the processes in there but I guess that is the main point at issue. I find it hard because, again, one of the two huntsmen, and I do not mean to be disrespectful, said that the fox is in control of the situation. Well, he is not. You have stopped most of the holes he wants to go down so instantly there is another activity there that is questionable.
If you want a constructive suggestion how to eliminate cruelty from fox hunting, well, there is a way to do that. The current method of fox hunting was invented by Mailer (?) in the 1750s and that was because they wanted a nice, fast chase. Prior to that fox hunts used to meet at 4 am and hunt by following the drag of the fox back to his earth before the sun got up and burnt the smell off. Well, there you are - you can drag hunt a fox back to his earth but I do not suspect it is a very practical suggestion for you, and it was abandoned because frankly they thought it was bloody boring and you can understand why!
MR JONES: When I was chairman of the Terrier Federation for three years we set up a code of conduct and that has been accepted by the MFHA and a lot of people throughout the world. We have moved forward on terrier work because there was a need to move forward but not everyone is under that code of conduct. If you are going to bring a licensing system then obviously that will change those things. What you have to remember is that the terrier is the only selective controller of foxes once they go to ground.
As far as what Mr Harris said about blocking holes, we have not taken up that practice. The fox, once it goes to ground, goes to ground. It would be totally impossible to block all the holes anyway. If you block one valley it would be in another valley in about two minutes but there is no reason why terrier work should not continue because it is an activity used in hill areas to control foxes for farmers.
Mr Harris was talking about shooting vixens on top of the holes. It is the biggest load of rubbish I have ever heard. At night the vixen is out hunting and could be two miles away from the earth, so if you shoot that vixen two miles from the earth how will you find the cubs, and if you do find the cubs you need a terrier to kill them anyway. That is why I think it is important to keep terrier work.
MR HUSKISSON: I wish I could be of help to you on this one, Minister, but obviously far cleverer minds than my own have racked their brains on this issue for many years trying to come up with some compromise situation without success. I cannot really see any way of removing the cruelty from these activities as long as the animal is running there. I have heard it said here this afternoon that the fox is not put under any real pressure and there is no real difficulty there but to my mind and in my experience that is not the case, and when it comes to the fact that hounds are tightly pressing the fox or the deer or the hare then, to my mind, that animal suffers and is suffering unnecessarily.
The easy solution is to take the animal out of the equation. I find it somewhat frustrating because of all the hunts I have seen where the hounds are not chasing the fox but are chasing deer or are after some other species and the riders come by and they are having a wonderful gallop but they are not hunting the fox, so I say to them, "Your hounds are in riot. They are not after a fox" and they accuse me of lying, but I see the deer go out.
The point is if they get as much fun in the belief they are hunting the fox, then we could take fox/deer out and put a man in its place to run the line to simulate the fox hunt and give them the fun and I would be the first one to volunteer to go there --
PROFESSOR HARRIS: I am afraid I think there would be a kill at the end of that hunt!
MR HUSKISSON: I have run two marathons myself and when I get tired I can stop. When an animal is running its last marathon in front of hounds, when it gets tired it dies and it is not pleasant. It is done for sport and it can be easily remedied by putting the artificial scent or a human alternative.
MR MARTIN: Well, there was a lot of anecdotal evidence there, talking about running marathons, which is not in this argument.
I would like to answer Mr Lissack's question about justifying and being accountable. Obviously within ISAH there are the three main pillars of ISAH which is the humanity, the avoidance of unnecessary suffering, the utility, effective management of forest species and the stewardship, sensitive management of the living environment, and within that you can move forward.
As a practitioner, if somebody said to me there will be an inspectorate riding with you every day of the week to inspect you and your hounds and what you do, I would be only too pleased because I feel that, having moved into the 21st century, I am accountable and whatever those hounds do I would be totally happy to stand by what they do. If the idea is that we could move forward with ISAH and they are accountable and if you as a Minister decide that is the way forward and there should be more inspectors in the field and there should be more people to check I would be very happy with that. I think it would be an important part of showing you and the public that we have moved forward and that we are very happy to change if change is for the right reasons.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Well, we have missed a point of agreement here so I thought in a spirit of consensus I would offer it to you. We heard from Mr Jones of the irrelevance of stopping out so I think a lot of people would be delighted if he removed the special provisions that allow fox hunts to stop badger setts. There are things like that that already we have some agreement on it that you can agree. So there you are I have found you one more agreement there! End that privilege.
MR MARTIN: Just to clear this up, badger setts are stopped; we co-operate with badger groups. There has been research into the effect of stopping badger setts and the one good thing to come out of stopping a badger sett before you go hunting is that hounds then do not go near that badger sett and do not disturb it any more.
MS CAMPBELL-McRAE: Going back to this issue of modifying activity to eliminate cruelty, I wanted to ask Mike Huskisson a question as I did the other panel members in relation to improvements as a result of the adoption of licensed hounds. Have you in your experience seen, as we have heard from the other witnesses, any improvements as a result of the introduction of ISAH's rules?
MR HUSKISSON: I am in a difficult situation here to be able to help the panel and the Minister because my ability to work within hunting and gather evidence within hunting has long since passed because they recognise me all too well and I cannot get close to them. There was a time when I could follow under cover as a hunt supporter in order to get good evidence of what was going on but that has long gone. They tell us that they have changed this and that rule but I cannot verify it.
MS CAMPBELL-McRAE: Is that because hunting primarily takes place on private land?
MR HUSKISSON: Yes, and I cannot get anywhere near it. We can go down footpaths and public roads and watch with a pair of binoculars but what goes on in woods on private land out of my sight is not known to me and I have no means of verifying it.
MS CAMPBELL-McRAE: Following up on the point that Mr Martin made, would you therefore have no objection to the act of hunting being viewed on private land?
MR MARTIN: I understand the question that you would like more access to see what was going on --
MS CAMPBELL-McRAE: No. The question is would you accept people viewing hunting on private land?
MR MARTIN: You are asking me to speak for the land owners. I personally would have no objection but I cannot say, "Yes, you should all be allowed on private land". I know that the majority of farmers - there has to be an element of trust somewhere and, as I said to you, these people are involved in animal welfare, they have said to me, "Come on to my land" - you have to trust people in all aspects of private, personal and politicians' lives if you will excuse me, Minister. If there is no trust then there is no belief and we can all go round this table spinning arguments until we are blue in the face.
If the land owner was happy for you to have access, if you ask the land owner I know several in my country who would probably be perfectly happy as long as it was done properly, and you were allowed to go on and witness what was going on. I do not think I have any reason to say that you should not have access but, again, I cannot say that because I am not the land owner.
MS CAMPBELL-McRAE: But in your opinion would it be desirable in terms of building this trust? We have heard that there is in some respects a breakdown in trust because of the incidents that have repeatedly been drawn to our attention.
MR MARTIN: I think it definitely would because I think it would again show us to be openly accountable but I am sure that I could ask a land owner - and this is me saying this - and say that you wanted to come on there and you wanted to check in the public, whether you were a government appointed inspector, a private inspector or an ISAH inspector, and I think that access would be allowed because they would see it as a way forward and a way of making us even more accountable.
MR HUSKISSON: This was what we had with Lord Burns and his inquiry; we wanted to urge him to be able to go out there unannounced but it was difficult for him because of who he was. He was recognised as soon as he turned up. I went on a lot of the visits that he made into the world of hunting and he was granted full and open access and everyone was very friendly and helpful and he was driven around in Land Rovers and allowed to go here, there and everywhere but they knew who he was. He never saw a stag or a hind killed - there was a lot he never saw because he was being given a guided tour, if you like, of the hunting field and this is the problem you have with any form of inspection like this.
It is like in the old days when the school inspectors came round to your boarding school. All the flowers went out in the pots outside and everything was spruced up and then disappeared as soon as they had gone and this is the problem with having this sort of inspection - that they know who is coming. It is a problem that has taxed all areas of animal welfare in research laboratories as well. Home Office inspectors have that problem - they have to announce when they are coming round.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: Going back to what Mike said, if you go back to the Burns Inquiry, he wanted to get large samples of foxes examined to see methods of killing, and lots of foxes were being killed but none were coming in to be inspected. He only got a handful. So, again, there is this problem trying to get anything you can verify or inspect or monitor.
MR OPIK: So the frustration that Mike is describing is that when you turn up, because they know who you are, basically they stop doing things you would otherwise see?
MR HUSKISSON: It is in their control whether hounds will catch a deer because they can be urged on or stopped. It is a lot in their control as to whether they will dig a fox out or not. When Lord Burns went to a fox hunt up north there was a fox put to ground beside an old stone wall and they declined to dig it and I think Lord Burns was somewhat frustrated by that but it was perhaps down to his presence and the presence of a Sky television news crew that were there and perhaps understandably so. Having said that, however, another day on another hunt they did dig. It is in their control when they know that the people are there from some regulatory or observatory authority.
MR OPIK: So inspection works?
MR HUSKISSON: What do you mean? It does not see what they want to see. If you have an inspection to see hunting as it really is it does not work, no.
MR OPIK: And regulation is possible because those organisations were able to rein in the bad practices they would otherwise observe?
MR HUSKISSON: The hunts on the day are able to regulate, control what happens - whether or not they kill a fox or a stag, yes.
MR OPIK: I think this is really important so let's be absolutely clear. Inspection works because bad practice stopped when they knew you or Lord Burns were watching and, secondly, they had the capacity to control the events going on to rein in the bad practice through regulation of their activities. Is that the correct understanding of what you have just said?
MR HUSKISSON: They can always stop a dig out. They do not have to do it - that is in their power - but they have to hunt. They are chasing the fox to the point where it seeks sanctuary below ground so there is cruelty there because it was an exhausted fox that went to ground.
PROFESSOR HARRIS: As I understand what you are saying, Mr Opik, though it is not an argument I have founded, if what Mike says is right it seems to me that regulation works as long as you have someone there every minute of the day for every hunt. I guess that would work for every hunt every minute of the day.
MR OPIK: My understanding from what the other two have said and from what you have said, Mike, which I think is very seminal is that the hunts do have the capacity to control the good or bad practice because otherwise they could not have stopped you from seeing things. Secondly, on something that Stephen Harris has said with which I adamantly agree, there has to be the fear of inspection in many cases to make sure that happens but when that fear is present, the inspection works.
MR MARTIN: I totally agree. I agree with everything you have said, but again picking up one other point about a fox going to ground, whether Lord Burns was there or not, again it is the landowner's decision, we are there at the landowner's behest, his choice; if he wants the fox left, it is left, if he wants it got out of the ground it is far better done by us as expert practitioners, rather than somebody who is just playing around. All I would say is that again shows the degree of accountability. We have a very reasonable aim and we