Hare Coursing (Hansard, 29 October 1997)

§ Mr. Colin Pickthall (West Lancashire)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make hare coursing illegal. This is the fourth time I have attempted to bring in such a Bill. It may be unusual for a Member of Parliament to introduce a Bill in the fervent hope that it is rendered irrelevant by another Bill in the very near future, but that is what I am doing. My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr. Foster) has the enormous privilege of introducing on 28 November a Bill that seeks to enact one of the most popular measures any Back Bencher could possibly initiate, and I wish him well with it.
The purpose of my Bill is partly to counter the propaganda of blood sports aficionados over recent months, which has sought to give the impression that the Bill to abolish hunting with dogs is concerned almost solely with fox hunting. Foxes, they maintain, are vermin and, therefore, hunters are doing us a favour by pulling foxes to bits. Recent studies have shown that foxes spend much of their lives destroying vermin, but that is by the way.
Hunting with dogs also involves deer and hares. The hare is by no means vermin. It is a spectacularly beautiful and magical animal and it is already under stress as a species because of changes in agricultural practice. Animals have to be captured and transported cross country to provide the quarry for some hare coursing events—indeed, sometimes they are captured in and brought from Ireland for the purpose.
At Altcar in my constituency, the Waterloo cup is held every February, at which time many hares are breeding. West Lancashire has many reasons to be proud of itself, but the area is ashamed that it is forced to host the Waterloo cup. West Lancashire and Sefton councils have cross-party agreements to try to end the activity in their area, but a proposed West Lancashire byelaw was stifled by the last Government. I am hopeful that legislation will make it unnecessary for the council to go through that procedure again.
At most coursing events, hares are beaten out of long grass, one at a time, on to the course. When they pass the dog handler—the slipper—he releases two dogs, which compete to catch the hare before it reaches the longer grass at the far end of the course. Points are awarded for the dogs' success in turning the hare away from its escape. Of course, many hares are caught and pulled to pieces. The fact that hares escape is used as an excuse for the event, although the presence of illegal gangs in surrounding fields sometimes ensures that escaping hares run a second gauntlet. Unlike other forms of hunting, the dogs—normally greyhounds—are faster than the hare and they usually catch up with it fairly rapidly.
Legal hare coursing is linked to illegal hare coursing. Men with dogs frequent farm land in casual pursuit of hares. When farmers try to stop it, they are often threatened with dire consequences and farmers are known to shoot hares on their land so as to keep casual coursers away. In recent years in my constituency, hares have been torn to pieces next to a primary school, with the children watching horrified from the playground; and one small girl saw, twice in one day and from her own garden, hares 916 killed by lurchers. It is impossible to stamp out those illegal horrors while organised events are sanctioned by the law and thereby afforded some moral licence.
Organised hare coursing is the last of the spectator blood sports. It belongs with bear baiting, bull baiting and cock fighting—all of which have been properly outlawed in this country for many years.
The spectacle of large numbers of city dwellers massed along the banking at Altcar, copiously supplied with booze and baying for blood, is a particularly unpleasant one. It is this spectator aspect of hare coursing that makes it the most loathsome of all blood sports.
The excuses made by blood sports fans are universally ridiculous. I have been told by a gentleman living in Manningtree in Essex, in one of many rather unpleasant letters that I have received—none of them from my constituents—that hares are a pursuit species—that is a new one! Apparently, they evolved to be chased. Furthermore, they are not traumatised by the chase. Clearly, this gentleman has psychoanalysed hares to discover that truth.
Coursing is excused also because of its long and distinguished history. It dates back, the same gentleman tells me, to pre-Roman times; and years ago kings and queens owned and ran coursing dogs—so that is all right then. Mr. Mark Prescott, who organises the Waterloo cup, speaks similarly—although rather more eloquently—about the history of the sport. Much the same sort of argument, of course, can be made about public beheading, drawing and quartering, a tradition espoused both by the Romans and by our past monarchs. Hare coursing is also excused because it is a celebration of the skills of the hare—the pursuit species—as well as of the skills of the hounds. Celebrating the skills of an animal escaping its human-designed torture seems perverse in the extreme.
Hare coursing is excused, too, because it is good for the hare population—even though in many areas hare numbers are in decline and hares are captured and transported to coursing areas where their numbers have collapsed. The hare population is now about 20 per cent. of what it was 100 years ago. The United Kingdom biodiversity steering group includes the brown hare in its list of species in decline or under threat.
In common with other blood sports, hare coursing is further excused by the claim that it is a country activity which is opposed only by city people. That is the most blatant absurdity of all blood sports apologias. The audience for the slaughter at the Waterloo cup gives the lie to this claim. Hunts generally are supported by urban dwellers, as more and more people move in and out of the countryside for their leisure activities.
The attempt to build up a false mystique of country life to excuse hunting with dogs is a huge deception.
Another excuse is that banning hare coursing, as with hunting with dogs generally, is an infringement of individual liberties. That argument does not bear a moment's examination. No doubt Dr. Crippen thought his liberties were being infringed when he was arrested for his activities.
The only argument for blood sports that carries any weight—not much, at that—concerns the role that they play in the local economy. The same argument is used in favour of the exporting of land mines. Few jobs are involved and they are usually temporary ones. There are 917 many alternatives, certainly on managed estates. Bearing in mind the inevitability of legislation on this issue in the not-too-distant future, there is time for those involved to adjust their activities and to bring them more closely in keeping with what is acceptable to most British people.
Whatever the arguments for and against blood sports, I have one major underlying concern. One does not have to be a fervent animal lover to be deeply worried by the psychology of those who obtain pleasure from the killing of an animal and who increase that pleasure by setting one animal to kill another. Even more deeply disturbing is the psychology of those who gain their pleasure from simply watching this happen without even the excuse of participating themselves in the so-called thrill of the chase.
Hare coursing was the origin of greyhound and whippet racing, in which there is no intention to set out to kill an animal. These sports are enjoyed by millions of people with no lust for blood. They are where spectators of hare coursing can legitimately enjoy watching the progress of dogs.
There is no possible excuse for the continuation of the legality of hare coursing. I trust that during the lifetime of this Government the huge public revulsion at this activity will be reflected by Parliament banning it.

§ Madam Speaker
I call Mr. Peter Atkinson to oppose the motion.

§ Mr. Peter Atkinson (Hexham)
It is proper that I declare an interest at this stage, in that I am a consultant for the British Field Sports Society, an organisation which represents not only coursing but hunting, shooting, fishing and falconry.
This Bill has become something of a hardy annual with the hon. Member for West Lancashire (Mr. Pickthall); he has brought it up about four times in recent years, and I believe that it is time to explode some of the myths that he has perpetuated about the ancient sport of coursing. The hon. Gentleman's correspondent from Manningtree is correct in saying that hare coursing is, with falconry, one of the oldest field sports in existence.
Make no mistake, Mr. Deputy Speaker: this is a question not simply of animal rights, but of individual rights. The hon. Member for West Lancashire said that it did not bear a moment's examination to suggest that he was proposing to take away the right of decision from individuals, but to me, that is the central issue in what he proposes. The matter should not be decided by law; people should be allowed to take part in that activity if they consider that it is right.
Defending individual freedom is what the House is about. We are in the Chamber because we have a duty to allow people to exercise their conscience on the matter and not to be dictated to.
People who follow coursing are annoyed by the ignorance of the sport on the part of the people who attack it. I give credit to the hon. Member for West Lancashire because I understand that he turned up at the Waterloo cup about two or three years ago. He spent about a quarter of an hour or 20 minutes there, during which time not a single hare was killed, but I commend him for having done so.
918 Opinion polls suggest that the majority of the people who are opposed to coursing—I accept that there are many—understand little of the sport. Some years ago, an exercise was put in hand assembling a focus group—now a common thing with the Labour party—to ask people what they thought about coursing. The majority of people, when asked, said that coursing was letting a captive hare out of a box in an enclosed field and chasing it around the enclosed field with two greyhounds; the greyhound that killed it was the winner. Every one of those points is untrue. If that was the sport of coursing, I certainly should not be here defending it. Coursing is not about that.
Hon. Members are equally guilty of such ignorance. A Labour Member who introduced a similar Bill to the one before us appeared on a "Newsnight" programme. Mr. Paxman showed him two photographs, one of a rabbit and one of a hare. He was asked which was the hare and which was the rabbit, and he admitted that he could not tell. The previous time that a similar Bill was sent to a Standing Committee of the House, a Labour Member suggested that a course lasted for 40 minutes, whereas the average length of a course is 35 seconds.
I would spare the blushes of those Members, but it is wrong that Labour Members, especially, condemn the activities of perfectly reasonable individuals without knowing anything about those activities. Indeed, it is an abuse of Parliament to do so.
Hare coursing is about the pursuit of wild hares that are not restrained or interfered with. The object of coursing is to test the stamina, skill and ability of two greyhounds, not to kill hares, which is why very few hares are killed. In the last season—records are kept by the National Coursing Club—245 hares were killed during 89 days of coursing. On the other hand, it is possible to run a successful coursing meeting—such as the one that the hon. Member for West Lancashire will have seen at Altcar—only if there is a large population of wild, healthy hares in that area, so strict conservation methods must be introduced to ensure that the local hare population prospers. That is why, on coursing estates throughout the country and on the farms where the clubs run, the hare population is far higher than average.
The hon. Member for West Lancashire is right to say that the hare population has declined. It declined until about 20 years ago, although it is stable now. However, that was the result of changing farming practices and the fact that farmers now make silage, not the traditional hay. The decline is not, however, in the areas where coursing clubs look after the hares.
If he went to Altcar, the hon. Member for West Lancashire would see the conservation effort that is made by gamekeepers to protect the hares from predators such as foxes, and from human predators such as poachers. We share the hon. Gentleman's disapproval of illegal coursing, which is merely poaching. Even if the Bill became law, there would be no guarantee that those individuals would take any more notice of it than they take of the law of the land now. The only way to deal with those people is to arrest and prosecute them, and confiscate their vehicles.
If the Bill succeeds, the hare population on coursing estates will decline, as it has in other parts of the country. The hon. Gentleman may save 245 hares, but, ultimately, we would see the decline of many thousands of hares on 919 that field. The Bill is a bad bargain for hares and the hon. Gentleman should understand some of the paradoxes involved in the conservation of wild species.
The hon. Gentleman talked about the crowd. Curiously, last year he was rather rude about the crowd on what is known as the "public bank" at Altcar. Last year, I asked somebody from the British Field Sports Society to carry out a survey to find out who was sitting on the bank, and the news for the hon. Gentleman is that most of them were his constituents. Naturally, they are from the area and, traditionally, over many years, they have come to watch the Waterloo cup, so many of the people whom the hon. Gentleman described as beer-loaded lager louts are his constituents. Some have come from further afield: some are miners or factory workers; others are unemployed. There is no reason why they should not enjoy a traditional sport, as they always have.
Three proper substantial investigations have been carried out into coursing since the war, and all three have found in its favour. I refer the hon. Gentleman to the last, which was carried out by a House of Lords Special Select Committee set up in 1976 at the behest of a Labour Government.

§ Mr. Kevin McNamara (Hull, North)
It was not.

§ Mr. Atkinson
If the hon. Gentleman will listen, that Special Select Committee concluded—

§ Mr. McNamara
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

§ Mr. Atkinson
No, I will not give way because I have only a short time to speak—[Interruption.]

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst)
Order. The hon. Member for Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) has been here long enough to know that we are operating 920 under the 10-minute rule. If the hon. Member for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson) does not wish to give way, he does not have to give way.

§ Mr. Atkinson
Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

§ Mr. McNamara
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for the hon. Gentleman to mislead the House by saying that a Labour Government established that Committee? They did not do so. It was established by a Tory majority in the House of Lords after my Bill, supported by the Government, had successfully gone through this House.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
That is a point for debate, which, if necessary, can be corrected in some other way.

§ Mr. Atkinson
I said that the Committee was set up under a Labour Government—it was 1976, which I recall was the time of a Labour Government. It is important not to argue about that but to understand the conclusions of the House of Lords Special Select Committee that the Committee have concluded that the Bill is not a suitable instrument for reducing the suffering of hares… The ethical question should in their opinion be for the individual conscience and not for legislation. That is the position that this House should hold for today.