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 C
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: This session focusses on the question of how the principles would impact on those involved with pest control and whose jobs are involved - gamekeepers and so on. We have for this session Charles Nodder who is an adviser to the National Gamekeepers Organisation and previously the Game Conservancy Trust, and Sean Rickard from the Cranfield School of Management, a Senior Lecturer, serving on the relevant panel there of economists. I am tempted to comment on that, but I will not.
Can I just remind everybody, in case they have forgotten, to switch off their mobile phones or any other electronic gadgets that they happen to have brought with them, and can we make a start. Could we have your presentations, please?
MR NODDER: Thank you, Minister. I have been invited here in my role as Adviser to the National Gamekeepers Organisation. Ken Butler, seated behind me, is the Organisation's Chairman
The NGO now has 3,000 gamekeeper members and it speaks for the gamekeeping profession in England and Wales. It may also be relevant that as well as being their political adviser, I am also a practitioner, personally involved in a considerable amount of voluntary gamekeeping in my spare time.
Because our session is a short one, I want to concentrate on the potential impact of restrictions on the use of dogs in fox control.
The extent of damage that can be done by foxes to game birds and other ground-nesting species has been demonstrated beyond doubt many times, and references are given in the written evidence that I have submitted. It is not surprising, therefore, that foxes are controlled at considerable cost and effort by 98 per cent of gamekeepers and also now by many conservation organisations such as English Nature and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. This control is done not for sport, it is done because it is necessary.
The legal methods used are shooting (shotguns and rifles, day and night), dogs, used in various ways (hounds and terriers and/or lurchers), snares and cage traps. These techniques are all that remain now of what was once a much wider range, because poisons and unselective and inhumane traps have been removed by earlier legislation.
Most gamekeepers use a combination of the remaining legal control methods, although the extent to which they use each varies widely from place to place, and this is because different methods suit different circumstances. For example, dogs are the only effective means of flushing foxes from thick cover, while terriers are the only means of locating a fox underground. Lamping is sometimes not possible without vehicular access or where there are particular safety considerations, and it is much less effective when the crops are high. Snares cannot be used where livestock is present, and cage traps, whilst they can work in towns, invariably prove ineffective in the countryside.
Retention of the full range of remaining legal control techniques is thus essential to effective year-round management of the fox population, and this is a conclusion not just of the National Gamekeepers Organisation but also the Game Conservancy Trust, the Country Landowners Association, the British Association of Shooting and Conservation, the NFU and the Farmers' Union of Wales.
Gamekeepers, we believe, have the experience and the local knowledge to be best placed to decide what methods to deploy at any one time in each locality.
Foxes and the other mammals in question are protected from unnecessary suffering, in some cases by general animal welfare legislation, and in all cases by various codes of practice, including that of the National Working Terrier Federation and, very importantly, by the strong welfare ethic of the gamekeeping profession.
There is no widespread public call for any of this to change, and there is certainly no parliamentary demand for the work of gamekeepers to be curtailed.. On the contrary, the Government has a manifesto commitment, repeated by the Minister, not to restrict shooting in any way, yet reducing the ways in which gamekeepers can use dogs for dealing with foxes and other predators would restrict shooting severely. Some game shoots, especially wild-bird shoots on grouse moors, would simply become unmanageable and have to stop, with adverse consequences for jobs and the rural economy. I shall come back to that in a moment. Conservation would suffer too. Rare and declining ground-nesting birds, including many biodiversity action plan species, would experience further declines through increased predation.
A particular worry of our organisation is that illegal control techniques that are unselective and inhumane could resurface once again as inexpert practitioners search around in desperation for ways of dealing with the growing fox population.
Returning to the question of jobs, the Burns Report acknowledged the importance of the many forms of "hunting with dogs" used by gamekeepers, but when it came to assessing likely job losses and economic consequences of legislation Burns looked only at those relating to hunting with hounds. Gamekeepers kill around 80,000 foxes in Britain each year, four times as many as do registered hunts, and we believe 57 per cent of gamekeepers use dogs within this control effort. That is to say nothing of the use they make of their dogs in managing the mink, rabbits, hares and deer. If these forms of hunting with dogs were to be restricted, game management would be severely compromised, with knock-on effects for shooting and therefore the countryside as a whole.
The magnitude of these impacts has never been properly assessed, but with game shooting worth an estimated £650 million a year for the UK economy and contributing to the direct employment of 26,300 people, they are clearly very substantial. It is in this context that gamekeepers are alarmed that no previous legislative attempt to ban hunting has succeeded in distinguishing between formal hunting with hounds and other pest control using working dogs. For example, the last Bill considered at Westminster would have made illegal all terrier work, whether by hunts, gamekeepers, farmers or anybody else, and even restricted the use of gundogs on a shooting day. In Scotland, by contrast, the exemptions in the recent Act, which we believe rightly allow necessary fox control by gamekeepers, seem to have left the main provisions of the Act in tatters and open to further legal challenge.
In summary, gamekeepers regard the use of dogs in wildlife management as being essential to their work. If the use of dogs were to be restricted, there would be severe consequences for shooting-related jobs, the rural economy, bio-diversity and the management of the countryside.
THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Sean Rickard.
MR RICKARD: Thank you very much, Minister. Can I say that I appear here as an independent. I am not a member of, I am not employed by, any organisation which as anything to do with hunting, either for it or against it. My submission and evidence this afternoon is concerned primarily with the effects of a ban on hunting with dogs on employment.
My expertise, such as it is, comes from my involvement with agriculture over 20 years, ten of which were spent as Chief Economist with the National Farmers' Union where I seemed to spend quite a considerable amount of my time working out the effects of changes in policy on rural unemployment.
To move this matter on to save arguing over endless points, I will start with the estimate of jobs that are dependent on hunting given by the independent consultants to the Burns Inquiry, a figure of 5,724 jobs. I emphasise that because Burns took it into his head to say it was between 6,000 and 8,000. He provides no evidence for that. He just dreamt it up.
I also point out the use of the word "dependent", and I would draws people's attention to what existed in the following paragraph of the Burns Report, and which I very much echo. It is impossible to estimate how many jobs would be lost as a result of a ban on hunting, but what we do know for a certainty is that the number that would be lost would be a great deal smaller than the 5,724. That is my opinion. It appears also to be the Burns Inquiry's opinion, although, for reasons best known to them, they did not choose to emphasise that point.
I think it would be helpful if we think about the jobs as divided into four categories. There are those who are employed by hunts - 710 according to the Burns Inquiry. The Burns Inquiry said there were 1,497 jobs dependent on hunt followers. Then they said another 1,992 were accounted for by the suppliers, people who supply those who hunt with goods and services, and another 1,525 jobs in the wider economy.
The thrust of my argument is this. Burns himself pointed out that of those 710 jobs 25 per cent of them were employed as grooms and stable hands, so unless you can tell me how big a switch there is going to be to drag hunting as a result of a ban on hunting with dogs, unless you can tell me how many of those hunts are going to have nothing more to do with horses, you cannot even tell me that 710 jobs will go, though what we do know is that probably the majority of those jobs would go following a ban on hunting.
Then we turn to this question of the followers. The problem here is that what we again do not know is firstly how much activity and expenditure will be switched by followers to alternative equestrian and another activities which will continue to employ these people. In any event, what the independent consultants to the Burns Inquiry pointed out - it seems, I think, to have slipped through the Burns Report - was that very many of these individuals were youngsters, as they call them, working with horses as recreation. In other words they helped out with these horses, presumably in return for being able to ride them. We therefore have a conceptual difficulty here: If these people are no longer engaged is this unemployment or loss of recreation? If it is recreation I am not too sure how we can in the same breath and say this is unemployment. If some of these people lost the chance to ride horses, they would lose the opportunity to engage in a certain amount of recreation.
When we turn to the suppliers and the wider economy, then you have an enormous difficulty, because unless you are going to tell me that these people who hunt are going to take the money they spend on hunting and burn it, then we know it is going to be re-spent somewhere. It is either going to be spent on equestrian activities or other activities, or it is spent in other sectors of the economy, but the point is, it goes back into the economy, and if you lose a job here you gain a job there. If we are talking in terms of the economy, if we are talking in terms of the economic impact, then we have to think in terms of the net employment. It is quite ridiculous, and certainly not acceptable, just to look on one side of the account. If expenditure is taken out from A and goes back to B, then what is the effect of that going to be on total employment? This applies to the last two categories, in fact.
So if our concern is with the net effect on the rural economy of a ban on hunting, it would be more honest - the Burns Committee say it is going to be limited in the short run, not many jobs are going to be lost - to point out that we are probably talking about a figure of about 1,000. If you want to spread it either way, 1,500 to 500, in the short run, then that is fine by me.
To put that in context, over the last 25 years the agricultural industry has lost 9,000 jobs per year. As far as I am aware, unemployment in rural areas is growing faster than in urban areas. Employment in rural areas is lower than in urban areas. If you cannot demonstrate that loss of agriculture jobs has caused great problems for rural areas, then I submit that you are in some difficulties in arguing that a ban on hunting is going to have anything other than a very small, indeed negligible, effect on unemployment. Of course, I am mindful of the fact that for those who actually lose their job it is a personal tragedy for them, but then this is going on every day in our economy in this world of so-called creative destruction, people are losing their jobs and people are gaining new jobs.
In summary, Minister, a ban on hunting would create some unemployment. The effect would be so small that I do not think, other than those who are affected, anyone else would notice.
THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much indeed, both of you. Can I turn to the panel as before, with a request for short questions, crisp probing of the witnesses and instructiveness.
MS CAMPBELL-MCRAE: Thank you, Minister. This is a question for Sean Rickard, and I hope that it gives you the opportunity for a very simple answer.
Given the points listed in your paper, such as the tendency for any job losses to be absorbed and the likely reallocation of expenditure on other activities, how significant do you believe that a ban on hunting would be in economic terms?
MR RICKARD: I can answer that very simply. In economic terms, I think it is negligible. In fact, if you push me on it, it depends where this extra expenditure turns up, but just to take an extreme example to make my point, if those who had formerly hunted decided to spend their money on restaurants, you would actually have a gain in employment.
MS CAMPBELL-MCRAE: Adding to that, could you give us your analysis of the points that Charles Nodder put forward, and any comments you might like to make with regard to his paper, and vice versa?
MR RICKARD: I have enormous difficulty in dealing with the points made by Charles Nodder, because he provided no quantification whatsoever. To use words like "substantial", or "significant", etcetera, has no meaning at all unless it can be put in some sort of context. To give you an example, I think we were told that 98 per cent of gamekeepers are involved in killing foxes, but what is of importance here, is that if, as a result of a ban on hunting with dogs, gamekeepers were prevented from killing foxes, does that mean that 5 per cent of their activities would be curtailed? Does it mean 10, does it mean 15 per cent? I have no idea whatsoever. We were given no guidance on that.
THE CHAIRMAN: The members of the panel I suppose can question each other. Charles, would you like to respond?
MR NODDER: Yes, I would like to respond to both questions, if I may. First the point about the extent to which fox control would be stopped if hunting with dogs by gamekeepers was restricted. We do actually have a figure for that - it is 47 per cent - based upon three different sets of surveys of gamekeepers that have been done.
My main point in relation to potential job losses in gamekeeping is that they have not been quantified. This is why I have to resort to words like "substantial" and other relatively subjective terms. Whereas with hunting Lord Burns and the many inquiries that fed into his inquiry have come up with a well-reasoned figure, we just simply do not have figures for the job losses there would be if gamekeeping were restricted.
I think to dismiss Lord Burns as having invented a figure is a bit disingenuous. When Lord Burns started his inquiry he said that the estimates of the numbers of jobs that might be lost through hunting ranged from 4,000 to 22,000. In a fairly major part of the work of the Burns Report and the research that was done for it, he narrowed that down to 6,000 to 8,000 jobs. Now we can argue about whether that is very precise or not, but I would have thought in terms of the needs of Parliament in weighing this up as an equation, that is actually a sufficiently precise figure.
I would like to echo something Sean Rickard said, which is that 6,000, 8,000, 2,000, whatever, if it is your job that is being lost, that is a personal tragedy, and both for gamekeepers and for hunt servants the loss of the job very often involves the loss of the house as well, and of course it involves the loss of the vocation.
MR BATCHELOR: As a supplementary to that, and bearing in mind that I think 93 per cent of the horses in the UK are not in any way involved in hunting, there is a very interesting issue here in relation first of all to the location of the losses and the opportunity for them to be re-absorbed, compared with, say, a car factory in one place closing down; and secondly, the extent to which, because this particular activity, for want of a better word, plays such a small part in the overall horse/equine economy, the distribution of the impact and the replacement expenditure question is something I would like both speakers to address, because I think there is a very real difference for a highly localised loss and its impact and for a highly distributed loss and its impact.
THE CHAIRMAN: Charles Nodder, would you like to start?
MR NODDER: Minister, I am here to represent gamekeeping interests and I can comment on the gamekeeping jobs. I am not in a position, through personal knowledge, to comment on jobs in the equine industry.
THE CHAIRMAN: Sean Rickard?
MR RICKARD: Let me comment briefly. I do not claim any great expertise here in the horse world, even though my wife does breed and ride horses. It would be very, very difficult to say that expenditure taken out of, say, a local area was going to go back into that area, if you had a ban on hunting and people then spent the money again. But I would draw the panel's attention to the point made very clearly, certainly by the independent consultants and therefore by implication the Burns Report, that at the moment a great deal of the expenditure by followers flows out of the local area; when they buy saddles, equipment, feed and the like, A relatively small amount of expenditure on hunting is actually so localised.
Then I think it is a question of going back to my point, which I think covers so many points really. Most farm workers lose their houses when they lose their jobs. Most farm workers are relatively low paid, though they are apparently better paid than those who work for hunts, As these people have lost their jobs, they have apparently been in large measure re-absorbed . The evidence is all about us. Therefore, I think it is beholden on those who claim otherwise to explain why the situation would be different in this case.
THE CHAIRMAN: I wonder if I could just ask a question, because I was not sure that I was clear on something Charles Nodder said a few moments ago in response to Phyllis's question. You referred to a percentage of gamekeepers - I think the figure you used was 47 per cent - who said that their activities would be affected if hunting with dogs were to be curtailed. I am not sure what that figure meant, or what assumption they would be making about the extent of the curtailment of activities with dogs. If legislation, for instances, were to affect the traditional hunting with dogs, that does not necessarily mean that it would affect the way in which gamekeepers on a day-to-day basis use dogs. So I would be grateful if you would explain to me what that figure was and what it actually means.
MR NODDER: That is absolutely right. Fifty-seven per cent of gamekeepers use their dogs when controlling foxes, and that is from a survey of BASC gamekeeper members. There are two further relevant surveys. There was a survey conducted of the National Gamekeepers' Organisation members by Bristol University. It was actually a study that dealt with weasels and stoats primarily, but it did ask a question about fox control.
THE CHAIRMAN: I thought you said it was 47 per cent, but 57 per cent is the figure mentioned in your paper, which refers to "keepers use dogs within this control effort". It means any sort of use of dogs.
MR NODDER: Yes. The further qualifying figure is 46 per cent of keepers who use dogs regularly coming out of an NGO survey, and the Wildlife Network's “Putting Foxes First”, which estimates that 42 per cent of foxes killed are either flushed or found by dogs. Broadly speaking, 40-50 per cent is a fair measure of the extent of the use of dogs by keepers in their total fox control effort.
THE CHAIRMAN: Forgive me, but I thought you were indicating an impact of any legislation. You were just indicating the generality right across the board of the use of dogs.
MR NODDER: No, I think that would be the impact of legislation, if it was sufficiently broadly drawn to restrict any use of dogs in "hunting", whether singly by gamekeepers or by farmers
THE CHAIRMAN: It is right across the whole gamut; it is not referring just to the activity of formal hunts.
MR NODDER: That is correct.
DR LINDLEY: You say that 42 per cent of foxes controlled by gamekeepers are flushed or found by dogs. Those are the words you used.
MR NODDER: Yes, that is the Wildlife Network's figure.
DR LINDLEY: That is flushed or found, not hunted.
MR NODDER: No. Let us be clear on this. The majority of fox control by gamekeepers when they use dogs is flushing a fox from a breeding earth with a terrier, and shooting it as it is flushed.
THE CHAIRMAN: That is included within those figures.
MR NODDER: Yes.
MR LUFF: I have a few questions directed towards Mr Nodder, because the economic and job issues are strictly secondary, and it is the animal welfare issues that are foremost - and you cannot create jobs out of unnecessary suffering, so we are concentrating on Mr Nodder in this session. I am just seeking clarification of my first question which is what you were just pushing him on. You list three particular problems that would emerge if legal methods of fox control were restricted further. You are talking here not about mounted packs of hounds; you are talking about gamekeepers using dogs to control predators.
MR NODDER: Exactly. I am trying to establish what the difficulties for gamekeepers would be if a ban on hunting were so broadly drawn as to preclude all hunting with all types of dogs in any circumstances.
MR LUFF: My specific question is about how gamekeepers would respond to a ban in relation to the fox population. What level of fox predation would then be acceptable to gamekeepers in areas where hunting had previously been practised and where the level of fox predation was acceptable, and would now be acceptable without the hunts there to have an interest in fox populations.
MR NODDER: Minister, can I answer that by quoting one statement from a Game Conservancy Trust Publication. The Game Conservancy Trust has done 30 years' work on the impact of predatory species on game, particularly concentrating on foxes. They summarised this in a publication called A Question of Balance published in 1999. It says: "Foxes have a large impact on small game species as well as on other vulnerable prey such as ground-nesting birds. For a species like the grey partridge, the main predation is on nesting hens, which lowers production and affects autumn numbers, and subsequently breeding stocks. For the brown hare, the main predation is probably on leverets and may be sufficient to keep numbers of adults permanently low. Wild game bird management for driven shooting, pheasant, partridge or grouse, would be impossible without reducing the fox population. Foxes can also be a real threat to colonial nesting birds and nature reserve wardens have found fox control essential to prevent the destruction of nesting eider duck and common tern."
For gamekeepers, particularly those who are reliant on wild birds to provide their shooting, as for example, all grouse moors, fox control is an absolutely fundamental part of what they do; and if it were restricted in any way, that would lead to problems.
MR LUFF: I think you have perhaps missed my point. If traditional hunting on horseback, by men in red coats, were banned, how would gamekeepers respond to the fox populations on their territories? Would they be more likely to kill more of them than they do at present or not?
MR NODDER: I think it would depend entirely where you were. The evidence of the Game Conservancy is that in certain parts of the country hunting with hounds makes a very meaningful contribution to fox control. In those areas, the absence of hunting might mean that gamekeepers have to increase their effort. There are other places where fox-hunting almost certainly acts as a brake on the control of foxes by gamekeepers through social pressure and so on; and where that brake were taken off, it is only speculation but the likelihood is that more foxes would be killed rather than less.
BARONESS GOLDING: If organised hunting of rats, rabbits and mink was banned, how would that affect the ability to control them?
MR NODDER: I am not sure there is any organised hunting of rats.
BARONESS GOLDING: There is.
MR NODDER: The case of rats is a good example. At the moment the two practical means of disposal available to the gamekeeper are the use of traps and the use of anticoagulant poisons. Many gamekeepers are now returning to using terriers to control rats - to smoke them out and use terriers to catch them, because they prefer to do this than to use large quantities of poisons in the countryside, about which there is at least some concern on secondary poisoning.
MR JACKSON: Minister, if we can try and broaden the discussion, on the basis that this session is fundamentally about people, society and community structure, and a lot about bank notes, would the panel please say in the evidence they have given the extent to which they have taken into account in their evidence the possible impact of any changes, not just those resulting from the application of the principles that the Minister is interested in, on community structures, with regard particularly to what one finds underlying, in letters of fire, in the Rio declaration, the Burn convention and the habitat directive with regard to communities and the environment that they live in?
MR RICKARD: I have to say that I do not claim to be qualified, and do not intend to comment upon the impact on flora and fauna and wildlife habitats. I do not have any expertise.
MR JACKSON: Communities?
MR RICKARD: I am coming to those. I am afraid the rural areas - and I have watched this for over thirty years in the farming industry - perhaps like all parts of our economy are undergoing constant change. What society always has to come to terms with are the benefits of change. We lead a very different life now to what our parents and their parents before them did - and most of us would say that we have a much better standard of living as a result of that - but we have to come to terms with the impacts of change, which are always adverse on some people - I do not deny that. Whether we are talking about economic change or changes that result from legislation or whatever, I acknowledged in my evidence that there would be an impact on some people. What it behoves those who have to make a is to get it into a clear perspective. That is why it is important - if I could just take a swipe to my left here - that Burns, who made up the 6,000-8,000 should have stuck to a normal distribution and placed their estimate either side of 5,724 not one way.
I repeat: the overall economic effect of this ban in the overall context of change in rural areas which is going on year in, year out, is negligible. I do not deny that for individuals there is hardship. Every day around us there are individuals who lose jobs; every day there are changes in communities - local shops and pubs closing down. Unless you are going to start telling people what they must do in their lives, forcing them to shop in areas where you think they should - I cannot do much about that and I have to accept that change goes on; and on balance I believe that that has been to the benefit of most people. What I am really coming round to say is that I cannot, in truth, looking at the changes I have seen over thirty years, put this sort of change into a very high category.
MR NODDER: Minister, I think the question was about social and community upheaval, rather than about economic change or upheaval. I think that you have to accept that both within hunting and within shooting (which I know better) the social capital and the social networks in the countryside that relate to the totality of these activities is enormous. Indeed, in parts of rural Britain it is, frankly, what makes the countryside tick in winter. If one thinks of Exmoor for example, hunting and shooting is what Exmoor is about in the winter months. I think it would be a very considerable impact if these activities were either stopped or made more difficult to the point that they became less common. It is certainly the case, as the questioner has indicated, that this country, as a signatory to various international declarations, is required to look after its local communities and respect local traditions.
MR LISSACK: This is a different tack, Minister, but I hope it will be relevant to the issue in play. I would like to ask the panel whether they have any view as to whether there is some potential gain - we focus on the ban, but rather from the application of principles, which is what the question about; that is to say, the principle of cruelty and the principle of utility. I would like to ask you to consider whether you think there is or is not positive value to be found in the following three respects: (1) a welfare gain for the quarry species from there being higher and more visible standards imposed on those who must control them; (2) whether particularly you, Mr Nodder, think there would be a discouragement for the unlawful unregulated use of dogs with wild mammals if the majority were subjected to a licensing or regulatory; and (3) whether there would be a greater pride taken by members of your organisation and others affiliated or related to it in their work if they were given a higher rating, as it were, viewed objectively, because they are tested against some higher criteria? Can you both comment?
MR NODDER: The question, as I understand it, is really about whether we should license some of these activities in order to gain a greater control over them. I think we have to be careful with this. There is a considerable suspicion in the countryside about licensing schemes to do with the control of wild animals. You do not have to go far to find examples that indicate why that is the case. If you have very, very specific, even animal-specific licensing, as you do with the control of problem badgers or birds of prey, for which it is possible to get a licence but only under very, very strict conditions - if you try to apply that to the control by gamekeepers of 80,000 foxes a year, you end up with a bureaucratic nightmare and a system that, frankly, is unworkable. If, on the other hand, you are thinking in terms of a licensing scheme whereby individuals are accredited in a non-burdensome way, certainly not on an annual basis as suggested in the last Bill before Westminster - if a guy is fit to do a job, then presumably he is fit for a number of years - and the licensing leaves it to that individual to choose from a suite of fox management or mink management techniques to get the result that he needs, but the judgment is left for him on the ground, knowing the techniques available and the time and place, then that is potentially workable. We have seen slow change in the attitudes of gamekeepers, not just in this country but overseas as well, towards viewing those sorts of schemes with greater regard than they did in the past - but it has to be done with extreme care, in the context of a Government pledge not to restrict shooting - certainly with a very light touch.
MR LISSACK: Would they have the benefit of the three different sorts that I outlined, do you think, or not?
MR NODDER: If it was the right sort of scheme and it took gamekeepers and other countryside managers with it, then it would.
MR RICKARD: Again, I do not feel qualified to comment on welfare. I have a simple observation: as a general rule in a modern society, I would welcome higher standards and encouragement of them. I am not qualified to talk about this.
DR LINDLEY: Can I ask a specific question of Mr Nodder relating to what he has called "rare and declining ground-nesting birds". In your paper and presentation you have made the specific statement that "rare and declining ground-nesting birds, including many Biodiversity Action Plan species, will suffer further declines through increased predation" - if legal methods of fox control are restricted further. I wondered how you felt that reconciled with the view given to this hearing by the RSPB, through Professor Harris: "Overall, fox predation is not a significant problem on our 176 reserves and predation usually stops when the control is precise and small-scale." I do not quite see how your view of protecting Biodiversity Action Plan nesting birds meets the RSPB's view at all.
MR NODDER: There is a study within which RSPB scientists were involved, and it has been published in a refereed journal recently. It very clearly shows a linkage between the success of ground-nesting birds on grouse moors where gamekeepers are controlling predators, in comparison to areas where they are not. There is a linkage there.
The reason why I think our two statements are not contradictory is that it is all about management objectives. If you are managing a nature reserve, as the RSPB are, to try and encourage as broad a suite of wildlife as you can, you are not hugely concerned about the numbers of individual species. Provided bird-watchers can come and actually see a Golden Plover or whatever, you may not necessarily need a huge number of Golden Plovers to satisfy the objective of the reserve. The gamekeeper, on the other hand, particularly the wild bird gamekeeper, is employed to do one thing only, and that is to provide a harvestable surplus of game birds. He needs a lot more partridges, pheasant or grouse than the RSPB would need on a nature reserve. The management objective is different. The gamekeeper's interest and his need to control foxes is going to be that much greater.
DR LINDLEY: Forgive me, but that was not the point of my question. My question related to rare and declining ground-nesting birds, which is the RSPB's objective, clearly; and I do not think I would include partridges and the like. I was not questioning anything to do with the management of game birds for shooting, but the claim that a restriction of fox control would adversely affect rare and declining ground-nesting birds. Surely it would be the RSPB objective to maintain those?
MR NODDER: Take the example of that string of nature reserves along the north Norfolk coast, some of which are owned by the RSPB [full stop] Members of the National Gamekeepers' Organisation have been involved in helping train wardens in fox control, and that has included the use of dogs to control foxes. The primary aim there has been to look after terns on the nature reserves.
THE CHAIRMAN: Charles Nodder, in your main evidence you made a point that has not been picked up as yet: "Some game shoots would become unmanageable and have to stop if legal methods of fox control are restricted further." Is that based on the assumption, like one of the other points we raised earlier, that you have effectively the banning of everything as distinct from a limitation on some elements of activity with dogs?
MR NODDER: If a ban were phrased in such a way that current operations by gamekeepers were materially affected, then this result would begin to take shape, and the extent to which it would take shape would obviously depend entirely on how far the management of predators by gamekeepers was being changed.
THE CHAIRMAN: It would relate primarily to the activities that would be undertaken with their dogs specifically by gamekeepers, as distinct from the wider range of hunting activities.
MR NODDER: That was the context within which I made the point.
MR OPIK: You said that there would probably be an increase in some areas of the killing of foxes if hunting with dogs was banned. What would be the methods you imagine being used in those areas where killing of foxes was increased?
MR NODDER: It is only speculation that the numbers of foxes controlled would increase, but it is a reasonably well-founded speculation. One could also say that you can probably extrapolate the current suite of control methods and say that they would be used in the same sort of proportion because, as I said in my introductory remarks, it depends very much on where you are and what time you are operating whether your preferred method will be lamping, the use of the snare, the use of terriers flushing a fox to shoot it, driving foxes through woodland to shoot them at the end as they come out, or whatever. The full range is likely to be used, and it will depend on where you are in the country as to the proportion in which they are deployed.
MR JACKSON: Can either panel member tell us whether in their view there would be ways of applying the principles that we have been discussing, i.e., cruelty and utility, in a way which would have a beneficial impact on those involved in pest control/wildlife management and jobs - and, I cannot resist saying "and the communities of which they form part"?
MR NODDER: If I do not misunderstand you, that is quite similar to the question asked by Mr Lissack, Q.C. If the principles were deployed in a very measured way to gamekeeping practice, then there could be a benefit in terms of pride, standards and quality.
MR RICKARD: I have a slightly different view. Earlier Charles said that gamekeepers would have to put more effort in, and one interpretation of "more effort" is possibly more employment in that area.
I would point out something else that it suits people to overlook. If they looked at the agricultural industry, they would have seen this over the years. I have never seen a change in agriculture that was not opposed. What I do see is that almost every time they are introduced, they are accepted; people adjust their behaviour, and it works. In short, what I am really saying is that the gamekeepers should recognise this; there is one game today where people are trying to resist something; once the world changes and something arrives, how would their behaviour have changed to adapt? I am pretty confident that most people adapt to the new world they are in.
MR JACKSON: That is not quite what I was after.
MR BATCHELOR: As a non-economist, I am struggling with a concept that is causing me some difficulty here, and it is the conflict in the argument that says on the one hand if people cannot do this thing in a particular way, life will get more difficult and therefore there will be less jobs, and the comment made by Mr Rickard that if you change the rules of the game it might create more jobs in a different place. There was a huge assertion that I questioned in relation to the £650 million figure that suddenly flew into the paper, with regard to the impact of shooting. My concern here is that if you found one activity and displaced control to another place, what evidence is there to substantiate the claim that there would be less jobs in shooting?
MR NODDER: The 650 million figure comes from a paper prepared on 1997 data by Cobham Resource Consultants. I did not deploy it as a figure for the economic impact on shooting of interference with fox control by keepers; it is the total economic activity in 1997 in this country related to shooting.
MR BATCHELOR: So it is not relevant.
MR NODDER: My point was that this is a big industry with a lot of money and a lot of jobs involved, and therefore any impact of changing the fundamentals of predator control by the gamekeeper is likely to have a substantial knock-on effect, but I was very clear to make the point that that effect has simply not been assessed.
MR BATCHELOR: It might be positive or negative.
MR NODDER: It could be positive or negative, but I find it very difficult to see what way it could be positive, in terms of there being more shooting if game management becomes more difficult.
MR BATCHELOR: At the very simple level, if there is more litter on the streets, there might be more jobs for removing the litter. Surely, if there is a greater problem in relation to managing the shoot, there would be more jobs in managing the shoot?
MR NODDER: The problem we are dealing with here is the control of the foxes. If a limitation is imposed on how you control the foxes, how can you get more people to control them? They do not have the tools to do it - you have taken them away.
MR RICKARD: I would answer in a broader sense, as an economist. As for £650 million or whatever, I do not much care; it is an estimate. The point that needs to be taken is this. Unless you are going to argue that if there were a decline in some activity that resulted in £650 million or £550 million, that other £100 million is going to go somewhere. If one is going to take a comprehensive view of this, one has to say in the round: "Where would this money be spent?" The whole line of a lot of this has been to assume that this has been taken away out of the arena: that is just naive and unacceptable. Most of it will probably go back into broadly the areas it was originally in. If that is the case, it really changes by an enormous magnitude the sums we are talking about. In other words, people who ride horses will continue to ride horses and continue to spend money. If they do not spend as much here, they will spend it there; and the effect on employment will therefore be rather limited.
THE CHAIRMAN: Some of these figures have been bandied around outside these hearings, it has to be said; and it is a pity if the general public gets confused. The £650 million figure that is being referred to is the size of the shooting industry.
MR RICKARD: The alleged size of the shooting industry. Of course, hunting is much, much smaller than that.
THE CHAIRMAN: My point about it is that that is what that figure is, and in a sense it has nothing to do with what we are exploring here, which is the impact of the activity with dogs. I want this to be clear because it has been bandied around publicly outside these hearings.
MR NODDER: I simply use it as a figure to show the scale of the UK shooting industry. It is not an alleged figure; it is a figure based on the best available research at the time.
MR RICKARD: It is an estimate, but - and this is the point ---
MR NODDER: That is different from an "alleged" figure.
MR RICKARD: It is an estimate. Out of £650 million, what we do not know - and this point is relevant - is that if there were a ban on hunting with dogs that affected the use that gamekeepers put their dogs to, it will have some effect on that 650 million. We have no evidence presented here, and we have no idea whether we are talking 5 million, 10 million or 50 million. No-one has offered any evidence of that.
MR BATCHELOR: Is it not also equally arguable that the fox population will be just as well controlled by releasing fewer surplus pheasants?
MR NODDER: No, it is not. There are many shoots that depend on released pheasants, but
MR BATCHELOR: But you are providing food for foxes - that is the point I am making.
MR NODDER: You are providing food for foxes, and there have been scientific studies on fox diets and so on, but I do not think anybody has established the extent to which the fox population is bigger because we release pheasants than it would be if we did not.
MR RICKARD: I am not qualified to answer!
MR BATCHELOR: The nub of this was that there is an alleged problem that would be caused by the change, and what has been suggested in the question is that the problem is being caused in part by the practice, and you can ameliorate this problem.
MR NODDER: I do not agree with that.
THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much indeed.
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Page last modified:
19 May, 2005
Page published: 10 December, 2002