RABBITS BILL. (Hansard, 28 June 1928)

§ Captain WATERHOUSE
Before this Bill is read the Third time I want to say one or two things not only about this particular Measure but about the general trend of legislation of which it is an example. I do not feel there is any call for the Rabbits Bill from the farming community as a whole. There certainly is a call for it from the Farmers' Union, but the Farmers' Union is a trade union and therefore, in common with the Trade Union movement as a whole, owes its present liberties and privileges largely to judicial decisions. What I object to so much about this Bill and about other Bills which have been introduced in the last few years is that we are taking away from the Courts a certain power and placing it in the hands of local authorities. Under this Bill a county council can enter upon a piece of land, can appoint either themselves or somebody else to kill the rabbits, and charge up against the owner the cost of the killing. It seems to me that the tenant, the occupier, of land to-day has quite sufficient safeguards through the County Court if his property is being damaged. If his crops are being damaged by rabbits he has his redress. Why is it necessary to put the county councils in this position? Under the Agricultural Holdings Act county councils have certain powers of intervention between a landlord and a tenant. It is within the knowledge of many hon. Members that the agricultural committees in many counties are absolutely inoperative, that it is quite impossible to get them to act against a tenant for bad husbandry; and I do not believe they will act under this particular Bill. The whole trend of the Bill is wrong. In this country we have the best, the cheapest and the speediest judiciary system in the world, and I humbly enter my protest against putting the functions of Courts on to a committee of a county council.

§ Sir G. HOHLER
I wish to express a measure of agreement with my hon. Friend. The real difficulty is that in this country damage done by rabbits is not actionable, though it is actionable in Scotland. In Committee I proposed an Amendment to make it actionable here, but I was told that it was outside the scope of the Bill. I think that in a large measure this Bill will be perfectly useless. I agree with what has been said about county councils not being the appropriate body to determine questions under this Bill, and I think that by an appeal from the county council to the County Court one could easily hold up proceedings for so long that no relief was obtainable until all the damage had been done and the shooting tenant was gone. I regret that the Bill has not taken the form of assimilating the law in this country to the law as it is in Scotland. As I have said, damage by rabbits is an actionable wrong there, and the law works admirably. There has been no difficulty about it. I think when the farmers get this Bill they will say, "We have really got nothing." I deeply regret that the Government did not take the bold course, and the only proper course, of making this damage actionable at law.

§ Mr. NOEL BUXTON
The House ought to take note of the fact that this Bill is very different from the Bill which the Minister introduced in another place last year. I feel the Bill will need to be stiffened, and I hope the Minister wants to stiffen it. It deals with an evil which, from the purely agricultural point of view, is of very grave importance. It amazes the foreigner that we should allow millions' worth of valuable produce to be destroyed by vermin in this manner. The evil arises from a feature of agricultural life which is peculiar to this country. Owing to the industrial wealth of this country the owning of land for pleasure prevails to an abnormal degree, and leads to an extraordinary indifference to waste. In the opinion of hon. Members on these benches, the Bill ought to have given some public authority such as a county council the power to act in cases where land is obviously being wasted. Instead of that, the operations of the Bill are limited to cases where any particular farmer brings a complaint before a county council against his neighbour. In the 791 first place it assumes a readiness on the part of the farmer to make himself obnoxious to his neighbour, and anyone familiar with country life knows that in such a social atmosphere unneighbourliness is very difficult to practise. Secondly, the Bill assumes that the farmer is perfectly free to take action it he is prepared to face a charge of being unneighbourly. It must be obvious that on many estates where the owner wants to keep up a good head of rabbits he will not encourage his tenants to take action. He will make it known that tenants will be looked upon coldly if they do take advantage of the powers under this Act. Thirdly, the Bill, contrary to the Minister's Bill last year, assumes that injury from rabbits is only a matter of private interest to the farmer, whereas we feel very strongly that it ought to be regarded as a matter of public interest as well, from the point of view of the public wealth.
Land owning is a trust, a very peculiar kind of trust, which may easily be perverted, and trusteeship ought to be regarded as a matter of great public importance. I cannot help thinking that the Minister absolutely agrees with what I am saying on the merits of the Bill, but the fact is that the Bill which was introduced in another place was largely turned down by a Committee representative of another place, and very largely composed of landowners, who, of course, were against the idea of interference of this kind. This Bill, therefore, embodies a distinct surrender on a point of principle, but in the main it is to the good, and I should not desire to vote against it, though I shall be glad of an opportunity to stiffen the Bill. Certainly the Bill is too feeble. The hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Lamb) introduced a Bill two or three years ago which was a very much stiffer Bill. Not only did he want the county council to have the power to act independently of the complaint of any particular farmer, but I do not think he permitted the right of appeal against a decision—a procedure which involves long delay and perhaps tends to disuse of the powers of the Bill. In my judgment the rights of appeal in this Bill are excessive. I feel that the Bill is weak because it cannot be brought into operation unless one farmer is prepared to "tell on" another, and that a farmer may resist 792 action on the ground that the damage has not yet taken place, whereas it may be absolutely necessary that action should be taken to put down the rabbits before the serious damage has occurred. If a man waits, say, until February before setting the county council in motion he will have lost his opportunity, though it may be much later than that before actual damage can be proved.
We have to choose between two points of view, there is the old-fashioned country point of view in which the comfort of the farmer is a very important factor, because nobody wants to be unneighbourly to anybody else, and the other point of view in which we must consider also justice to the public welfare and to the labourers. The labourer, though he may not be vocal on his own account, is very much concerned to see that good farming is practised, because by negligent farming and an excess of rabbits the standard of a farm will be lowered, and that means a reduction in the staff of men and a reduced ability to pay good wages. In this country we exact from agriculture a very heavy toll on account of rabbits, and on account of sport in some other directions. In our view the toll is too great. We feel the Minister has surrendered on a point of principle and should have made his Bill a very much stronger Bill than he has done.

§ The MINISTER of AGRICULTURE (Mr. Guinness)
The Bill has been criticised this evening from two points of view. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rochester (Sir G. Hohler) thinks we ought to have given legal redress in preference to leaving the damage done by rabbits on a neighbour's land to be dealt with by the county council. That solution was carefully considered by a Select Committee in another place last year, and in our opinion overwhelmingly strong evidence was produced against it, not only on account of the fact that people would hesitate to take their neighbours to a court of law, but also because we want to prevent loss, and do not want merely to pay compensation for food unnecessarily wasted. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Norfolk (Mr. Buxton) thought the Bill was too weak. He pointed out that we have changed some of its provisions since last year. We recognise that a great deal of anxiety was paused by 793 the machinery which we produced last year, and we think we have provided a reasonable compromise by allowing a power of appeal in suitable cases. We do not think that recourse to a Law Court is in all cases a satisfactory method, because of the difficulties of proof and evidence and the delay which will take place; and we think that the powers of appeal which have been given are as far as we can reasonably go in that direction. It is certainly not necessary to alter the Bill in the way suggested by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Norfolk and to put into the hands of the county council powers of entering upon land and exterminating rabbits when no complaint has been made. I do not believe that agriculturists generally demand any such drastic measures. I think they generally recognise that rabbits are, under proper control, quite useful, and that there is no reason why people should not be allowed to have them on their land if they do not hurt their neighbours.

§ Mr. BUXTON
If the powers are not necessary, may I ask why the Minister put that in his Bill last year?

§ Mr. GUINNESS
We did not propose that the County Council should come in and exterminate rabbits when no complaint was made.

§ Mr. BUXTON
But he did not propose that the complaint must be by the farmer concerned; under the Bill of last year it might be a complaint by an inspector who reported to the county council.

§ Mr. GUINNESS
Yes, but the Bill of last year certainly did not go as far as the proposal now made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Norfolk goes, as I understand it. We deliberately restricted the power of making complaints to those who were affected. We think that it would be undesirable to allow the busybody to make complaints to the council in the way which has been suggested in previous Bills. We believe that the willingness of the injured farmer to make a complaint is a very reasonable test as to the reality and importance of the complaint.