MINK AND COYPUS

HC Deb 20 November 1972 vol 846 cc1034-47

9.41 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mrs. Peggy Fenner)

I beg to move, That the Mink (Keeping) Order 1972, a copy of which was laid before this House on 7th November, be approved

Mr. Speaker

I think it might be for the convenience of the House if at the same time we discussed the second Motion— That the Coypus (Keeping) Order 1972, a copy of which was laid before this House on 7th November, be approved.

Hon. Members

Agreed.

Mrs. Fenner

I was going to seek your permission, Mr. Speaker, to discuss both orders together.

These orders renew for a further five year, from 1st January, 1973, powers which expire on 31st December, 1972, to prohibit the keeping of coypus and mink in Great Britain except under licence. These animals are not native to this country but are at large today as a result of escapes from fur farms which have taken place over the years. Both species are continuing to breed in the wild, but, whereas coypus are now largely confined to a small area of the Norfolk Broads, mink are fairly widespread throughout the country. Both animals can be very harmful. Coypus damage river banks and farm crops, particularly sugar beet, while mink kill poultry, freshwater fish, water fowl and young game birds.

It was for the purpose of bringing these pests under control that orders were first made in 1962 under the Destructive Imported Animals Act, 1932, a measure which, designed as a defence against the musk rat, also made provision for the powers it granted the Agricultural Ministers to be extended to cover other destructive alien mammals.

Besides regulating the keeping of such animals, the Act also empowers Ministers to take steps to destroy any found at large. This provision enabled the Ministry to mount a campaign against coypus between 1962 and 1965, with the result that a large number were killed, those remaining being confined to an area where they are able to do very little damage. It is unfortunate that, because of the nature of the area, complete eradication of this pest has so far not proved practicable but it is being kept within bounds by the co-operative efforts of "Coypu Control", a consortium of local interests. An attempt was made by the Agricultural Departments between 1965 and 1970 to exterminate mink found at large, but complete eradication was not found to be feasible, and it is now left to occupiers troubled by mink to take the necessary control measures.

The orders which we are considering today prohibit the keeping of mink and coypus within Great Britain except under licence. They will replace orders which also controlled the importation of these animals, but, as we now have the Rabies (Importation of Mammals) Orders, 1971, which imposes strict importation controls, albeit for a different purpose, it is clearly unnecessary to renew the import control measures under the Destructive Imported Animals Act.

The prohibition on keeping, except under licence, is intended to prevent further escapes which would worsen the present situation. It is a condition of the licence that premises conform to certain requirements laid down in regulations as to the precautions to be taken to prevent the escape of these animals. The regulations are strictly enforced, and there have, in fact, been few escapes since the regulations were first introduced in 1962.

Perhaps I need say no more to convince the House that the orders should now be renewed for a further five years. The National Farmers Union, the Nature Conservancy and the Fur Traders Association have all been consulted and have indicated their agreement to their renewals.

9.45 p.m.

Mr. Norman Buchan (Renfrew, West)

The hon. Lady does not need to say any more to convince us. I take this opportunity of welcoming her on her first appearance at the Dispatch Box. She graces it with rather more charm than some of her colleagues. She has added to the attractiveness of the Front Bench opposite. I say that with respect to some old friends there.

The hon. Lady has chosen a peculiar subject with which to launch her career. She was appointed to look after prices, and the first task to which she attends is mink, which does not involve our old-age pensioners and others on low incomes.

Having paid some compliments to the hon. Lady, I turn my attention to the order. We welcome it, but there are some rather mysterious features in it. The order was first introduced in relation to an Act regarding the musk rat, or musquash, as it is better known. There is always something rather horrible in the idea of animals being killed to provide fur. It seems worse than killing animals for food. Clearly, there is a great deal of emotion involved in the subject.

The immigration of these animals having been allowed they have spread, sometimes because of the carelessness of farmers. The last time we discussed the matter was in 1962, when the right hon. Member for Lowestoft (Mr. Prior), who is now the Leader of the House, took part in the debate. As Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, he was in charge of food prices until recently. The Opposition were delighted to see him give up that responsibility. We have great hopes for the hon. Lady. The right hon. Gentleman said in 1962 that he could not understand why so long had been taken to deal with coypus and mink. The right hon. Gentleman said then that the rabbit clearance societies had been extremely successful in dealing with them. But it was he who later wiped out the grant for the rabbit clearance societies.

It is not the fault of the hon. Lady, who has been in office for only a week, but how do her Government square the problem of the mink and coypus, pests and vermin which commit damage to agriculture, with the liquidating of the assistance which was given to the vermin clearance societies? That was done in October, 1970, if I remember correctly, in the first flush of the cutting of public expenditure, when all wasteful public extravagances were to go by the board, including assistance for dealing with pests such as coypus and mink. But, lo and behold, we now not only have an order, but we see it extended for five years until 31st December, 1977. That is a curious date, to which I shall return.

The present Leader of the House said in 1962 that he wondered what the money to be provided then was to be spent on. The right hon. Gentleman wanted to know why Government money was to be spent when we had managed to get on top of the problem in the previous two years without any Government money, except that which was provided through rabbit clearance societies. Yet he was the Minister who did away with them. To a large extent that system was operated by the county agricultural executive committee. That was the second body that was to deal with the whole problem. Lo and behold, by an odd coincidence the Government wiped it out with this year's Act.

The Minister has been warned of the mess her predecessor made. It is very unfortunate to place a maiden Minister in such a position.

I turn to the reason for the finishing date of 31st December, 1977. When we last had a major discussion on the matter in 1962 my good friend George Willis, then an Edinburgh Member, suggested that the 31st December date then proposed had something to do with Hogmanay. There is a more sinister date involved in the orders. Why 1977? What relationship is there between that choice and our entry into the Common Market? I hope that coypus and mink will not be involved in the problem of easy access that we shall discuss later this week.

I come now to a serious point. Are the orders in line with the Common Market regulations? If not, which have priority? We were suddenly told last week that the Common Market priority about which we had been lectured for a year no longer applied, that the Government could switch their priorities when they decided on a prices and incomes policy.

There are certain difficulties in the orders, particularly relating to the Interpretation Act, 1889. That Act is my daily bedside reading, but I find it difficult to understand article 2(3) of the orders in relation to article 2(2). I can understand paragraph (2): The Interpretation Act 1889 shall apply to an interpretation of this order as it applies to the interpretation of an Act of Parliament. But paragraph (3) says: When this order ceases to have effect as aforesaid section 38(2) of the Interpretation Act 1889 shall apply as if this order were an enactment repealed by another Act of Parliament. I do not understand what that means. If the Minister is wise, as I was in my maiden appearance, she will not try to answer that question, but we should be glad to have clarification at some stage.

Last week we dealt with the prices and incomes policy. The hon. Lady is to be put in charge of the prices side. Her hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Mrs. Sally Oppenheim) proved the efficacy of the prices and incomes policy when she complained to a supermarket manager about the cost of a packet of Omo and he told her that she was correct and credited her with 1p—a very handy sum to be credited with.

How many pence would pay for a mink coat? The mink coat trade is extremely expensive. I am not asking the Minister to pay the same attention to controlling the price of mink coats as I shall expect her to pay to the cost of vegetables, fruit, meat and fish and all the other exempted foods, but there is an important point here. The agricultural community or the nation will have to pay to deal with the pests covered by the orders. The mink coat trade is a luxury trade, and many people find it abhorrent. I do not necessarily agree with that view, but to many people the idea of keeping animals to produce fur is unpleasant. No one can regard it as vital to the well-being of the nation, except for the money it earns in exports, which may now be about £1 million a year. As the Government believe in people standing on their own feet, we should tell the trade—rather than the mink farmers, who are often pushed quite hard on prices—which produces coats costing about £1,100, that it should pay a tax to meet the cost of keeping down the vermin that the mink become when they escape. A Government which believe in people standing on their own feet might say to the trade "Pay for the cost to agriculture of escaping coypus."

The points I have mentioned are serious matters and I hope that the hon. Lady will at least be able to answer some of them, though I do not push her to the extent of seeking interpretation of the original Act. I quite genuinely welcome her to the Dispatch Box, if only because for the last two and a half years I have not had satisfactory answers from previous Ministers.

9.55 p.m.

Mr. John E. B. Hill (Norfolk, South)

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary on her appearance on the Front Bench. It is perhaps not inapposite to say, when she is having to deal with two kinds of fur tonight, that we would much sooner see her in mink than in nutria.

The hon. Member for Renfrew, West (Mr. Buchan) has imported into the debate practically every current complaint of the Opposition—prices and incomes, objection to entry to the European Economic Community, rising food prices and all the rest. He has rather overburdened the order. If there is to be an extra five years of operation, that has nothing to do with a transition period but merely that an order for five years is apt, if renewed, to last another five years.

To what extent are mink and coypu farms flourishing? I expect that mink farming is probably expanding because there is a demand for the product, but I imagine that coypu farming is declining because nutria or musquash, although a relatively cheap animal fur, has been undercut by man-made furs of nylon and similar artificial products. One answer to the hon. Member, therefore, is that in the range of fur products there is something within the reach of the purse of anyone.

But if the coypu farms should shrink it does not necessarily follow that coypus themselves are not currently increasing, and I should like an indication of the extent of the present problem. It is true that as a result of what was virtually a paramilitary campaign between 1962 and 1965 their numbers were very greatly reduced, but pockets remained, and coypus multiply remarkably quickly considering the hostile temperature they experience in the Broads as compared with their native habitat, and considerable damage is done to river banks. Therefore, though I welcome the renewal of the order, I should like to know just how big the problem is and by what means it is hoped to keep up the pressure.

The hon. Member referred to the withdrawal of the subsidy to rabbit clearance societies. That withdrawal does not mean that rabbit clearance societies have ceased to exist. It was never the practice of the wartime agricultural committees, as committees, to march out in search of coypus. Their disappearance will not greatly weaken the forces deployed against the coypu, but this animal is a serious pest and I hope that we can finally get it under control.

9.59 p.m.

Mr. Mark Hughes (Durham)

I echo the various expressions of good will towards the hon. Lady the Under-Secretary of State on her elevation to the Front Bench. While I agree with what has been said by the hon. Member for Norfolk, South (Mr. John E. B. Hill) about the dangers of coypus, I should like the hon. Lady to tell us the Government's position on the derating of licensed mink and coypu farms. Normally, these are agricultural endeavours, and if the Government include the keeping of coypu and mink within the ambit of agricultural activities I should be interested to hear what the Government's thinking is on the inclusion of mink and coypus licensed farms for agricultural derating purposes.

There can be no doubt that among the nastiest rodents that the animal kingdom produces mink and coypus run each other pretty closely as being undesirable. As one who has a mink farm on the border of his constituency, I have no desire to see these mink cross the border as feral mink and do the damage they are so easily capable of doing. Equally, in the Norfolk area I accept everything said by the hon. Member for Norfolk, South about the damage that feral coypus can do to river banks and so on. I ask where the relationship lies between the proper wish to control the licensed fur prduction of these animals and the equally proper requirement that feral stocks of these animals should be eradicated.

Then there is the decision of the Government on the importation of the skins of very rare species which are the alternative in some cases to mink and nutria. It is all very well to limit and declare as undesirable feral mink and nutria, but unless one does this with a clear programme as to what one does about serval, leopard, tiger and other environmentally-at-risk species, one is not closing the right door. No one questions that mink and coypus are despicable, horrid little rodents, but one is concerned that, in closing the door or attempting to shut it against these nasty brutes one is not effectively controlling sealskins, leopard skins, tiger skins, serval and all the other conservation-risk skins which are at risk nationally.

Therefore, while agreeing on the desirability of the orders, I ask the hon. Lady, in looking at the position of rate grant for the proper production of furs from these two animals, also to look at the position of the importation of those wild animals at tremendous risk which we still permit and which are the competition in the furrier trade, at least for the mink and, at the cheaper end of the trade, for the coypu and the nutria. Unless one gets these two factors in balance, however desirable these orders may be, they will not effectively deal with the rather wider problem of international conservation of at-risk species.

No one wants to have an uncontrolled feral population of mink or coypu in this country, and to that extent we are in entire agreement with the spirit and content of the two orders.

However they do not go far enough, and what one wants is much more effective control over the utilisation of alternative pelts from at-risk species in the furrier trade.

10.5 p.m.

Mr. Michael Cocks (Bristol, South)

I join with my colleagues in welcoming the hon. Lady to the Government Front Bench. At the same time, it is rather ironic that the right hon. Member for Lowestoft (Mr. Prior) should at last have managed to produce something which has general support in the House, he having vacated office in that Ministry.

I welcome these orders. While I would not go so far as my hon. Friend the Member for Durham (Mr. Mark Hughes) in his value judgments of these animals which we are discussing, I think we have here an example where the interruption of the balance of nature produces undesirable results. These animals are essentially non-indigenous. The hon. Member for Norfolk, South (Mr. John E. B. Hill) touched upon the very severe damage which was done to large parts of East Anglia when these animals were in their heyday, particularly to drainage channels and the destruction of river banks. It might be that if the orders were not passed these animals would proliferate to such an extent that they would become wholesale throughout the country and particularly in the West Country and in Somerset.

There is under the orders a responsibility to report to the Ministry the presence of coypus if they are not kept under licence. I would like the hon. Lady to tell me whether the Ministry has sufficient staff to cope with this problem, particularly bearing in mind that, following the widespread incidence of myxomatosis, the rabbit population now shows substantial signs of resurgence. Is the Ministry's staff able to cope with the additional burden put upon it by these orders? I shall be most obliged if in her reply, the hon. Lady will deal with this point.

10.8 p.m.

Mr. Eric Deakins (Walthamstow, West)

I echo the congratulations to the hon. Lady and I should like briefly to ask her two questions. First, is it the Governments' desire and intention that as long as there is a danger from these animals in the wild in this country the Government will be willing to reintroduce the order if necessary—if the present Government are still in office at the appropriate time—or are we seeing the last order of this kind, the last likely to be made under the Act of 1932?

That brings me to my second question. There may be no significance in the terminal date of 31st December, 1977, but can the hon. Lady assure us that there is in these orders, or in the Act which gives them their statutory force, nothing which would in any way be inconsistent with any of our Common Market obligations or under the secondary legislation within the Common Market itself?

10.9 p.m.

Mrs. Fenner

I should like to try to deal with the points made by hon. Members. First, with reference to the comments by the hon. Member for Renfrew, West (Mr. Buchan), there is no significance about the date. As my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South (Mr. John E. B. Hill) said, it is fairly usual when there is in a previous order a five-year period to repeat the five-year period in a subsequent order.

The hon. Member for Walthamstow, West (Mr. Deakins) mentioned the Common Market regulations. There are no comparable regulations in Europe and there is no significant connection between 1977 and our entry into the Market.

I would add that there is now no coypu farming in this country.

The rabbit clearance grant was extended to cover control operations against coypus in 1960 with good results. By the end of 1965 it had achieved the objective of killing more than 136,000 coypus. The fact that 2,196 coypus were killed during 1971 outside the containment area demonstrates the need for continued close control.

The county agricultural committees have been mentioned. There is no vacuum because they have been replaced by the regional panels, which are now getting down to work. I accept that they do not have exactly the same functions, but there is no vacuum.

I was asked why we should grant-aid coypu control and not rabbit control. It is Government policy that occupiers should be responsible for controlling pests on their own land, but the coypu is a special case. Its breeding grounds are now largely confined to remote marshes and almost impenetrable areas of the Norfolk Broads, which are not occupied in any normal sense of the word. Rabbits on the other hand are wide-ranging and often live and breed on farmland.

It is entirely reasonable to expect farmers to control rabbits on their own land and it is their legal obligation to do so. But it would be unreasonable to attempt to deal with the coypu in the same way as the rabbit. The damage that the coypu could do if it broke out from the Broads would involve far more than the damage to crops that rabbits do.

The coypu could also damage river banks and it is a potential carrier of disease. The problem is to keep it confined to its present area in the hope that one day it can be completely exterminated. There is therefore no comparison between the justification for Government assistance in coypu control and the policy that in general the occupiers who suffer the damage should be responsible for controlling the pests on their own land.

Mr. Buchan

The argument is not mine, but that of the present Leader of the House.

Mrs. Fenner

The number of coypus killed during 1971 bears out the argument that is now deployed.

The hon. Member for Renfrew, West mentioned his interpretation of the Act. I cannot answer him exactly tonight, but I will take his considered wisdom—he has some experience in these matters—and see whether I can understand the matter. He discussed what the trade should do, but in doing so he dealt with the subject of taxation and he will appreciate that that is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

My hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South asked whether mink farming and coypu farming were flourishing. There are now no longer any coypu farms, as I said, and we are dealing with the progeny of the original escapers from those farms. Mink farming is flourishing. Its stock has been steadily expanding and the export turnover is around the £1 million mark. There are 18 licences for coypus, but they are all now for zoos and wildlife parks.

I should like to write to the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Robert Hughes) about the rather complicated subject of the derating of licensed mink and coypu farms. I take his point about the other conservation risk skins, but I do not think it is wholly appropriate to the order and no doubt he will find a suitable time to raise the matter.

Mr. Mark Hughes

Hugheses are extremely common in this place, but it is the hon. Member for Durham rather than the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North.

Mrs. Fenner

I apologise to the hon. Gentleman.

The hon. Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Michael Cocks) raised the question of staff. There is no indication that the staff at the Ministry are finding any difficulty in coping with the work which will arise under these orders. The hon. Member mentioned the situation which arose during the great rabbit scare involving myxomatosis but there is no indication that anything like such a situation will now occur. It seems clear that in view of the continued success of the trapping of coypus the staff at the Ministry are fully able to cope.

Hon. Members have mentioned the orders in relation to the European Economic Community. I must tell the House that the Community has no regulations of this sort.

I should like to thank the hon. Member for Renfrew, West for his very kind comments and also the comments made from both sides of the House, a courtesy which is so often accorded to those who stand at this Box for the first time. I very much appreciate what has been said.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved, That the Mink (Keeping) Order 1972, a copy of which was laid before this House on 7th November, be approved.

Resolved, That the Coypus (Keeping) Order 1972, a copy of which was laid before this House on 7th November, be approved.—[Mrs. Fenner.]

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