§ Bill, as amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.
§ 1.3 p.m.
§ Sir Dymoke White (Fareham)I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read the Third time."
I will not detain the House very long, because I know that others wish to follow me on other matters. This matter has been before the country for a good many years. Before the war, it proceeded to certain stages in another place. The present Measure was well discussed on Second Reading and was altered in a small way upstairs in Committee. That alteration applied to Clause 2 under which a licence was arranged for the importation of horses for the improvement of the breeds in this country. That was agreed to without any trouble. The only other matter of importance mentioned in Committee was, under Clause 5 (3), that this Measure should not extend to Northern Ireland.
§ 1.4 p.m.
§ Major Legge-Bourke (Isle of Ely)I do not propose at this stage of the Bill to reiterate all the arguments I used in Committee to show the very real concern with which some farmers view this Bill. They believe that it will have a very harmful effect on agriculture and on the horses themselves. There was an Amendment on the Order Paper this morning in my name which, of course, I cannot 2541 now discuss, but I wish to make it clear that the National Farmers' Union considered that that Amendment would have met many of the points to which they object in the Bill.
We should realise that the Bill as it stands today, thanks to the Amendments which were made upstairs, now gives encouragement to a farmer who wants to use a docked horse, or who thinks that a docked horse is the most suitable for his farm, to import it from abroad rather than have one which has been bred at home. That, I think, can be dealt with in another place, and I hope it will be, but I assure the Ministry of Agriculture that the support which the Parliamentary Secretary was unable to give me in Committee is the support which farmers, as a whole, seek. I hope that in another place it may be possible for something to be done to meet the real objections which the farmers have to this Bill.
If one considers this Measure in the light of the circumstances as we know them today, there seems some confusion as to which docks are being talked about or which ought to be talked about. I am certain that in the eyes of many farmers this Bill is really unnecessary, and hampers rather than helps many who are anxious to co-operate with the Ministry of Agriculture at this time.
§ 1.6 p.m.
§ Mr. Gage (Belfast, South)I wish to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Sir D. White) on introducing this desirable Measure, which can do nothing but good. My only reason for intervening is because the question was raised by the Government of the importing of docked horses from Eire and the difficulty of controlling their importation. I took pains to discover what was the position, both in Eire and Northern Ireland, in order to allay their fears in that respect. I hear from a very responsible person, who is not only the Secretary of the Ulster Prevention of Cruelty to Animals League, in Northern Ireland but is also a farmer and has had practical experience of working horses without docked tails and who knows the position over there—that the practice here, as in Eire, is so uncommon, that to prohibit it would affect only a handful of Clydesdale and Hackney breeders who are obsessed with the idea that English and Scottish fashions must be copied over there.
2542 The only reason why a horse's tail is docked in Ireland is because the breeders there think that it is the fashion in England, where they want to sell the horses. It is very uncommon. I have found very little evidence of it myself, and am perfectly certain that as soon as the practice is prohibited here, it will die out completely on the other side of the Irish Sea.
§ 1.7 p.m.
§ Colonel Clarke (East Grinstead)I wish to intervene for only a moment, on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Sir D. White), to express his thanks, and those of all who supported him, to the Government Departments which assisted in helping this Bill on its way. We are very grateful.
§ 1.8 p.m.
§ Lieut.-Colonel Sir Thomas Moore (Ayr Burghs)There is only one point I wish to make and that is in reference to the remarks made by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke). He said that in Committee upstairs certain arguments were advanced by him on behalf of the farmers, which should have convinced the Committee but did not. He hopes, apparently, that on some future occasion there may be another opportunity, but I would like to point out that the arguments used by him were fully answered in Committee, and that there is nothing further to be said about them.
The action which we are taking today completes the task which was initiated just 10 years ago by my hon. Friend the Member for Abingdon (Sir R. Glyn). In the years between many horses have suffered acute discomfort through docking. Our work today, will, we hope, put an end to that discomfort; by the passage of the Bill thousands of horses will certainly be relieved, I will not say of pain—I think that is too harsh a word—certainly of discomfort, which I think is the word which can more properly be applied to what horses have had to endure when tails, manes and, indeed, forelocks have been docked. In addition to giving that relief I believe that we shall give pleasure to millions of horse lovers throughout the country, who have long wanted to see a Bill like this passed into law. I congratulate my hon. Friend, who has done so much work in connection with this Bill, and I wish him God-speed in his final efforts.
§ 1.11 p.m.
§ Mr. Dye (Norfolk, South Western)I am puzzled by one of the final sentences of the speech of the hon. and gallant Member for Ayr Burghs (Sir T. Moore), in which he referred to the docking of manes and forelocks. That puzzles me because up to now I had thought that the word "docking" referred to taking off a portion of a horse's tail. For the hon. and gallant Member now to bring in the head as well, and to give the impression that the cutting of the mane or forelock is also prohibited by the Bill is something entirely new. If that is so, and if such legislation as this is likely to persist, it seems to me that farmers and others who work horses may soon have to get permission even to put a collar or a halter, or a certain style of collar or halter, on their horses.
If that is the intention behind the Bill it will, in my view, lead to the extinction of the horse as an animal of service to British agriculture, and the tractor will very soon have complete sway on the farms of our country. I have always been a lover of horses and a worker of horses for well over 40 years. Having been brought up among them, I appreciate the value of the horse to the farmer. But when sentimentalists come along and want to impose all kinds of restrictions for certain purposes it seems to me that they are damaging their cause, and hastening the day when the horse will disappear from our farms and the tractor or some other form of power will completely take its place. We should all regret that day, for the horse is a noble animal; most of those who work the horse enjoy doing so, and look after its welfare to the utmost of their ability. One cannot harbour the same kind of affection for the tractor but if such a day as I have envisaged comes, the tractor will no doubt do very good work, as the horse has done.
§ 1.13 p.m.
§ The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture (Mr. George Brown)I intervene for a few moments because I would not like it to be thought from what has just been said by my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk (Mr. Dye), with whose view about the nobility of the horse as compared with the tractor one is familiar, and by the hon. and gallant Member for the 2544 Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke), that we have not given considerable thought to whether this Bill would have an effect either on the position of the horse in the farm economy or upon the effectiveness of the horse in doing the work for which it is used. As I tried to indicate upstairs, it can be held that there is a degree of agricultural inconvenience involved, and that it will incommode the horseman, the man who has to work the horse, a little. It adds something to the work he has to do, but I am quite certain that that degree of inconvenience can be very easily overstated.
I am certain that to argue that to leave the horse with his nobility enhanced by having all his tail, will somehow encourage or lead to the replacement of the horse by the tractor is carrying the argument much further than can be justified. The hon. and gallant Member for the Isle of Ely has put forward the view, which has apparently been conveyed to him, of the National Farmers' Union. I have just been, as I hope have other hon. Members and others interested in agriculture, to Shrewsbury to see the great display of British agriculture there. One is always impressed by the parade of cattle at the Royal Show; one was no less impressed this year by the parade of horses. I took every opportunity I could while I was there to obtain as many opinions as possible on the question of the docking of horses. It was most impressive to find that people either felt the humanitarian aspect to be somehow rather more important than the incommoding aspect, or else said, "I could not care less. It is a question of you people making up your mind." I found no evidence that farmers were worried about the Bill or had the feeling that the carrying out of its provisions would cause difficulty in the farm economy.
It is not my business to give a lead to the House in this matter, and am most anxious not to cut across the advice which was tendered from below the Gangway earlier today. I felt, however, that if I did not intervene it might be thought that we had not given this aspect some consideration. My own view, in the light of my great interest and keenness in this matter, is that the Bill can be carried without fear of any harm coming to our agricultural economy or the horse. Leaving aside my personal view, the view of 2545 my Department, fortified by such consultative machinery as we have at our disposal, is that the argument that this Bill will lead either to the disappearance of the horse or the over-weighting of the work of the horseman and those whose job it is to deal with horses, can be heavily overstated, and that the carrying of the Bill will not have any of the harmful effects that have been suggested.
§ Question put, and agreed to.
§ Bill read the Third time, and passed.