Mr. Colin Pickthall (West Lancashire): I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary for introducing the Bill in this way; it is the right way to do it. I take a certain amount of pleasure in uniquely disagreeing with him. I do not think that I have ever done so before on a policy matter.

I should like to refer to a comment made several times by the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer). He kept saying that the Bill has been introduced for electoral reasons. If that is the case, it implies that he believes that the electorate are all on our side, so he loses his argument either way--

I will vote for a total ban because I believe that hunting with dogs is wrong. I believe that it cannot be wrong sometimes but okay at others just because it has been licensed, and I shall explain why in a moment.

The Bill provides an opportunity for the House to ban hunting with dogs, but, in the past couple of years, those on both sides of the argument have had an increasing tendency to discuss it almost entirely as though it were about foxhunting and nothing else. The Country Landowners Association briefing, which we have all received, is entirely about foxhunting; it mentions no other mammal. Pro-hunters follow that line because it allows them to concentrate on the arguments about vermin control. Many anti-hunters concentrate on foxhunting, too. I am not certain why, but I suspect that it is because foxhunting conjures up the panoply of ceremonial involved in hunting and there is a touch of class-war instinct in that for many people.

The Bill will outlaw stag hunting, deer hunting, hare coursing, hare hunting and mink hunting. I have never witnessed a stag or mink hunt--or only on film--but I have frequently witnessed hare coursing. I want to spend a couple of minutes telling those hon. Members who have not seen it what that gruesome activity involves.

My constituency is the unwilling host to the blue riband event of hare coursing--the Waterloo cup at Altcar--which is held each February. It attracts, I stress, a mainly urban audience of several thousand. Hares are encouraged to breed in the area. Some years they have been netted elsewhere--usually in East Anglia, but even in Ireland--and brought to Altcar to be coursed. It is essentially a spectator sport; it does not even have the excuse of people enjoying the thrill of the chase and being involved in that way.

Hares are beaten out of the longer grass one at a time on to the course, which resembles a large football field with an embankment around it on three sides. A man called the slipper holds two rival greyhounds and releases them when the hare bolts past him. Whether the hare is caught and killed depends partly--perhaps largely--on how soon the hounds are released, and visitors such as myself never see a hare killed. As soon as we leave, the slaughter recommences.

Points are scored by the dogs for turning the hare away from its escape route. When a hare is caught by one dog, it is almost invariably caught also by the other dog and usually pulled in half. The League Against Cruel Sports described that activity as creating a "living rope"; it is absolutely appalling. I can hardly imagine anything worse, and Burns sums it up by saying:

This experience seriously compromises the welfare of the hare

a wonderful understatement. Hares that escape--many do--are often pursued unofficially in contiguous fields by coursing supporters with their dogs. No one could describe the hare as vermin. I know of no farmer--and there are many in my constituency--who complains that hares are pests. On the contrary, everyone I know regards the hare as a magnificent and exciting mammal. People regret the fact that the brown hare is under severe pressure from hunting, but especially from changes in agricultural practices.

I know the gamekeeper at Altcar and I admire his work on the estate, except for his hare-coursing activities. I support him, particularly in his constant battle against illegal hare coursing. That activity is carried out by men, mostly from the conurbations of east Lancashire and Merseyside, who arrive in vans, set their dogs to hunt hare and leave the killed hares where they lie. They physically threaten farmers who try to keep them off their land--they threaten them with personal violence or with burning their hayricks. The hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) has similar experiences on his patch. How can we morally combat that unacceptable activity to any effect when organised coursing is accepted, simply because it has a species of licence--the third way's proposal. [Hon. Members: "The middle way."] I beg its pardon. [Interruption.] They seem a bit the same to me.

I note recent reports that the pro-hunting organisations are prepared to jettison hare coursing so long as they can retain foxhunting. If that is true, it shows that at last the loathsomeness of hare coursing is filtering through even to the most confirmed hunters. I am pleased to note that the Bill deals with coursing separately and specifically in schedule 3.

I was brought up just outside a small town in Cumbria and now represent a huge rural area of Lancashire. I know a good deal about the harshness of rural life and about the speed and efficiency with which the farming community disposes of pests, with or without dogs. An argument in defence of hunting that depends on saying that it is an innocent preoccupation of gentle rural folk who are being persecuted by an urban majority obsessed with anthropomorphism is bull.

Hunting appeals to anyone--rural or urban--who wishes to pursue animals solely for pleasure. My personal belief is that it is only acceptable to kill animals for food, for self-defence or the defence of others or other animals, or when an animal is sick or wounded. I find it impossible to understand human beings who enjoy and derive vicarious pleasure from seeing a wild mammal torn to bits by dogs that have been specially bred and trained to do so. Incidentally, I do not know of any angler or fisherman who fishes by means of specially trained dogs.

The pro-hunting lobby claims that a ban on hunting wild mammals with dogs represents the oppression of a minority by the majority. A letter in The Times on Monday from a lady in Ashburton says:

Law based on the opinions of the majority is nearly always unsound and illiberal, and so would the proposed ban on hunting be.

That is a fine principle on which to base our constitution and law making. It should not need to be pointed out that virtually all legislation infringes the freedoms of particular minorities and prevents them from perpetrating certain acts. The crucial factor in legislation is the assessment of the nature and acceptability of the acts that are being legislated against, or for. That is one of the reasons we are sent here as representatives of our constituents, not as delegates.

However, we now find--it was repeated by the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff)--that the pro-hunting lobby and the middle way have shifted their position. We hear now that we should not legislate for a ban because only 48 per cent.--a minority--support it. They argue that if it is a majority view it is unacceptable, but if it is a minority view it is also unacceptable. That is brilliant. These are wonderful Morton's fork arguments, and it is small wonder that the Burns inquiry refused to wander into that quagmire.

The pro-hunters also tell us that the ban would infringe the civil liberties of hunters, and they invoke the Human Rights Act 1998 and the articles of the convention on which it is based. In particular, they invoke article 1 on the enjoyment of property rights and article 8 on the respect for private life. That argument does not bear a moment's examination. Let us consider what people are allowed to do in their private life or with their private property. Of course we should be able to enjoy our private property under the Human Rights Act, but we are not allowed to beat a dog to death with a stick in our own kitchen or murder a cat.