Lords Sitting of 26 January 1954

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers

ABORTION BILL [H.L.]
2.35 p.m.
LORD AMULREE: My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to amend the law relating to abortion. I beg to move that this Bill be read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1ª.—(Lord Amulree.)
On Question, Bill read 1ª and to be printed.

TRAPPING OF RABBITS
VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN: My Lords, I beg to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government (1) the number or weight of home-killed rabbits sold annually in Great Britain and Northern Ireland for the last three years (to any convenient date); (2) how long have experiments been going on in designing humane rabbit traps, and whether any trap has yet been designed comparable to the ordinary gin trap as regards weight, efficiency and price.]
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES (LORD CARRINGTON): My Lords, there are no records of the number or weight of home-killed rabbits sold annually in the United Kingdom, but it has been estimated by the trade that during the last three years an average of about 40 million home-killed wild rabbits have been sold annually for human consumption. Efforts to devise a humane rabbit trap have been going on for many years, but I do not know of any trap so far devised that compares with the gin trap as regards weight, efficiency and price.

BRITISH WAR DEBT TO AMERICA
2.37 p.m.
VISCOUNT ELIBANK: My Lords, I beg to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they can state in round figures the amount of the debt owing by the United Kingdom to the United States at the conclusion on the 1939–45 war; in general terms, on what account that debt was incurred; and what amount of the debt has since been repaid by the United Kingdom to the United States.]
THE PAYMASTER GENERAL (THE EARL OF SELKIRK): My Lords, if I may assume for the purposes of this Question that the war came to an end on V.J. Day—that is, August 15, 1945—the position at that date was as follows. There was an outstanding loan contracted by Her Majesty's Government from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation under the Agreement of July 21, 1941, for a sum of 274 million dollars. This has now been repaid. There was also a liability to repay the United States 88 million ounces of silver. Repayment was to be made in kind within a period which has now been determined as ending on April 28, 1957. No payment has yet been made. Under a Joint Statement of December 6, 1945, Her Majesty's Government assumed a liability of 532 million dollars in respect of Lease-Lend and Reciprocal Aid. This figure was subsequently increased to cover items arising after August 15 by 90 million dollars. This gives a total debt of 622 million dollars, of which 43 million dollars had been repaid by December 31, 1953, leaving 579 million dollars still outstanding on January 1, 1954.
VISCOUNT ELIBANK: I thank the noble Earl for his Answer.

VICTORIA EMBANKMENT ROADWAY
2.39 p.m.
LORD TEYNHAM: My Lords, I beg to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are aware of the chaotic

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conditions on the Embankment roadway between Blackfriars Bridge and the Houses of Parliament, owing to the lack of co-ordination and proper planning, by which both sides of the road are in hand at the same time and parts of the road have been pulled up twice in eight weeks, thereby causing great inconvenience to traffic and the business community on that important thoroughfare, and what steps Her Majesty's Government propose to take to prevent a similar occurrence in the future.]
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: My Lords, after the abandonment of the tramways along the Embankment in July, 1952, the City of Westminster and the City of London have taken the opportunity of reconstructing the whole Embankment at a cost of £250,000. The new road will be a dual carriageway and should greatly improve the traffic facilities. This is a big scheme and, I am afraid, has necessarily brought a measure of inconvenience to this area during the period of reconstruction. But from the outset the highway authorities—the City of Westminster and the City of London—have co-operated with each other and have thereafter brought into consultation the police, the statutory undertakers, the London Transport Executive and officers of the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation.
A development of this character is necessarily complicated and requires to be carefully phased. This phasing which, among other things, has to consider the interests of traffic, has involved in certain cases temporary paving of roads and foot-paths which has subsequently had to be redone. My right honourable friend is satisfied that the highway authorities have done their utmost to reduce the public inconvenience to the minimum consistent with finishing the work in the shortest possible time. It is very much hoped that this whole scheme will be completed by early this summer.
LORD TEYNHAM: My Lords, I am obliged to the noble Earl for that reply. Arising out of it, is the noble Earl aware that the Public Streets Act, 1950, controls these matters, and will he ask the Ministry of Transport to see for the convenience of the public that this Act is enforced?
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: My Lords, I am informed that tie Acts concerned have been fully complied with. I have a reference here to the co-ordination required under Section 4 of the London Traffic Act, 1924. I am afraid that I have not a reference to the 1950 Act, to which the noble Lord referred.

PRIVATE BILLS (CONSOLIDATION)
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF DROGHEDA): My Lords, I beg to move the Resolution standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved to resolve, That it is desirable that in the present Session all Private Bills for the exclusive purpose of consolidating the provisions of existing Private Acts of Parliament be referred to the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills and that the Joint Committee shall not take into consideration any petition against any such Bill if the petitioners seek to alter the existing law.—(The Earl of Drogheda.)
On Question, Resolution agreed to: Ordered, That a Message be sent to the Commons to communicate this Resolution and to desire their concurrence.

PESTS BILL [H.L.]
2.41 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, although this Bill has the general title, "Pests Bill," it deals mainly with wild rabbits. Its aim is to make their destruction more effective and more humane, and it gives effect to Government decisions on some of the recommendations in the Report of the Committee on Cruelty to Wild Animals which was published in June, 1951. I expect that in the discussions on this Bill we shall refer frequently to that Report, and I should like to take this opportunity of saying how grateful we are to the Committee for their help and guidance. They dealt with a difficult and controversial subject and your Lordships will agree that the Report which they produced is excellent.
Most people are agreed that the rabbit is a pest. This is a fact that is repeated

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very often—but with varying degrees of conviction. People who are not directly concerned with the production of food are sometimes inclined to think that the farmer is unnecessarily hard on the rabbit, so I think on this occasion it might be worth while mentioning again some of the reasons why the rabbit is condemned as a pest. It causes considerable damage to grass, herbage, green shoots, spring corn, roots and other crops, and it fouls and damages pastureland so as to reduce its stock-carrying capacity.
It is difficult to put a figure to this damage, but some striking results have been obtained from local trials. In 1950 a survey of rabbit damage in Kent showed that, if a plot of spring wheat was unfenced, its yield was reduced by 20 per cent. A wider survey of damage to winter wheat showed an average loss of yield of over 6 per cent. It is more difficult to assess the damage which rabbits do to grassland, but losses of over 25 per cent. of yield have been recorded in heavily infested areas. The damage to grassland is not so apparent because it does not arise when rabbits feed on the summer flush, when there is plenty of herbage for all, but in the spring, when the rabbits graze the early bite which is now so badly needed for cattle and sheep, and, of course, in the autumn and onwards when the herbage is thinning out.
In forestry, too, a great deal of damage is done throughout the rotation of the crop. Rabbits destroy much of the natural seedling growth in woodlands and so make it impossible to establish a new crop without the expense of raising trees in special nurseries. Rabbits also prevent the restocking, either naturally or artificially, of gaps in woodlands caused by windthrow or of small clearings. One of the reasons for lack of new growth by natural generation is damage caused by rabbits. In young plantations small trees may be killed outright by the stem being bitten through or by much of the bark being nibbled off. Where the trees survive they are usually deformed by having two of more leaders so that they lose in quality. Older trees are not altogether safe; the rabbits at certain times gnaw the bark at the base, which exposes the tree to disease and causes defects in the timber. Rabbits not only burrow among the roots of trees, endangering the stability of the crop; they
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also destroy the hedges and hedge banks which give the plantations natural protection against stock. Apart from the serious loss in productivity and quality, the cost of protection against this kind of destruction is considerable. It entails erecting and maintaining miles of rabbit proof fencing the annual cost of which is in the region of £500,000 for State-owned plantations, and for privately-owned woodlands it might well amount to £1,500,000 or more.
Of course, there is a credit side, but it is far less than the losses caused by rabbits. Some people like rabbit to eat, but I am sure that not many realise that if it is an English wild rabbit, each helping, assuming a helping to be six ounces, has taken as much fodder to produce as seven lamb chops or 2½ Ib. of rump steak. Added to this, it is worth remembering that experts on nutrition believe that rabbit meat has only about half the food value of ordinary meat. The Select Committee on Agriculture in 1937 endorsed the view that the rabbit had seldom been killed which, when sold, did not owe somebody several shillings as a result of its activities. The Committee on Cruelty to Wild Animals to which I have already referred considered that the economic interests of the country would best be served by the total elimination of the rabbit, if that were possible.
I think I ought to say something about myxomatosis and how it affects this Bill. The House will remember that the disease first appeared in this country last October, when infected rabbits were found on an estate of some 200 acres near Edenbridge in Kent. The Ministry did what was possible to prevent the disease from spreading before we had time to consider its implications, but there are now nine recorded outbreaks of infection in the south-eastern counties, stretching from Southwold in Suffolk to Lewes in Sussex. There are many different opinions about the part myxomatosis might play in getting rid of rabbits in this country, but I do not think it would be appropriate for me to go into them on the Second Reading of this Bill. Your Lordships will know that a Committee is considering this question and we hope to be able to report before very long. What is very much to the point is to ensure that, in areas where myxomatosis does kill off the rabbits, steps are taken to dispose of

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survivors and to prevent other rabbits from moving in. That is important, because the surviving rabbits would soon multiply again and also because it is from these survivors that an immune strain of rabbits might develop. The control measures provided in this Bill, therefore, assume an added significance now that myxomatosis has appeared in this country. We shall want strong mopping-up operations by gassing and trapping to follow in the wake of outbreaks of the disease.
My Lords, as far as the details of the Bill are concerned, you will see that it is divided into two parts. Part I deals mainly with the destruction and control of rabbits and Part II deals with the use of spring traps. The first clause deals with rabbit clearance areas. No matter how many laws we pass, we are list going to get very far with the rabbit problem without combined efforts from all sections of the agricultural community. There are over 350 voluntary clearance schemes in operation, ranging up to 10,000 acres and mote in area, and covering about 1.500,000 acres in all. Unfortunately, efforts to organise voluntary schemes of this sort in Scotland have not met with any success.
Although we are now taking powers in Clause 1 of the Bill to make rabbit destruction compulsory in clearance areas, we have tried to preserve as far as possible the voluntary character of these area schemes. The areas to be schedules for clearance will be drawn up in consultation with the local interests; then when an area has been selected interested persons in the area will have an opportunity of objecting to the inclusion of their land, if for any good reason they think it should not be included. The obligations on occupiers within the scheduled area have statutory force and that will be to the advantage of the majority of willing participants, because they will know clearly what is required of them and that the job is being shouldered fairly by all.
The duty of the occupier to destroy rabbits on his land will be a continuing one and will not be discharged simply by clearing the rabbits once. Within a clearance area any occupier may take whatever action is necessary to destroy rabbits by trapping, gassing, snaring, netting or other such means. It should seldom be essential to shoot the rabbits
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and we do not think that shooting would be the normal method of destruction. But, in dealing with rabbits that harbour in scrub and overgrown woodland, the only effective method may be to get the rabbits out of the scrub and shoot them as they come out. Provision has therefore been made for this.
The duty of destroying rabbits is, as I have said, being placed on the occupier and he must therefore be given the means of doing what is required of him. An occupier's right to kill rabbits may be restricted by his tenancy agreement, or he may have disposed of his rights. If in this case he needs to bring more people on to the land to shoot rabbits than are permitted to him under the Ground Game Act (that is, if he needs more guns than his own and one other person) he must apply for the consent of the landowner, or whoever has the rabbiting rights. If the consent were unreasonably withheld the occupier could ask the Minister or the Secretary of State for his consent. This provision follows fairly closely a similar provision which is in force in Scotland under the Agriculture (Scotland) Act of 1948.
Clause 2 enables the Minister and the Secretary of State to require the removal of scrub or other cover for rabbits and to require the erection of rabbit-proof fencing where it is not practicable to destroy the rabbits. To ensure that the reasonableness of each case is carefully considered, requirements of this kind must be given in an individual notice specifying what has to be done. Of course, no reasonable Minister would require a farmer to put up a lot of fencing to keep out other people's rabbits. The sort of case we have in mind is one where a large area has been cleared of rabbits except for, say, a small area of scrub in the middle which could not be cleared without a great deal of expense. Then, obviously, the thing to do would be to fence off the scrub. The present grant of half the cost of clearing rabbit-infested scrub in clearance areas will be continued and in approved cases extended to cover removal of earth banks and the erection of rabbit-proof fencing. To encourage farmers generally to adopt the most rapid, effective and humane means of destroying rabbits, without regard to financial return, we propose to continue the subsidy on gassing powder

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under which a 7 lb. tin costs no more than 15s. The remaining clauses in Part I deal mainly with finance and procedure.
Part II of the Bill deals with trapping. The Committee on Cruelty to Wild Animals condemned the gin trap and considered that its sale and use in this country ought to be banned within a short period of time. There is also a great deal of public feeling against the gin. Her Majesty's Government are in complete sympathy with this, and we are now seeking the power in Clause 8 to enable the sale and use of inhumane traps to be abolished in England and Wales. The Secretary of State for Scotland already has this power. Time must, of course, be allowed for effective substitutes to be provided and for gamekeepers, farmers, trappers, and others whose business it is to get rid of rabbits to adapt themselves to the new traps. Traps have already been designed to catch and kill rabbits without causing unnecessary suffering, and some of these have been tested on a fairly extensive scale, but I am afraid we cannot yet say with certainty whether, in general use, they would provide a complete answer to the trapping problem. It would not be in the interests either of rabbit destruction or of humanity, as the Committee on Cruelty to Wild Animals recognised in their Report, to bring about a state of affairs that resulted in there being more rabbits to be destroyed than would otherwise be the case.
It is estimated that there are some 3,000,000 gin traps in use in this country and a period of four years in which to prepare for their displacement has been allowed. The Minister may prohibit the use of any spring trap of which he has not approved as from a date fixed by him, but not earlier than July, 1958. I think there is little doubt that the effect of this Bill will be to stimulate the development and improvement of humane traps, because those who are interested in them either experimentally or commercially will know that the time when the gin can be banned will depend very largely on their efforts. I am able to tell you that one of the most experienced manufacturers of gin traps in this country has, for several years, been engaged in the development of a completely new design for a humane trap which he feels may
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stand a chance of being so perfected as to compete with gin traps on level terms as regards usage, efficiency and price. The Agricultural Departments are taking a keen interest in this and other designs that are in process of development.
Clause 9 deals with open trapping. On this the Committee on Cruelty to Wild Animals considered there was some misapprehension. There seemed to be a tendency to associate open trapping with cruelty because it was customary to think about it in terms of gin traps. The open trapping of rabbits with gin traps would, of course, involve suffering, although the Committee considered that the argument that a rabbit caught in the open suffered more than one caught in a hole was open to dispute. The argument would, in any case, disappear if the trap used were of an approved humane type that killed the rabbit outright. The Committee went very fully into this question of open trapping and a special investigation was carried out by one of its members. They came to the conclusion that there were areas where it was quite impossible to control the numbers of rabbits without setting traps in the open and where, because of the ban on open trapping, there had been an appreciable increase in the number of rabbits. They considered, therefore, that it would be in the national interest that the Agricultural Ministers should be given power to authorise the use of spring traps in the open in appropriate circumstances. We have accordingly provided in Clause 9 that, in England and Wales, trapping of rabbits and hares in the open may be authorised by regulation or by licence.
Broadly similar provisions to those in Clauses 8 and 9 are applied to Scotland by Clause 10. The Scottish Act of 1948 gives the Secretary of State power to prohibit the use of the gin trap for catching rabbits or hares whenever he is satisfied that enough "approved" or humane traps are available. Clause 10 follows the general lines of the existing statutory provisions, but these are amended and widened so as to leave the Secretary of State free at any time to ban the gin trap for all purposes, subject, of course, to his being satisfied that enough approved traps are available. There is one slight difference between England and Wales and Scotland in the matter of open trapping, in that the Secretary

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of State is satisfied that the limited demand and need for open trapping in Scotland can adequately be met by individual licences. So he does not seek the power which we consider necessary in England and Wales to make regulations authorising open trapping generally.
It will be seen that we have concentrated our attention in the Bill almost exclusively on rabbits. We have done this because we feel we have the means of securing an enormous reduction in the rabbit population. I only wish we could say the same about harmful birds such as the pigeon. The provisions of the Bill have been worked out in consultation with the interests concerned and in the light of the recommendations of the Committee on Cruelty to Wild Animals; and we have acted upon the best advice available to us. I hope your Lordships will agree that the Bill should provide a useful and humane contribution towards the solution of the rabbit problem. I beg to move that the Bill be read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2ª.—(Lord Carrington.)
3.0 p.m.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, I think the House will agree that this Bill is quite uncontroversial, though not for that reason unimportant, and no doubt that is one of the reasons why the Government thought fit to introduce it in your Lordships' House and not in another place. I am sure that we all agree that we ought to do much more than is being done at the present time to safeguard our home-grown foodstuffs from tine depredations of the rabbit, and that a much greater effort should be made by all concerned, first to reduce the numbers of, and ultimately to wipe out, the most formidable of our pests. What is very disturbing about the present situation is, first, the damage still done by rabbits despite all the efforts that have been made to reduce their numbers. I am glad that the noble Lord opposite dwelt at some length on these facts, because I think that they are not generally known to the public; if they were known a greater effort would be made to get rid of the rabbits. There is no need for me to re-emphasise the facts about the damage done by rabbits; that has already been mentioned. But it is a startling fact (this was not mentioned by the noble
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Lord, although I am sure he will agree) that if we were to try to estimate in terms of pounds, shillings and pence the damage done annually to corn crops and growing grass, it would run into millions of pounds. Obviously, we cannot give even an approximate figure, but it is safe to say that the total damage done certainly runs into millions of pounds every year.
The other disturbing feature about our loss of food as a result of the depredations of rabbits (a feature to which I think the noble Lord did not refer), is that in many respects it would appear that in this campaign of man versus rabbit the rabbit is getting the upper hand. For instance, in a number of areas in the country it has been accurately estimated—so far as any estimates of the kind can be made—that the number of rabbits has actually increased in the last few years. This is a very sobering fact indeed, for it means that the persistent efforts that have been made by most farmers, by agricultural executive committees and by successive Governments (I remember the tremendous efforts which were made during the time that I was associated with the Ministry of Agriculture) have failed to achieve their principal object: we have not succeeded in wiping, out rabbits, Far from it. It is doubtful even whether we have managed to stabilise the rabbit population. It is certainly on the increase in some parts of the country.
This is where I think we all agree wholeheartedly with the provisions of the Bill. It is quite obvious that more must be put into this anti-pest campaign. We need fresh reserves of good will and authority; we need an even greater determination on the part of farmers, landowners and occupiers of land to do their bit by getting rid of their own rabbits. I am sure that at the present time the great majority are doing their best to keep their own rabbits down; but there are scattered farms and estates in different parts of the country where this duty has been neglected. Of course, rabbits spread very rapidly indeed from these rabbit-infested areas, however small they may be, and the work of a number of good farmers who have practically eliminated rabbits from their own farms can be completely ruined by one man, working quite a small piece of land, who does not take any trouble about his rabbits.

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It is not sufficient to have the good will and co-operation of the majority on our side; if large areas of the country are to be permanently cleared of rabbits, we must have everyone on our side. That is where the provisions of the Bill about designation of clearance areas appear to be valuable. Unless we can get these large blocks cleared, and everyone within those blocks doing his bit, we shall not be able to eliminate the pest. If, of course, it were generally felt that to give your neighbours rabbits was as unneighbourly as to give them chicken pox or measles, then the problem would be easily solved. Unfortunately, although no doubt some people do feel that way, there are others who do not: and they also have to be catered for. That is why there is a need for more authority, as well as more persuasion. We should all prefer this task of clearing rabbits to be undertaken without compulsion. But, of course, while we must go on trying to get as much agreement as possible from those concerned, there is no doubt that the Government should have all the powers that may be required for effective action in cases where co-operation is not otherwise obtainable.
I am glad to see that in Clauses 1 and 2, the Government are asking for powers—which I regard as essential—beyond those given under the 1947 Act, to use compulsion where necessary in the clearance of rabbits. The only anxiety which I feel bound to express at this stage is that, when they are obtained, these powers may not be boldly used. There is nothing to oblige the Minister to use the powers for which he is asking even if Parliament agrees to give them to him. I am doubtful whether there are more than a few cases in which, under the provisions of the 1947 Act, farmers have been compelled to clear their rabbits, even when a very strong case of neglect can be made against them. It is a matter of psychology of Governments that they are reluctant to attract the unpopularity of coercive measures; that applies to Governments of every sort or kind.
I should like the noble Lord, if he will, in his final remarks, to assure us that the Government seriously intend to use these powers, if they are given by Parliament, as well as existing powers, whenever they are satisfied that their use is justified by
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the circumstances in any part of the country. Part I of the Bill will be entirely useless if people begin to think that myxomatosis can be a substitute for rabbit control. That would be an extremely dangerous misconception, because it would mean an immediate relaxation of voluntary effort and would be the strongest possible argument against control by public authority. For that reason, I am sure that the more information the public have about the nature and the effects of this disease, and the sooner this information is generally available, the more surely any misunderstandings of this kind will be removed.
The noble Lord, Lord Carrington, referred to the Committee that has been appointed to inquire into this disease. I should like to ask the noble Lord whether he can say how soon their Report will be ready, and whether, when the Report appears, he or his colleague will be willing to state, at the earliest practical moment after they have had time to make up their minds about it, the Government's policy in relation to this disease. The noble Lord said the Committee's Report will appear before very long. May I ask the noble Lord what he means by "before very long"? Does he mean within the next few months, or before the end of the year? That is a very important matter, from the point of view both of the spread of the disease and of the interest that farmers take in its character and effects. I shall be very much obliged if he will clarify that rather ambiguous statement when he replies. Or perhaps he would prefer to do it now?
LORD CARRINGTON: I mean in March, if that is possible.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: That is very pleasing to hear. I am grateful to the noble Lord. Evidently there is a sense of urgency in the work of the Committee. One other question about the Report that I should like the noble Lord to answer is this. Will the Report be generally available? Or will it be a private document, available only for information and advice for Ministers? I hope that it will be published, because I think that the need for information about this disease is very general.
May I pass now to Part II of the Bill, which deals with the prohibition of the gin trap and the substitution for it of a

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humane spring trap approved by the Minister? I think everyone will agree with the purpose which the Government seek to achieve with this Part of the Bill. Indeed, your Lordships will remember a number of occasions in this House when noble Lords on both sides have tinged the Government to implement, by legislation, the two important recommendations in the Scott-Henderson Committee's Report—the Report of the Committee on Cruelty to Wild Animals. As we on this side take no less interest in the Report, the Committee having been appointed by my colleagues when they were in office, may I say how glad I was to hear the noble Lord say that the Government have accepted the recommendations of the Report. We, of course, wish to be associated with them in our attitude to the Committee's recommendations.
Your Lordships will remember that probably the two most important recommendations made by the Committee were, first, that the sale and use of the gin trap should be banned by law in this country; and, secondly, that it should be illegal to use any spring trap that has not been approved by the Minister. We welcome the intention, which is obvious from the Bill, to substitute, in the fullness of time, a humane trap for the gin trap, which the Scott-Henderson Committee wish to make illegal. At the same time, I must express my own disappointment—for although it has been partly removed by what the noble Lord has said, it has not been entirely removed—at the particular proposals in Part II of the Bill. I think the House is entitled to expect from the Government a full statement of their reasons for what appears to be a somewhat half-hearted attempt to face the issue of the gin trap. I think we should like to know why such a long time as four years is required before any date can be fixed for the prohibition of the gin trap, and why, in spite of this long delay, no date beyond the four-year period has been fixed in the Bill for the prohibition of the trap.
The provisions of the Bill are not by any means entirely in line with the recommendations of the Scott-Henderson Committee's Report. The Committee said that the gin trap should be banned "within a short period of time." They reported in 1951. Now, three years later, this Bill
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has been introduced, and under Clause 8 the Minister cannot prohibit the use or sale of the gin trap before the summer of 1958—four and a half years from the present time. And even then, four and a half years hence, the Minister will not be tinier any statutory obligation to do so, or even to do so at a later date: it will still be a matter for his own discretion. Whatever happens, it is clear that there will be a further long period of delay before the earliest date can be fixed on which the trap can be made illegal. And there is no guarantee that, even after this long delay, the Minister may not find reasons for further delay before these traps are banned. These proposals will leave manufacturers and farmers in a stale of uncertainty about the future of the gin trap. Farmers will not be encouraged to replace gin traps by humane traps when purchasing fresh supplies of these articles; nor will manufacturers be encouraged to plan production in order to provide sufficient numbers of traps of humane design to fill the place of the gin traps as they become worn-out or useless and have to be replaced.
These were remarks which came into my mind when I was preparing what I proposed to say this afternoon. They have been to some extent countered by what the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, has said. But I should be very grateful if, when he comes to make his final speech, he would be good enough to amplify what he has already said. Particularly, I should like him to answer this question: Is it the present intention of the Government to fix a date for the prohibition of the gin trap as soon as possible after the period of four and a half years has elapsed? I think there can be no question as to the need for an adequate supply of efficient alternative traps when the gin trap becomes illegal. In view of the very large number of gin traps that are at present being used, the provision of a sufficiently large number of alternative traps that are equally efficient, at approximately the same cost, is an essential condition for the prohibition of the gin trap. I do not think the prohibition should be delayed a day longer than is necessary for the requisite preparation to be made for the use of an alternative humane trap.
I was pleased to hear the noble Lord say that a new design of trap was under consideration. Does that mean an improvement on the Imbra, which I

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believe is the latest type? I have seen the Imbra trap, and I am told that it is quite efficient compared with the gin trap, though not quite so cheap. I should like the noble Lord to say whether the trap of which he speaks will be an improvement on the Imbra trap; and, if so, in what respects. Will it be in respect of cost or efficiency, or in some other factor? However, I do think it is important to fix a date, as I have suggested—and for this reason. It is hard to see how the necessary preparations for the switch-over from one type of trap to another can be made by all those concerned—farmers, trappers, manufacturers, retailers, and so on—unless they are confronted by an absolutely certain date, after which the use and sale of the gin trap will become illegal. If they have that date clearly before them, they will have to adapt their practice to the changed conditions.
I should like the Government to consider whether they would be willing to amend the Bill so as to make it more certain that the gin trap will not be used after a sufficient period of time has elapsed for the alternative trap to be generally available. We shall listen with very great care to what the noble Lord has to say in reply to the debate, and to the contributions which will be made by other noble Lords who, in time past, have shown that they have special knowledge of this matter, and who will no doubt do so again to-day. Then, in the light of the information which will be available by the time the debate has concluded, we shall decide whether we think the Bill ought to be amended in order to make this provision in relation to the gin trap more effective than it is in the Bill as it now stands.
3.20 p.m.
LORD AMULREE: My Lords, I assure your Lordships that we shall be pleased to give a welcome to any measure proposed to control the breeding of rabbits in this country. As has already been stated, the value of rabbits for food is greatly counterbalanced by the damage they do to crops and food production. From my own recollection of where I lived in Scotland, I know that the people there did not eat rabbits at all, because they held, quite properly, that they could he counted as vermin and were not of great value as food. That has been con-
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firmed by what the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, said in moving the Second Reading of this Bill. We have no reason to be sorry that steps have been taken to control the breeding of rabbits in this country.
There is one point in the Bill about which I am not entirely clear: whether the trapping to be allowed is to be commercial trapping, because that has never proved to be quite satisfactory. Where the owners of rabbits make a certain amount of gain trappers are careful or manage it so that there is never complete extermination in any part of the country. I think more encouragement should be given to the clearance of the breeding grounds from time to time, and more work should be done in netting rabbits, which I think has proved successful in those parts of the country where it is being carried out now. I should like to support what both noble Lords have said about myxomatosis. I certainly do not think that that should be encouraged as a means of dealing with the rabbit pest, because I think it would result in a relaxation of any efforts that are now being made. Moreover it might not prove satisfactory, because it is certain that in time some strain of rabbit would be produced which would be immune to the disease. Therefore, we should not rely on that as a means of exterminating this pest.
I should like to say a word about Part II of the Bill. I am very disappointed to learn that there is no possibility of the banning of the gin trap until 1958 at the earliest. It was about four years ago when I first mentioned the gin trap in your Lordships' House, when talking about the Agriculture (Scotland) Bill. Then we had an encouraging reply. We were told that work was being done on an alternative trap. We had expected that by now the gin trap would be abolished by law. It seems rather sad that we have to wait for another four and a half years before that is possible, and there is no guarantee that at the end of that four and a half years something will be done to abolish it. So long as people are allowed to employ the gin trap, there will be no great encouragement for anyone to try to invent a different kind of trap. If, however, they knew that by a certain date the gin trap would be banned. They would be stimulated to endeavour to find some means of coping with the problem. This

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is a point which will probably be raised on Committee stage and I do not want to detain your Lordships in regard to it any further. I should like to say on behalf of noble Lords who sit on the Liberal Benches that we welcome the Bill in its present form and are pleased to give it a Second Reading.
3.24 p.m.
LORD ELTON: My Lords, while welcoming the Bill and, incidentally, congratulating the Government on (I think for the first time) publicly classifying the rabbit as a pest, f am afraid I must confine my remarks to what I regard as the most important clause of the Bill, Clause 8, which deals with spring traps; or, to be more precise, which alas! fails to deal with spring traps. I am speaking as a Back Bencher who rather more than two years ago, in November, 1951, moved in your Lordships' House the Second Reading of a Private Member's Bill, the Spring Traps Bill, which was designed to end the scandal of the gin trap by January 1, 1954: and I am bound lo say that the present Bill seems to me to reflect little credit on either the head or the heart of the present advisers of Her Majesty.
May I remind your Lordships briefly of two or three of the salient landmarks in the long, sad, and in some ways almost incredible story of the gin trap? Perhaps, in parenthesis, since we shall be talking a great deal about the gin trap, I ought to say that the gin trap is the "ugly sister," so to speak, of the spring trap family: it is a spring trap, armed with teeth and jaws, which mutilates, without killing, millions of rabbits; and not rabbits only, but also dogs, cats, birds, ranging from golden eagles to blue tits, and other creatures, in tens of thousands every year. Not to go further back into this sad story than 1935, in that year the noble Viscount. Lord Tredegar, introduced a Private Member's Bill which would have abolished the gin, and which was defeated by only four votes. By 1951 the Government had set up the Scott-Henderson Committee on Cruelty to Wild Animals, which has been mentioned so often already this afternoon. The Scott-Henderson Committee used words which cannot be quoted too often. They said that the gin trap is
"a diabolical instrument which causes an incalculable amount of suffering. Its sale and
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use in this country ought to be prohibited by law within a short period of time."
That was in 1951. In November, 1951, with your Lordships' permission, I introduced a Private Member's Bill, designed to abolish the gin trap by January 1, 1954. At that time the noble Lords who spoke on behalf of the Government said, in effect, that whilst entertaining every sympathy with the objects of the Bill, they could not agree to the abolition of the gin unless and until some humane substitute had been proved to be 100 per cent. effective. The noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, who wound up, was, however, quite hopeful. He said (OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 174, Col. 603):
"We very much hope that the gin trap can he abolished by that date"—
"that date" being January 1, 1954, approximately three weeks ago to-day. And thus partially reassured, your Lordships defeated my Bill by a comfortable margin.
Two years have elapsed since then, as the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, has just reminded the House, and during those two years, I am thankful to say, opinion in the country has been becoming increasing sensitive. My noble friend Lord Merthyr and I were both among the speakers at a great meeting convened by the Lord Mayor of Birmingham and designed to launch a campaign against the gin trap. All the mayors of the neighbouring boroughs were there, and several Members of Parliament. As a result of that meeting, a campaign was launched which has resulted in collecting already over 300,000 signatures to a petition against the gin trap. Unfortunately, I understand, the wording of the petition was irregular in some way, and it is doubtful whether it can be presented to another place. Nevertheless, it is significant evidence of a long overdue stirring of public opinion. Indeed, it has always been my experience that one has only to explain the nature of the gin trap to a British audience to arouse widespread horror and indignation.
This autumn, those of us who were interested in the original Private Member's Bill had prepared another, designed if possible to placate those noble Lords who were doubtful about the first Bill. This time, instead of saying that the gin must be abolished by such-and-such a dale, we were going to propose that the

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Minister should have power to abolish the gin when he pleased, but that he should also have power to license, by way of exception, the use of the gin, after its abolition—in no case for commercial trapping, but for genuine rabbit clearance schemes—if and when it appeared to him that none of the now plentiful alternatives to the trap would prove effective. That might have commanded a considerable degree of support among your Lordships, for I believe that the clause permitting licensing might have brought over some noble Lords who were doubtful about our original Bill. Then, however—and I must not say "therefore"—just as we were looking for a date for the First Reading of our Bill, the Government announced the Bill which is now before your Lordships, the principal result of which—I think it would be fair so say the principal object—must be that nothing whatever can be done about the gin trap for four and a half years, and that after that, as the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, has cogently pointed out, the Minister still remains entirely free to do nothing whatever.
The noble Lord, Lord Carrington, in introducing the measure, referred several times to the fact that the Government were implementing the recommendations of the Scott-Henderson Committee. I took up my pencil and looked out for ways in which they were, in fact, in this Bill implementing those recommendations, and I noted that there was to be a subsidy on gas powder. But I cannot see how you are implementing the recommendations of a Committee which said that you ought to ban a diabolical instrument within a short period of time, by announcing three years later that you are going to do nothing whatever for four and a half years, and that you will then still be free to continue to take no action at all. I am bound to say that this Bill is not worthy of the long humanitarian history of this country. What is more, it is not even common sense. For we are all agreed that the gin trap is a source of abominable cruelty. We all know, or ought to know, that every night in the winter more than 200,000 creatures of different kinds are lying alive and mutilated in these instruments. It was common ground among those of your Lordships who opposed my Bill that you deplored this cruelty, just as much as did
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those who supported the Bill. But noble Lords used the the only possible argument against the Bill, which was that the trap was needed for genuine rabbit-clearance schemes, and until some effective humane substitute can be devised we have to carry on using the gin trap. That is a respectable argument, so far as it goes.
Let me point out, in parenthesis, that you must distinguish between the genuine rabbit-clearance scheme and the commercial trapper who was mentioned just now by the noble Lord, Lord Amulree. The commercial trapper will never, if he can prevent it, allow you to abolish the gin trap. The commercial trapper needs the gin trap, because it keeps the victim alive in the trap until he can visit it and find the animal fresh for the market. But the commercial trapper is a parasite on agriculture. The commercial trapper no more wants to destroy rabbits than the butcher wants to destroy sheep, for they are his livelihood. As has been shown by the use of Lincoln indexes, the commercial trapper kills off about one-third of the rabbits on a typical estate, and leaves the rest to breed for the following year. I believe it was the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, who said it was disappointing that the rabbit population seems to be stationary, in spite of all the efforts of rabbit-clearance schemes. The answer to that is largely the commercial trapper, who kills off one-third, leaving the rest to breed, unobstructed by competition, and thereby does much to maintain a flourishing rabbit population.
However, your Lordships are not interested in commercial trapping but in clearance schemes. And I now want to put a further argument before you. Sometimes, when you are going to speak from my point of view on a Bill of this kind, people say that you should not talk about humane traps, because you will only get the whole argument clogged up with irrelevant controversy. But I think we must get this matter cleared up if we can. I want to put before your Lordships an argument seldom heard, but which I think is extremely cogent. I believe that this non possumus attitude—that we must wait until the humane trap has proved its efficiency 100 per cent.—is largely unjustifiable. I think there are three replies to the man who says that we must wait for the humane trap, and that cumulatively they are decisive. First,

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many of us who support this Bill say that there is virtually no type of ground on which you cannot effectively destroy rabbits without the use of any trap, either humane or gin. I cannot go into the technical arguments now, even if I were qualified to do so; I can only refer your Lordships to two publications, both authoritative and one of them official. The unofficial one is the University Federation of Animal Welfare's pamphlet. Instructions for Dealing with Rabbits, which summarises the technique appropriate for many different kinds of ground, and very moderately sums up its general conclusions in this sentence:
"What can safely be said is that neither traps nor snares can succeed unless they are set in a hole or run, and that if a hole or a run can be found, then various other methods become available."
But I need not refer to unofficial publications, authoritative though I believe this particular publication to be, for in Volume 60 of the Ministry of Agriculture's own Journal, published last year, on page 39, there is an article by Dr. F. D. Smith on "Farming Against Rabbits," which commences with this sentence:
"I began my campaign against rabbits in the wrong way. I trapped them."
Later in the article he sums up his conclusions by saying:
"Trapping"—
your Lordships will notice he does not say "Gin trapping"—
has no useful place in a scheme for rabbit clearance."
So useful, apparently, did the Ministry of Agriculture think that article to be that they have republished it in leaflet form for wide circulation. We therefore say that to an extent—and to a considerable extent, I should have thought—we have the authority of the Ministry of Agriculture behind us when we say that you can work an effective rabbit-clearance scheme without the use of a trap, whether it be a gin trap or a humane trap. Of course, that argument has no meaning to the commercial trapper, but I think your Lordships are probably with me in excluding the commercial trapper from consideration.
As I have just said, in order that those of your Lordships who are still doubtful might, if possible, be converted, in the Bill which we were hoping to introduce
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we had provided first, that there should be a fixed dale for the abolition of the girt trap, and then that the Minister should have power to license the use of the gin trap, even after its abolition, in circumstances in which he judged that none of the alternatives would be effective. But the clause was drawn in such a way that it would not permit the use of the gin trap for commercial trapping or by commercial trappers. That, surely, would have been the right course; and I believe it might have received support from many of your Lordships.
Finally, there is the third and, in some ways, the most interesting answer to the man who says that you must wait for the humane trap. I firmly believe that we shall never get a humane trap until we have set a date for the abolition of the gin trap. May I remind your Lordships—perhaps not remind all of you, because many of you are already aware—that the history of this attempt to devise a humane trap is at least fifty years old. I have here a quotation from an Annual Report of the Comptroller of Patents in. 1905. On page 11 this sentence occurs:
"A noteworthy growth occurred in vermin traps, accentuated no doubt by the offer of a prize for the most humane rabbit trap."
That was in 1905, all but fifty years ago. It is a matter of common observation in the history of technological discovery that the need provokes the answer. Professor Burkitt, summarising the history of inventions, actually used these words:
"Once something is definitely wanted, again and again it has been produced in an extremely short time."
He goes on to add that, conversely, if it is not really wanted it is not invented. The Field newspaper not long ago made precisely that same acute remark about the gin trap. It wrote:
"It has often been said that although the gin is deplorable it has to be used because there is no efficient substitute. In so far as this is true, it is only because there has never had to be an alternative."
Of course, we have lately seen that process—the urgent need rapidly evoking the answer—conspicuously at work in our own history in war time, where repeatedly the need for art invention elicited it within a few months, or weeks. I have little doubt that if the Minister would have the courage to fix a date for the abolition of this abominable instrument, we should

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have the humane trap perfected probably within a few months. That is throwing to the winds for the moment my own basic argument that even the humane trap is not absolutely essential.
We who support earlier abolition say that there is no case in logic or in morals for the Bill as drawn at present, and that the reasonable course would be to amend this Bill in Committee: first, by substituting the words "not later than July, 1948" for "not earlier than July, 1948"; and, secondly, by adding a clause which would permit the Minister to licence exceptions after the abolition, when and where he judged necessary. Something like that policy—but only like in the sense that a ghost is like a living man—can be dimly discerned behind the rather cumbrous verbiage of Clause 10, which deals with Scotland. I am told that in fact trapping goes merrily on in Scotland—commercial trapping and all—because a general licence for trapping, including commercial trapping, has been issued by the Ministry. I will therefore end by suggesting to your Lordships that the alternative which I have tried to sketch would be a reasonable one, and that I hope your Lordships will pass this Bill this afternoon with the mental reservation that you will support Amendments on some such lines in the Committee stage.

KENYA: CONDUCT OF BRITISH FORCES
3.43 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF DEFENCE (EARL ALEXANDER OF TUNIS): My Lords, perhaps I may interrupt the proceedings of the House for a few moments in order to make a statement, similar to that made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for War, about the Court of Inquiry held by General McLean in Kenya. The statement reads as follows:
"The Court assembled on December 15 and completed its report on December 31. Evidence was taken from all commanding officers and from officers, other ranks, chaplains, and medical officers of all formations and major units now in Africa which have been involved in the operations. Others concerned were invited to give evidence.
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and amongst those who availed themselves of this opportunity was the director of a native civil hospital and a bishop. I am satisfied that the Court, which took evidence from 147 military and civil witnesses, gave every opportunity to those concerned to appear before it.
"I told the House that when the Court of Inquiry had been completed I would make available a full and frank report. This I have prepared, and I can assure the House that I have omitted nothing of substance contained in the findings of the Court of Inquiry. As my report to the House is of necessity rather long, I think it would be for the convenience of the House if I circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
"I think that honourable Members will agree with me, when they have read it, that the summary of the findings indicates that the troops in Kenya have shown a high sense of responsibility and application to duty. There do not appear to be any grounds for accusing them of indiscriminate shooting, irresponsible conduct, or inhuman practices. There have, however, been allegations that in two instances serious misconduct occurred in the King's African Rifles. These cases are being fully investigated, and disciplinary action will be taken if required in the light of these inquiries. As I have already told the House, both General Erskine and I are determined that such matters shall be brought to light, and our intention, both in instituting the Court of Inquiry and in subsequent action, is for a clean-up and not a cover-up.
"I consider that the Court made a full and comprehensive inquiry, and that all the facts have been placed before me. Subject to what I have said about the allegations of serious misconduct in two cases, nothing is disclosed which should in any way shake the confidence of the House in the high standard of behaviour of the British Army. As a result of reading the report and visiting Kenya, I am convinced that the British Army, under difficult and arduous circumstances, has shown that measure of restraint, backed by good discipline, which this country has traditionally expected."
Following is a summary of the report made by the Court of Inquiry into allegations made during the trial of Captain G. S. L. Griffiths, D.L.I., against the conduct of the British Security Forces in Kenya.
Origin
1. Captain G. S. L. Griffiths, D. L. I., was tried by General Court Martial on 25th-27th November on a charge of murder of an African, and was acquitted. In the course of this trial certain allegations were made against the conduct of the British Security Forces in Kenya.
A Court of Inquiry was assembled by G.O.C.-in-C., East Africa, on 15th December, 1953, to inquire into and report on these allegations.
The President of the Court was Lieut.-General Sir Kenneth McLean, K.B.E., C.B., and members—Colonel G. Barret, O.B.E., Deputy Director, Army Legal Services, War Office and Colonel G. A. Rimbault, D.S.O., M.C., Deputy Chief of Staff, East Africa Command.
Terms of Reference
2. The Court were instructed to inquire into and report on the allegations made at the G.C.M. on Captain Griffiths in respect of:—

(a) the offering to soldiers of monetary rewards for Mau Mau killings;

(b) the keeping and exhibition of score boards recording official and unofficial kills and other activities against Mau Mau;

(c) the fostering of a competitive spirit amongst units in regard to kills in anti-Mau Mau operations.

3. In addition, the Court were instructed to inquire into any other actions which might come to their notice which reflected discredit on the Army and. in particular, into:—

(a) any other inhuman practices such as the cutting off of bards from Africans killed during the course of anti-Mau Mau operations;

(b) any other matters which reflected on the honour of the Army.

They were, however instructed that, with the exception of inquiring into the operations of 39 Infantry Brigade from their arrival in Fast Africa, and in particular into the specific allegations that a £5 reward had been offered for the first "kill" by one of its battalions, they would confine their inquiries to matters which occurred after 1st June, 1953.
Method
4. The Court assembled on 14th December, 1953, and completed its report on 31st December 1953.
During this period it took evidence from all formations and major units (Lieut.-Colonels' Commands) now in Africa which had been involved in anti-Mau Mau operations.
5. A representative cross-section of witnesses was heard from each major unit, ranging from
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the Commanding Officer to other ranks and including, where possible, the chaplain and medical officer.
In addition all units published orders giving details of the subjects being investigated by the Court and inviting any person wishing to do so to give evidence.
The Court heard evidence from 147 witnesses and these included six Army chaplains and four regimental medical officers, the Director of a native civil hospital and a Roman Catholic Bishop. The Christian Council of Kenya were invited to put forward any specific allegations against the conduct of the Army of which they were aware, but replied that they had no such matters to put forward.
Background
6. The area in which the Army in Kenya is operating comprises:—
(a) The Prohibited Areas
Areas consisting largely of forest and mountain, gazetted as prohibited by the Kenya Government, into which no persons other than members of the Security Forces or a small number holding a special permit are allowed to enter. Under Kenya Emergency Regulations, Security Forces have the right, if necessary, to shoot on sight.
(b) The Special Areas
These are areas, gazetted as such, in which certain special rules regarding the use of firearms apply. Any person in a special area who fails to halt after being challenged is liable to be shot. The special areas include the Kikuyu, Embu and Meru Land Units, commonly called "The Reserve," and also parts of the Kenya Highlands in the Central and Rift Valley Provinces in which lie the farms and ranches of European settlers, commonly called "The Settled Area."
Allegations
7. The offering to soldiers of monetary awards for Mau Mau killings
The Court found one instance where a reward was offered to a unit for getting a specific criminal. The battalion had been warned that a notorious Mau Mau leader, for whom the Government had offered a reward of five thousand shillings, was in the vicinity and that they were to undertake operations against him. Two of the Company Commanders, with the approval of the Commanding Officer, offered one hundred shillings to the unit which killed or captured him. This amount was to be laid out in kind for the benefit of the successful unit or sub-unit and was not to be paid to any individual. The Court considered that this offer, though mistaken, was explicable in the circumstances obtaining at the time.
There was also one instance which has already been publicised where a Commanding Officer offered £5 to the first sub-unit to kill a terrorist, as an encouragement to the troops when the battalion first went into action in anti-Mau Mau operations, The battalion was going into operations in the prohibited area (an area of thick forest) where no one other

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than the Security Forces had the right to be. The Court came to the same conclusion, as in the previous case, bearing in mind that it could not possibly recur because the G.O.C.-in-C. has since expressly forbidden the offering of monetary awards of any kind.
An instance also occurred where a Commanding Officer had given discretion to his Company Commanders to give rewards in the form of money, leave or other privileges to individuals or sub-units who put up an exceptionally good performance in operations. The assessment of a very good performance was not expressly related to kills. Monetary awards of this type will not recur.
Apart from the instances mentioned above and the rewards offered by Captain Griffiths as admitted in his evidence at his court martial, there is no other evidence of the practice of offering soldiers monetary or other rewards for killing Mau Mau in any of the units which they investigated.
8. The keeping and exhibition of scoreboards recording unofficial kills and other activities in operations against Mau Mau.
The Court understood the term "scoreboard" to be used in a derogatory sense and to refer to a visual record kept and displayed solely or mainly to foster unhealthy and irresponsible competition in killings between units and sub-units.
It is necessary for all formations, units and sub-units to collect and consolidate information recording all incidents in order to complete the periodical situation reports required by higher formations, and to show clearly to Commanders at all levels the progress of operations. The incidents so recorded include casualties to Mau Mau and to our own troops, prisoners captured, arms captured or lost, contacts with gangs, cattle stolen, etc.
The Court found that in platoons such information was kept in notebooks or memorised. In companies it was normally kept in notebooks or on pro formas in files. In some Company, Battalion and Brigade Headquarters, these incidents were consolidated graphically in the form of wall charts for the greater convenience of Commanders.
All these forms of Charts were considered perfectly legitimate and reasonable. There was no evidence that they were used for any improper purpose. Moreover it was clear that without exception they were kept in offices to which access was severely restricted. There was no evidence of records of unofficial killings whether this phrase is used in the sense of Mau Mau wounded and believed killed or in the sense of Africans other than the established Mau Mau who have been killed.
The Court's finding was that allegations of the exhibition of "scoreboards" recording official and unofficial kills and other activities in operations against Mau Mau were unfounded. Nothing more appeared to have been kept than charts recording official incidents consolidated from Situation Reports, which were kept in offices to which access was severely restricted.
9. The fostering of a competitive spirit amongst units in regard to kills in anti-Mau Mau operations.
The Court found that it was widely recognised amongst all ranks that the number of kills obtained by units depended largely on opportunity and that a captured Mau Mau who might possibly give valuable information was better than a dead one. Units' and sub units' capabilities appear to have been judged not by their total of kills but by the number of successful operations they carried out, including the capture of prisoners. When battalions were operating solely in a prohibited area, the capture of arms and prisoners was rare due to the conditions prevailing in those areas and the number of kills therefore acquired a greater prominence.
Due to very wide dispersion the rivalry between battalions appears to be negligible. Members of different battalions seldom met and in no cases did the Court find that witnesses knew the total kills in neighbouring battalions. There was somewhat more rivalry between companies within a battalion and still more between platoons in a Company. The Court satisfied themselves that the competitive spirit did not go beyond the natural rivalry to be found between sub-units in all good regiments in the British Army.
The Court found that allegations that the competitive spirit was being deliberately fostered amongst units in regard to kills in anti Mau Mau operations were unjustified.
Identification of Mau Mau killed in operations
10. The Court also investigated whether the practice existed in the Army of cutting off the hands of Africans killed in operations and bringing these hands back as a means of identification.
The normal practice when an African is killed by troops during operations in the Special Areas is for the body to be brought back to the nearest police post where it is handed over to the police.
In the Prohibited Areas the normal practice is for the body to be brought back by a patrol if this is possible. If this is impossible due to distance, terrain, or for operational reasons, identification papers if any, are removed from the body. When no papers are found finger-prints are taken with pads and ink specially issued to patrols and particulars of the corpse are recorded. If operational considerations permit, the body is then buried. The papers and finger prints are handed over to the police on completion of the operation.
It appears that in the early phases of anti Mau Mau operations and in the Prohibited Areas it was an accepted—although not a universal practice—to cut off either one or both hands from a body where the body could not be brought in and there was no other means of identification. The hand was brought back in order that finger prints could be taken from it. This practice was dictated by the necessity of reporting all Mau Mau casualties to the police. This practice started to decrease with the wide issue of finger printing equipment

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to units and has now been specifically forbidden, even if it means the loss of an identification.
It appears that in six instances (one of which was in the Special Areas) involving three battalions, hands had been brought back as proof of identification of Africans killed since 1st August, 1953. In each case this mutilation was carried out in good faith, on the instructions of a European officer or N.C.O. in view of the lack of other means of identification and was explicable in the operational circumstances. G.H.Q., East Africa, issued a further order on 1st January, 1954, accepting the loss of an identification if other methods were not available.
11. Inhuman practices—the torture and beating up of African prisoners and the illegal killing of Africans.
Normally prisoners when captured are immediately questioned by members of the sub-unit which captured them (assisted where necessary by personnel of the Kenya Regiment, Police or Home Guard to act as interpreters) in order to obtain information as to who they are and whether they cart guide the unit to a Mau Mau hideout. On conclusion of operations those retained as suspects are normally brought back to unit headquarters and handed over as soon as possible to the police—in some cases after further interrogation by the battalion Intelligence Officer.
The Court found no evidence whatever of African prisoners having been severely beaten or tortured by Army units for the purpose of forcing them to give information or for any other purpose, except in certain specific instances in two Kings African Rifles (K.A.R.) Battalions which are discussed in paragraphs 12 and 13 below. In fact, in British battalions the troops were as always, most sympathetic to their prisoners, offering them tea and cigarettes. As one witness put it to the Court "The prisoners put on weight whilst they are with us." Nor did the Court find any evidence of the illegal killing of Africans, except in certain specific cases which are discussed below.
12. Inhuman practices in K.A.R. battalions.
During June, 1953, one Company of a K.A.R. Battalion acted as Mobile Reserve to 70 (East Africa) Infantry Brigade and was detached for some weeks from its parent battalion. Apart from the incidents on 11th June which gave rise to the trial by court martial of Captain Griffiths, at which he was acquitted, there were certain other specific allegations against officers and men of this Company. These allegations are still under investigation.
13. Certain specific allegations have also been made that certain African prisoners base been ill-treated in another K.A.R. Battalion. A full investigation is now being made.
Honour of the Army
14. Other than the allegations in relation to the two K.A.R. Battalions referred to above, which are now under separate investigation, there is no evidence of any inhuman conduct towards Africans on the part of the Army.
15. Conclusion.
The above is a full and frank summary of the findings of the Court. It is my opinion, after reading the findings of the Court, that the incidents referred to in paragraphs 12 aid 13 above, though deplorable, are rare aid isolated. Allegations that such practices are or ever were widespread in the British Army are without foundation. Its conduct, under difficult and arduous circumstances, showed that measure of restraint backed by good discipline which this country has traditionally expected.
3.46 p.m.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLS-BOROUGH: My Lords, I am obliged to the noble and gallant Earl, the Minister of Defence, for having submitted to the House, this statement, which I understand is an exact replica of that submitted in another place. It is not possible to make any special comment upon the matter until all Members of your Lordships' House have had a chance of studying the summary of the report which it is intended to circulate in the OFFICIAL REPORT. I should like, therefore, to reserve the position of my noble friends on this side of the House, because we may desire to raise the matter again when we have had an opportunity of conferring upon the results shown.
We are happy to learn from the statement made by the Minister that the findings of this Court of Inquiry indicate that there have not been widespread instances of the kind of conduct which was complained of, for example, in the Griffiths case. I am quite sure that will be the desire of the noble Earl who has just submitted the statement to this House, with all his great reputation in general service and in the leadership of the Forces, that the position of honour amongst all the forces of the world which the British Forces have pre-eminently maintained in the past., shall be kept untouched, and that therefore all proper steps will be taken. On the other hand, I am in a rather difficult position. My noble Leader is out of the country and will be for some weeks. But when the first announcement of the Inquiry was made he did raise a specific issue which he put to the House, which was that he thought the proper form of the Inquiry should be a public inquiry.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS (VISCOUNT SWINTON): I do not think he put it quite as strongly as that.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLS-BOROUGH: I thought it was fairly strong, and I have refreshed my memory by reading the OFFICIAL REPORT. Can the Minister tell me whether it is intended to publish the full report, and not merely the summary which is to be circulated with the OFFICIAL REPORT of the House, so that if we come to the happy solution that, in general, any widespread charge has been disproved, that will be known to the public as a whole in detail, or whether the Government are going to confine themselves to this particular statement. I hope that as the public inquiry procedure has not been adopted, the fullest report will be issued, with, if possible, a report of the evidence. The two Houses of Parliament have had made available to them the minutes of evidence in the court-martial case, and those of your Lordships and Members of another place who have had an opportunity of seeing the kind of evidence there produced must have some disturbance of mind until we can be sure from the fullest evidence of this particular Inquiry that the matter has been—to use the Minister's own words—"cleaned up and not covered up." I simply say that I am much obliged to the Minister for making the statement, but I should like to know whether the full report will be circulated.
EARL ALEXANDER OF TUNIS: This summary, which is a full summary, is going to be circulated for the convenience of your Lordships and of honourable Members in another place. We felt it would be better than publishing the complete proceedings of the Court of Inquiry. But if noble Lords feel they would like to see the complete findings of the Court of Inquiry I will look into the matter.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLS-BOROUGH: I am very much obliged to the noble and gallant Earl. As I have said, I have had no opportunity of conferring with my colleagues on the matter, and I should like to do so. There is one other point on which I should be glad to have a reply, though not necessarily today. I should be glad to know whether the Minister can at some time make some statement as to the steps, if any, which are to be taken to prevent the selection of undesirable officers for native regiments, such as the King's African Rifles, with a view to the prevention of a possible
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repetition of such incidents as have occurred. I will say no more than that at the moment, but I feel that it is vital that there should be extraordinarily careful selection of officers for these native regiments.

PESTS BILL [H.L.]
3.52 p.m.
Debate on Second Reading resumed.
VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN: My Lords, I, in common with your Lordships, welcome this Bill, but there are a few doubts in my own mind as to its application to Scotland, and my own part of Scotland in particular. I congratulate the Government on having classed rabbits as pests, but how great a pest the rabbit is is a matter which varies from place to place. The amount of damage that can be done by rabbits, too, can vary considerably from condition to condition. Ninety per cent. of farmers are farming because that is their business and their livelihood; their aim and object is to earn as good a living as they can for themselves and their employees. Within these limits, rabbit damage can have a large or small application. In the case of Scotland, chiefly in my part of Scotland, the damage is to root crops grown for cattle, and also to grazing in the early bite period. If there is a plague of rabbits, obviously the losses are very great. If rabbits are controlled they are still a nuisance. But you do not often find Scottish farmers saying, "Right: no rabbits; we keep two more head of stock"—and a jolly good job, because the really trying problem is not the food but the housing. A man may kill off his rabbits, but he still has to have additional housing and to reorganise considerably his method of farming. He has to consider the subdivision of his farm. There are one or two aspects like that, which do not make altogether attractive the killing off of all rabbits. In Scotland, at any rate, it is not as attractive a proposition as I should like to see.
Then there is the other big point, the cost of killing rabbits. A number of noble Lords have talked of commercial rabbit killing. Whether they include in that the landlord or the farmer who kills off his rabbits and sells them and sets the income towards the cost of killing rabbits,

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I am not sure; but I must admit that I consider it a legitimate thing to do. It costs a lot of money to kill rabbits. The noble Lord spoke of 40 million rabbits a year. Well, my Lords, a rabbit is sold for not less than 2s. 6d. a time. That would mean £5 million, which is a large amount of money to be devoted to the killing of rabbits. I think it is legitimate that the people who have to find the £5 million should be encouraged, or at any rate should not be discouraged.
The insistence on rabbit clearance areas worries me a little. Much depends on how much the authorities insist on the necessity of killing the last rabbit, and upon how much they treat the problem on its reasonable merits. In my part of Scotland it is a very difficult matter. One might have an authority demanding a large quantity of expensive fencing to keep out a very few rabbits. It is not at all clear how these things are going to be done. I should say that "rabbit control area" would probably be a better term, and it would not frighten the people concerned quite so much. Moreover, there is no mention whatsoever, or intention, so far as I can see, of giving compensation for incurring this great expense. Killing rabbits is a very worthy object; but if people are obliged to go to this heavy expense it is surely just that this matter should be considered as one ranking for compensation. I am not trying to "crab" the Bill: I am all in favour of it; but I think that efficiency is the first requisite of a Bill if it is to work freely and well. Then there is the thorny question of rabbits in areas under the control of local authorities—nationalised industries and other people, who appear to be above all laws. I should like a definite assurance from the noble Lord, if possible, that these bodies will be swept into the provisions of this Bill. There, are such bodies as the National Trust, the National Coal Board and the Railway Executive (for railway embankments, like road verges, are infested with rabbits). I hope that they are not going to be left out, for that would be a great pity.
Part II of the Bill provides for the use of the humane trap. I hope that Her Majesty's Government will be in a position to assure us that an efficient humane trap will be provided—or, if they cannot do that, and feel justified in doing anything at all, that they will abolish all traps. To foist an inferior trap upon us
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because it is humane, and for no other reason, and to abolish inhumane traps, would be a poor solution. It would be a better policy altogether to abolish traps, if the Government are convinced that we can do without trapping. I personally am not convinced. It is important that any trap which is devised should be approximately the same weight and cost as a gin trap.
I cannot see why a fellow pest, the rat, should be excused or treated less humanely than the rabbit. Here, however, we have some facts and figures to go on, and there is an efficient alternative. Her Majesty's Government, I think, could abolish to-morrow gin traps for rats and mice and small pests of that sort. The introduction of the warfarine poisons for rodent control in the last two or three years has resulted in a spectacular reduction in the numbers of rats. Figures are always hard to go by, and hard to come by, but I can tell your Lordships, as you probably know, that the counties of Hampshire, Kent, Aberdeenshire, Kincardineshire and Renfrewshire have been able to pay off a large number—in some cases all, in others a large proportion—of their rat-catching staff. You can bandy about figures of how many rats you have killed, and how many are left, but the fact that you pay off a trapper does mean that there are fewer rats left. That is more to the point than talking about how many millions of rats you have killed. The local authorities in Bristol, Folkestone and several of the London boroughs have done the same thing. If you can humanely—and A is humane—kill your rats with poison, why are they not entitled to as humane treatment as rabbits are? You have the answer there, but with rabbits you have not the answer; I wish you had.
The other point is that the life of a gin trap or a spring-operated trap is of the order of three to four years, possibly five. Surely, if we wish to control effectively the use of gin traps, the best thing to do is merely to prohibit the manufacture of any further gin traps. No legislation is needed for that—at least, it may be, but no other control is necessary. We do not want people minim; about in cars, with secretaries. They would not be called rabbit-catchers; they would be known as rabbit prevention officers, and

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they would have a car and a secretary and all the usual things. Why not just prohibit the manufacture of traps except those that are equally efficient and humane?
4.3 p.m.
LORD ARCHIBALD: My Lords, I agree with my noble friend Lord Listowel and others who have emphasised the importance of the matter with which this Bill deals, but, in view of some of the speeches which have been made since, I can hardly follow him in saying that it is entirely uncontroversial. When we come to Part II of the Bill there is ample room for controversy. I should like first to refer back to the remarks made by the Minister who moved the Second Reading, with regard to the amount of damage done in this country by rabbits. He gave us a striking illustration by his comparison of the value of rabbit as food—the amount of food required to produce a helping of rabbit and what that food would have produced in other directions. But I would suggest to him that the Department might carry that type of illustration a little further and try to work out figures to give an idea of what the total damage amounts to.
I think I am right in saying that the survey to which he referred showed a loss of winter wheat of 1½ cwt. per acre. The Minister gave it as a percentage, but I think it is 1½ cwt. per acre. The pilot survey on spring wheat, made in Kent in 1950, indicated that the loss was of a similar nature, possibly a shade more. If we take that figure of 1½ cwt, of grain per acre and relate it to the total acreage under corn in this country to-day, we arrive at a staggering figure. I believe there is something like 6¾ million acres under corn. Allowing for the fact that other parts of the country may not suffer as heavily as those in the survey, if the loss is only 1 cwt. per acre the total loss of corn is something of the order of 330,000 tons, and that, I suppose, even at present-day prices, represents something in excess of £10 million. The loss might well be £15 million if we took the 1½ cwt. figure. When to that is added the loss on fodder crops and vegetable crops, and the loss of feeding-stuff for cattle and sheep, we may very well be dealing with a pest which is costing us something like £20
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million a year, which I put as being something like 2 per cent. of the total value of our agricultural production. As the Ministry has set a target of increased agricultural production of 160 per cent. of pre-war, it is important that we should not be losing 2 per cent. of it as a result of the operations of the rabbit.
When we come to deal with efforts to effect a diminution of this pest, I think the answer to Part I of the Bill is just to what extent is the Minister going to use the powers which are conferred on him by this section? I think I am right in saying that at the present time the most tragic example of the loss due to rabbits is to be found in the case of the small farmer who himself has cleared his own land but sees his crops being eaten and his land reinfested because his neighbours have not been as good farmers as he is. I wonder whether the reports of the county pest control officers indicate whether there is any particular type or class of offender in this respect. I have heard many farmers say they are completely at the mercy of their neighbours who are concerned with their shooting rights and who will not effectively clear their land of rabbits because that clearance would disturb the game. I think this is an instance where we have to say bluntly that the national loss attributable to rabbits is of much greater importance than shooting rights; and if reports indicate that reinfestation comes because rabbits are not cleared from land where shooting rights are regarded as important, we shall expect the Ministers, with the powers conferred under this Bill, not to be too tender about those shooting rights.
Like other noble Lords who have spoken, I hope that we in this country shall not have a wide-spreading of myxomatosis, and I hope particularly that farmers will not sit back in the belief that the disease will spread and thereby save them the necessity of taking active steps. I find it very sad already to hear farmers who are suffering from reinfestation from their neighbours saying, in a despairing sort of way: "Well, I suppose all we can do is to hope that myxomatosis will clear out my neighbour's rabbits." That is rather a reflection on the state of affairs which exists to-day, and I hope that the Minister will use his powers under Part I of the Bill in a drastic way.

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I am bound to say that I find Clause 8 of the Bill a deplorable clause, not only, and not even mainly, because it gives 1958 as the first date on which the abolition of the gin trap may come about—and it may, of course, be a much later date—but because the clause as it is drawn tends to give colour to the idea, which I believe to be fallacious, that trapping is an effective method of destroying rabbits. In my opinion, trapping is much more a method of preserving than of eliminating rabbits. I know that upon this issue the National Farmers' Union will be officially against me, but equally I know that thousands of farmers up and down the country share my view that trapping is not a means of destruction but a means of preservation. I should like to quote to your Lordships a few words from a practical Gloucestershire farmer who has been waging a ten-year battle to clear his farm of rabbits. He says:
"Trapping appears to make a striking clearance of rabbits. It also brings in a nice quick cheque."—
sometimes, if I may interpolate, it is nice quick cash, rather than a cheque—
"But in fact, trapping does rabbits good. The diseases that decimate them when they are too thick on the ground are kept in check by trapping."
In the Farmers Weekly of October 30, towards the end of a scientific article on myxomatosis, the writer refers to the two real sources of rabbit abundance. He says:
"So long as land is badly farmed (by allowing hedges and other cover to grow out of control), and so long as any form of maiming or killing traps, whether the live-taking toothed-gin which breaks the legs of all small animals trapped, or the 'humane' gin which usually causes instantaneous death, is used, and the stoats and weasels wiped out thereby, the rabbit will remain a perennial pest.
This is proved by the fact that on land where hedges are clean and without holes, and where traps are forbidden as well as unnecessary, rabbits are no problem at all—always of course excepting on those farms which, though in a high state of good husbandry, border on rough land, railway embankments and other sources of re-infection."
To my mind, those are two practical views indicating that trapping is not the effective weapon that it is supposed to be. As the noble Viscount, Lord Stonehaven, has said, just as we have found war farine to be the most effective weapon against rats, so I believe that gassing is much the most effective weapon against rabbits. I was glad to hear the reference
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to the subsidy for gassing material, but I would suggest to the Ministry that if they want to make an immediate and effective contribution to the destruction of rabbits, the immediate announcement of an even heavier subsidy on gassing materials in time for this season's drive to be undertaken would meet with a ready response. I believe it is mainly along the: lines of education in tie use of gas, the condemnation of the use of trapping, and the cheapening of the use of gas that an effective step will be made upon this job.
4.15 p.m.
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, it is obvious that this Bill is acceptable to noble Lords in all parts of the House. As the noble Lord who moved the Second Reading has pointed out, the rabbit has now reached the stage where its food value and fur value are far outweighed by its powers of destruction of agricultural products. Lord Stonehaven read the Bill a little differently from the way in which I read it. As I understand it, this Bill will place the occupier of any land in a clearance area under an obligation to eliminate the rabbits, regardless of whether the land is used for agriculture, for forestry or for any other purpose. There can be no doubt that this is a very necessary move; without it, the land within a clearance area belonging to occupiers other than agricultural occupiers might well become a harbouring ground for rabbits, with the consequential re-infestation of the agricultural lands once they have been cleared.
Although I welcome this Bill, I consider that there are some points which require serious consideration, most of which are in Part I. With your Lordships' permission, I should like to enumerate those. My first point relates to Clause 1 (4) which, as your Lordships will appreciate, empowers the Minister, on an application by a tenant, to authorise additional persons to carry firearms on his land for the purpose, of shooting rabbits—that is, over and above the two already permitted under the Ground Game Act, 1880. I believe that this clause is intended by the Minister to apply to a very limited number of cases, such as that of scrubland, to which the noble Lord who moved the Second Reading referred. It might also be argued that as the Minister has to satisfy himself that the owner has unreasonably

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withheld his consent, the owners' interests are adequately safeguarded. I respectfully submit that the proposals contained in this clause involve a wholly unnecessary interference with the landlord's discretion as to the management of his land. There are alternative, and less drastic, means available for securing the result everyone desires. All that is necessary, in the event of a landlord or sporting tenant failing to give his consent to the additional guns, is that the liability for the killing of rabbits on that particular piece of land should fall upon the landlord or the sporting tenant, whether or not his reasons for refusal are reasonable, but subject to the tenant's having tried all other available means of destroying the rabbits. Should the landlord or the sporting tenant then fail to take the necessary steps, the agricultural executive committee would be empowered to order the destruction of the rabbits and, if necessary, to exercise default powers.
My second point relates to the powers of entry under Clause 1 (6). I hope that the Minister will give an assurance that the county agricultural executive committees will give written notice, both to the owner and to the occupier, of an intention to enter on the land to survey it, prior to making a clearance order. Officials can and do enter on land without notice, provided that they have the occupier's consent. But surely this should be regarded as exceptional; as a general rule proper notice should be given, both as a matter of courtesy and in order to give those concerned the opportunity of being present when the survey is being made. The pressing needs of war time justified innumerable cases of entry without notice, but the war has been over for a considerable number of years, and it should be possible now to observe the ordinary rules of courtesy in such a matter.
My third point concerns Clause 1 (9). I hope that the Government will feel able to include the owners of forestry land as being representative interests to be consulted before an order is made. My last point is in regard to Clause 2 (1). I submit that unless this clause is administered with the utmost care an unreasonable financial burden will be imposed on the owner or occupier of
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land—for example, the Minister could require an owner to fence in land which might already have been cleared of rabbits. That, I gather, is partly the intention of this clause. The very wide powers conferred by this clause might result in expenditure being incurred in fencing out rabbits which was out of all proportion to the possible benefits. It is to be hoped that the Government will see their way to amending this clause to ensure that only reasonable and practicable steps are imposed on an owner or occupier to those ends. As I see it, under this clause, if rabbits should have been cleared from a wood of any size, whether it be five acres, fifty acres or even a hundred acres, the Minister could require the owner to fence the whole of that woodland to keep rabbits from getting back into it. These seem to me to be unnecessarily wide powers.
Finally, I should be gratified if the noble Lord, in his reply, could give me some clarification on two points. First, will these clearance orders be made on the initiation of the county agricultural executive committee and this joint committee of representatives, or by one or other, or by someone else altogether? Secondly, is it intended that the orders should be made in perpetuity, or will they have a limited life? Frankly, I do not like the idea of an order of any sort being made without there being in view some date for its termination.
4.22 p.m.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, being of the opinion that, as time goes on, this country must depend more and more for its nourishment on food produced within its borders, I am in favour of the total extermination of the rabbit. And when I say that, I am, I admit, saying that I do not think this Bill goes far enough. I think you must go for the complete extermination of the rabbit or the measures will be ineffective. I am aware that there are places, particularly in Scotland, where rabbits can be safely kept under certain precautions. But we are always faced with this situation: that the people whose rabbits are exterminated, and who do not want them to be exterminated, will put down new rabbits and say that they have come in "from next door." When my father cleared every rabbit out of some 11,000 acres of land, the farmers put back the rabbits and then

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tried to turn his keepers off, saying that they were their rabbits and not my father's. That is the kind of situation the Government will have to consider. In 1920, we calculated the damage caused by rabbits on old pasture—very fine, ancient pasture—and we came to the conclusion that it cost one-third of the rent. That did not represent the grass they ate, of which mention has been made in the debate to-day, but the grass and food which they contaminated, and which cattle afterwards would not eat.
But if the Government are to do what I want, and exterminate all the rabbits in this country, it must, I think, be done fairly. I am speaking only for Scotland. The rabbits in Scotland were forced upon the proprietors of land by the Central Government by Statute after Statute. You cannot ask the Muse of History the question "Why?" very often, and get an answer: and I cannot give your Lordships the reason for certain. I imagine, however, that it was this. In a country menaced every winter by starvation, the rabbit, the pigeon and the stockfish provided some chance of meat diet for the poor people in the country when the laird had his powdered beef which had been killed at Martinmas. That is the only reason I can suggest. The fact is that rabbits were introduced by the Government, Therefore, if you go for total extermination, you must be fair; you must compensate those people who to-day depend upon their rabbits, and have learned to depend upon them, for the losses which you are going to ask them to suffer. I think that that is a matter of common honesty, and I feel that it should be done. That is my criticism of the first Part of the Bill. While entirely in favour of it, I do not think that it goes far enough.
To turn for a moment to Part II, which deals with the gin trap, I have heard it said that with the gin trap it is impossible to exterminate rabbits. Nevertheless, with the gin trap my father exterminated rabbits on 11.000 acres—so much so that afterwards one never saw a rabbit in a day's shooting. That says something for the gin trap. I am perfectly prepared to admit that the gin trap is very cruel. I am not a judge of cruelty, and I cannot tell whether the gin trap is more cruel or less cruel than the snare. But anyone who has ever seen a snared rabbit will. I think, say that the snare is every bit as cruel as the
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gin trap, and less effective in getting rid of the rabbit population. Yet people who attack the gin trap never touch on the snare: they never say a word about it. I have tried to think of a reason for this. Perhaps it would be improper for me to say that it is due to the fact that the man who uses the gin trap is destroying large numbers, and probably trying to exterminate rabbits altogether, whereas the man who uses the snare is generally trying to poach a rabbit for his dinner. Whether that: be so or not, if you attack the gin trap I think you ought equally to attack the snare. I know that it is said that there are humane snares. It is fifty years since I set such a snare, but in the interval I have never once seen a humane snare.
There is a point with regard to all these measures of destruction which I think should be remembered, and that is that, following the periodic campaigns against rabbits in very large districts of the country, the rabbit has very much changed his habits. Nowadays, especially with these mile winters, great numbers of rabbits never go into holes at all: they live in rough woodland areas, and they are quite happy. One seldom sees them do anything more than make a slight scrape with their claws. How you are going to get rid of those rabbits if you limit the ways in which they can be attacked I do not know. Personally, I think the only way to destroy them in those places would be to use gin traps and snares as safely as you can. There is another thing we have to remember: with all this blown wood in Scotland to-day, the above-ground haunts of rabbits have been largely multiplied, and next year we shall certainly see a much larger population of rabbits which never go inside a hole.
One of the real difficulties in getting rid of rabbits is that we have not enough people who are thoroughly well acquainted with the habits and the nature of the rabbit. It is unfortunate that social changes have led to a diminution of such people, because in trying to exterminate rabbits from any area the most important thing is to have somebody thoroughly good at his work. Anybody acquainted with the country knows that there is a vast difference between one rabbit trapper and another. One man will clear every rabbit off the ground, while another man will always leave some for next year, not

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because he is unwilling but because he is unskilful. That is an important point. I conclude where I begin. I support this Bill, but I do not think it goes nearly far enough. I believe that the only way to deal with the rabbit is by total war. If we have total war against the rabbit, I am afraid that some cruelty must be wrapped up in it; but the sooner we get rid of the rabbits existing in this country, the less cruelty we shall have to inflict in doing so.
4.32 p.m.
THE EARL OF HADD1NGTON: My Lords, coming late in the debate one is apt to tread on ground covered by other noble Lords. Certainly the reason why the rabbit population has never been reduced in this country has been emphasised and I do not think it can be emphasised too strongly—that is, because there never has been a general will to reduce it. While some people have wanted to exterminate rabbits, other people wanted to breed them. Tenant farmers having equal rights with the landlord under the Ground Game Act, 1880, it is to their interest to let the rabbits out to trappers who, in their own interests again, kill only a proportion of the rabbits in order that they may have a breeding stock for the following year. In addition, farmers look to rabbits to get a small increase in their own incomes on the farms. It is common knowledge that this is the reason why rabbits do not show a continual reduction. Therefore, if we want to kill off our rabbits, the first thing to do is to stop commercial trapping and then take proper measures to kill the rabbits.
There has been a good deal of discussion about what is the best method of killing rabbits. I am certainly in agreement with those noble Lords who look on trapping as being not the best method. The noble Lord, Lord Archibald, has welcomed the increased subsidy for the gassing of rabbits. I am credibly informed, and it is my own experience, that gassing is not a good way of killing rabbits. When rabbits are gassed, they stay in their burrows and the dead bodies only invite vermin to come and eat them, and the vermin multiply. Added to this, the gassed rabbit is not a very palatable article of food and would not be popular with the housewife.
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I would ask Lord Carrington's Department to study the Caldra method of long-netting rabbits. Articles on this method of taking rabbits have recently been published in Country Life, The Field and, I think, the Farmers' Weekly. All rabbits must come out to feed at night. It does not matter whether they are in dense woods or in thick undergrowth, they have to come out on to neighbouring land at night to feed, and that is when they can be caught in large numbers by the long net. I believe that particulars of this method have been sent to every agricultural executive committee in the country, and while it is probably a little expensive, astonishing results have been obtained. I happen to be a neighbour of the instigator of this method and know him personally, and he has told me that he has had a haul of as many as 100 rabbits out of one field with one pull with the net at night. That is a pretty good haul of rabbits on a farm. This is probably the most humane way in existence to-day of catching rabbits. I had the idea that we could abolish the gin trap and make some sort of long net service available for farmers who are troubled by rabbits eating their spring wheat. This service could be supplied through the agricultural executive committees, who could have someone who would go out and net the rabbits off the fields. The whole operation could be done humanely in one night.
As we know, the gin trap is a peculiarly outmoded and barbarous means of killing rabbits. Yet in certain cases it may be necessary to use it to clear some of the areas which are to be defined under Clause 1 of the Bill. For that reason, I would not ask for the immediate abolition of the gin trap, much as I and other noble Lords would like to see it go. I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, whether he could fix a date, say a year ahead—it might have to be two years ahead, as the noble Lord, Lord Elton, proposed in his Spring Traps Bill last year—on which it could be abolished, and perhaps in the meantime licences for clearing certain areas could be given to bona fide trappers who are killing the rabbits to get them off the land in order to save our crops and young trees; but the trap should not be tolerated any longer for commercial trapping. By this means, I think that we should begin to abolish progressively

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what everybody has wanted to see abolished for a long time. I think that would be making a compromise which would be fair to all sides.
4.40 p.m.
LORD MERTHYR: My Lords, I think there is one thing upon which everyone will agree now—that is, that if there is to be anything like the extermination of rabbits, it will never be done except by some kind of central or national authority, working, it may be, through properly decentralised agencies. What other authority except the Ministry of Agriculture could possibly do it? Therefore, I admit at once that this Bill is not only desirable but essential. But I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, that it does not go nearly far enough, though possibly I do not agree with the direction in which he wants to go beyond this Bill. The noble Lord said—and I entirely agree—that nothing less than total war against rabbits is now essential.
I should like to ask one or two questions about this Bill. Can the noble Lord who is in charge of the Bill tell us in what way the powers conferred under Clause 1 are to be used? Other noble Lords have already asked whether these powers will be used, because, frankly, we are not particularly impressed with the degree to which the powers under the 1947 Act have been used in England, and those under the 1948 Act in Scotland. The record is not a very good one in the use to which those powers have been put. How will a rabbit clearance order be enforced? I can find nothing in the Bill about any penalty for non-enforcement, or anything about default powers; but it may be that they are hidden away in the 1947 Act, and that we must refer to that Act in order to find an answer. What will happen if the occupier fails to carry out an order? Will he be punished under Section 100 of the 1947 Act, or by some other means?
Then again, it is not always easy to find out who is the occupier of certain land. Who is the occupier of common land? There are a great number of rabbits on common land, and I cannot find anything in the Bill which provides an answer to that question. I hope that the Minister will do what the noble Viscount, Lord Stonehaven, asked him to
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do—namely, "chase up" all the Government Departments which are at fault in allowing rabbits to spread over their land. Other bodies have been mentioned to-day, but I would put at the top of the black list the War Office, who have a tremendous area of land nowadays. When I say, at home: "Why does not So-and-so clear the rabbits off his land?" quite often the answer is, "Well, look at the War Office, and the number of rabbits they have on their land." It must be admitted at once that in many cases War Office land is waste land and rather unproductive agriculturally. Nevertheless, that does not help towards a solution of the rabbit problem. I would urge the Ministry of Agriculture to see that all the other Ministries toe the line in this matter in the same way as individual owners will, rightly, be expected to do.
I should now like to say a word or two on the finance of this business. I note that under Clause 3 of the Bill the Treasury may consent to make a grant towards the expense of rabbit clearance. But equally, of course, they may not consent. That is a matter which I feel needs a little further thought. Where is the money to come from if the Treasury take an unfavourable view? I contend that this is a matter where the farmer or occupier deserves some kind of subsidy, at, any rate in some cases and in some places. After all, a great many aspects of farming are now subsidised, and I see no reason why rabbit clearance should not also be subsidised. In this connection, I would plead with the Minister to reduce the charges which he now makes for the work of the agricultural executive committees in clearing rabbits. In my county, if I go to the agricultural executive committee and ask for their help in clearing rabbits, as I have done, I am charged £12 a week for every man; and when I protest. I am told that the department has got to be made to pay, or, at any rate, to make both ends meet. We all know that the man himself does not get £12 a week; presumably the balance goes to meet overhead expenses. That will never do. I believe that if this problem is to be taken seriously, that sort of charge must be altered, and that farmers and occupiers cannot be expected to pay all the overheads of the Ministry of Agriculture in order to get rabbits cleared from their land. It is not at all encouraging to

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people to go to the Ministry and ask for their help if they are to be charged £12 a week for the work of every man.
Some words have already been said about sporting rights. I am not in the least against sporting or shooting rights, or the owners thereof. But let there he no mistake about this: that there is some conflict here between rabbit clearing and sporting rights. It is not a conflict that can never be resolved: on the contrary, I think that it may be over-estimated. But do not let us pretend that there is no conflict. If the owner of the sporting rights takes the proper and necessary steps to clear his land of rabbits, there will not be any trouble, because a rabbit clearance order will not be made in respect of that land. It is only if the sporting owner harbours too many rabbits on his land, which a few may do—and in France I believe they do it to a great extent—that there will be a clash of interests. I agree with the noble Lord opposite who says that if there is a clash of interests, then the case of rabbit clearance must be paramount, and in that respect the shooting rights must suffer. I would urge that shooting, which is an excellent way of killing rabbits, and much less inhumane than trapping, should not be discouraged.
I should like to ask this question: Why is it that, though it is legal in England for the owner of land to shoot rabbits at night, it is illegal in Scotland? I cannot understand how both of those positions are right. I would suggest that my noble Scottish friends should be released from the prohibition against the owner of land, or of sporting rights, being forbidden to shoot rabbits at night. We have just heard from a Scottish noble Lord that they come out at night to feed, and that shooting rabbits at night is one of the most effective ways of getting rid of them. I can understand why tenants might be prohibited, but I cannot understand why an owner should be prohibited from shooting rabbits on his own land at night.
LORD SALTOUN: It is very dangerous.
LORD MERTHYR: If it is dangerous in Scotland, then it is also dangerous in England. I do not think the Scottish marksmen are so inferior to the English as all that.
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I must say a few words on the subject of rabbit farming. It has been said before, but it cannot be over-emphasised, that the present system of using traps is a proved failure. I am glad that the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, is here, because we had some difference of opinion about this matter on the last debate. I say that the present system, quite manifestly, increases the population of rabbits. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, said this afternoon that the rabbit population was getting the upper hand; but unlike his colleague. the noble Lord, Lord Archibald, he has not yet seen the light as to why it is getting the upper hand. I know perfectly well that the rabbit population is getting the upper hand. In my own county, where there are swarms of trappers, and have been for the last thirty years, the number of rabbits, according to statistics published, is going up, not every year, but regularly. Something like 1,750,000 rabbits are to-day exported by rail alone in a small county. The reason why the rabbit population is going up is because traps are being used in the present way for rabbit farming. I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Archibald, in this matter. It will soon become clear that rabbit farming must be stopped.
One point that has not been mentioned this afternoon, I think, is this. One of the reasons why rabbit farming increases the number of rabbits is that it is not practised in the summer. I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, that if traps were used in the way his father used them they would exterminate rabbits. But the whole point is that the commercial rabbit trapper is not as sensible as the noble Lord's father. He does not use his traps to exterminate rabbits. He knows perfectly well that if he did he would exterminate his livelihood. If a trap is sensibly used it could kill any number of rabbits. I say once again that the way in which the traps are now being used will not diminish the population of rabbits but will increase them.
Another point which I do not think has been much touched upon is this. An enormous amount could be done in this matter if more attention was paid to the filling up of rabbit holes, the clearance of scrub and the getting rid of rabbit warrens. If the ordinary tenant farmer were to fill up the holes on his land, I believe there would be a great improvement.

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Then I think several things should be forbidden. First of all, the sale of wild rabbits should be forbidden. Your Lordships may think at first sight that that is a little unnecessary, but I want to quote from an advertisement which appeared in the Carmarthen Journal in the middle of last April. This, I believe, would interest the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, if he were here. The advertisement said:
"Wanted, One dozen live wild rabbits for re-stocking; price and particulars.…"
Then follows the name and address of the farmer. That is what we are up against. There is a man—and it bears out what the noble Lord said—who is deliberately trying to re-stock his land with wild rabbits in order to keep up the rabbit population. If that is not what he is trying to do, I do not know what it can mean. I would draw the attention of the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, to it, because that is what the Ministry of Agriculture are up against. Somehow or other the keeping of rabbits must be made unremunerative.
Another illuminating thing is the way in which rabbits are at present being used in the West Country and in Wales as a means of helping the farmer's livelihood and enabling him to pay his rent. I have permission from the people concerned to read this, and if your Lordships will also give me permission I should like to read this extract from a letter from a land agent in the West Country to his principal in London. It says:
"One reason why the tenant was prepared to increase the rent very considerably was that he lets the rabbit catching for a considerable sum of money. I do not know the exact figure, but probably £30 or £40. This applies to the rabbits caught on the Warren.…"
He goes on to say:
"He is definitely going to say that if the rabbits are exterminated by means of gassing then he is not going to get his rent from the rabbit catcher, and will not be able to pay us as much rent. It is a strange way of looking at it."
It is indeed a strange way of looking at the question, but we have to realise that it is looked at to-day in that way by hundreds of people in this country. Those are the people whom I accuse of rabbit farming.
I will go further and say that before we succeed in this total war of extinction against rabbits we shall have to prohibit
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not only the sale of wild rabbits but the sale of dead rabbits generally, because only by that means can you get rid of the incentive to keep rabbits. Incidentally, it might be mentioned that if there should be an outbreak of myxomatosis—with which I think the Government are dealing at present in entirely the correct way—it would have a strong effect on this question because, if I anticipate rightly, the people in the country would not buy rabbits for food. They may he quite, wrong in their fear, but they will nevertheless have a fear of rabbits for food and will not buy them. It will be interesting to see what effect that has upon the rabbit population. I believe effect may be just the opposite to what is forecast, and that there may be an improvement in the numbers rather than the reverse.
We must at any rate provide an incentive to people not to have rabbits. I would urge that landowners can help in this matter: they can prevent their tenants from selling the right to trap rabbits, and, in my opinion, they can tell their tenants that it is illegal to do so. Under the Ground Game Act, 1880, tenants are given certain rights to kill rabbits and to pay for killing rabbits, but they are given no right to sell rabbits or to sell the right to kill rabbits. Therefore I say that a landowner can stop his tenant from selling rabbits to trappers, and that if he did stop his tenant from doing so he would vastly improve the position.
I should like to say a few words with regard to Part II of the Bill. In the last debate on the subject in this House the noble Earl the Postmaster General said (OFFICIAL RFPORT, Vol. 174, col. 603):
"What really is the position arising out of this debate? Has not one thing become absolutely clear? Not a single speech in your Lordships' House to-day has been devoted to the question of whether or not the gin trap shall go. There has been an absolutely unanimous expression by all speakers of the view that the gin trap must and shall go. The only question raised in the discussion has been when it shall go."
From that point where we left off last time, I should like to take up the position again to-day. I agree that this Bill does not go far enough. After all, all that is done in Clause 8 is to take power to do four years hence what could be done to-day. Is that really a great concession? I do not think it will meet the present

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public opinion on this matter, and I agree with those noble Lords who have said that before that date, rather than after, is the time when gin traps should be prohibited. Like the noble Lord, Lord Elton, I am one of those who say that no trap is necessary. I am firmly convinced that he is right when he said that it is not only a question of abolishing the gin trap. but that no trap at all is necessary.
Rabbit traps are the lazy man's way of catching rabbits. I have tested this and have never allowed a trap on land in my occupation. I mention that merely as some justification for making the statement I have just made. I would concede that the Imbra trap and the Sawyer trap (and here I would say that it is possible that the Sawyer trap is just as efficient as the Imbra) are not at present as efficient as the gin, although the difference between them is nothing like so great as is made out—not as efficient, that is, in catching rabbits, but they are much more efficient in killing rabbits than the gin trap ever was. As one noble Lord has already said, the trappers do not want to kill the rabbits too quickly, and that is why they prefer the gin, because the gins keep the rabbits alive and fresh for the market. That accounts largely for the prejudice against the Imbra and Sawyer traps which, although they are not perfect, do at least kill the rabbits when they catch them. I entirely agree with other noble Lords who have said that necessity is the mother of invention, and that if the gin were abolished to-day we should very soon have an efficient humane trap on the market. The commercial trapper, against whom I have no enmity whatever, is a perfectly respectable citizen. He does not want the gin trap abolished. He does not want a humane trap—and very few of these commercial trappers would have the courage to say that they did—because all he wants is a trap which catches rabbits and catches them alive; and we have to realise that fact. Therefore, I hope that Part II of this Bill will be amended in some way, as several noble Lords have asked this afternoon.
Finally, I would come back to the main question: however efficient a trap is put on the market, let us all remember that the agricultural problem
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will remain untouched; and that problem, as well as the problem of humanity, must be tackled at once. Even if a trap is 100 per cent. efficient, if it is used in the way in which it is now being used the rabbit population will not be diminished by one. Therefore, I come back to this point: that all that is in Part I of this Bill is necessary and is going to be necessary; and this is not going to be the last Bill on the subject of rabbit destruction before this enormous agricultural problem is solved.
5.2 p.m.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I do not propose to occupy more than a few moments of your time with the consideration of one or two points with which I wish to deal. We on this side of the House welcome the Bill, and have no desire but to do everything we can in Committee to make it a better Bill. I have listened carefully to practically the whole of the debate this afternoon, and with most of the speakers I have at least some point of agreement. It seems to me that the Minister is going to have a difficult task in trying to match the suggestions together, but that is the kind of conciliatory task which he is quite capable of carrying out.
If I may mention a few specific points drawn from my own very small experience, I would say, first of all, that no one could consider that my noble friend Lord Archibald over-estimated the damage which is done by rabbits. He was, I thought, very mild in his estimate, and obviously did not wish to overstate his case. I am glad that he put his case as he did. I hope the Minister will pay some attention to the fact that much land which had never been cultivated before the war, but which was sometimes taken up and cultivated by the Ministry, or on their behalf, in odd parcels, is to-day either being released altogether or is being cultivated by new tenants who are up against all the other pieces of land which have not been under cultivation. Mention has been made of scrub and such things, and this is referred to in, I think, Clause 2. I sincerely hope that the Government will do something about the question of who is liable for the clearance of rabbits in such places. I can, perhaps, speak rather freely in this matter. There are some rented plots quite away from my homestead—a seaside place—which are full of cover for rabbits and,

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indeed, infested with rabbits. I think that last year I lost the best part of an acre of barley in a comparatively small field. I have no power to enter on that land or any right to do anything about this problem. I ought not to be asked to put up a fence against it if it: is going to be such a source of future trouble and concern. I think something ought to be done about that.
I want to stress the point made by my noble friends Lord Listowel and Lord Archibald about Part II of the Bill. I hope that some definite date can be fixed. I must say that Lord Archibald's argument concerning Clause 8 sounded very convincing to me. I am in agreement also with a point made in Lord Stonehaven's speech. I cannot see way the Ministry should not fix a very early date (I say this in spite of what Lord Merthyr said) for prohibiting the manufacture of gin traps. Let us get on with more rapid production, in quantity and efficiency, of the humane type of trap. The only other point I wish to make is in regard to certain powers taken by the Ministry. I hope that, where owners cannot be traced (and that does still happen: I do not know whether the Minister remembers our experiences in the early part of the war, where owners could not be traced), it may be possible to lay the duty on the local authority. With these few remarks I must say that we welcome this Bill. We want it to go a little further in the direction I have mentioned, and we shall be glad to support it.
5.6 p.m.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I am grateful for the way in which you have received this Bill. We shall be fortified by the speeches noble Lords have made to-day. But before I come to deal with the comments which have been made on the Bill, in particular those relating to the gin trap, I should like to try to answer some of the questions which have been put to me. First, the noble Earl, Lord Listowel—and I thank him and the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander, for blessing this Bill with the seal of the official Opposition—asked me whether we seriously intended to use the powers provided for under Clause 1. I can give the noble Earl that assurance wholeheartedly. We should not have bothered to introduce a Bill with those powers if
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we had no intention of using them. We most certainly shall use them. The noble Earl also asked me when the Committee at present inquiring into myxomatosis is going to report. I gave him the answer: "It will report in March." It will have to do so some time before the Spring, at any rate, because in the Spring there is much more insect life about and the insects act as vectors which spread the disease. Although I cannot give any definite date when the Report will be published—this Committee is a Standing Committee—I can say that the Government will announce their views on the subject.
Lord Stonehaven asked me whether Clause 1 of this Bill would apply to a. public authority. My answer is that it does; and I would say that the Transport Commission have been particularly helpful about the destruction of rabbits. They have carried out some interesting experiments which have been of very great use on the subject of rabbits in railway embankments. We are grateful to them for being so helpful. Lord St. Aldwyn queried the provision of the Bill which enables the Minister to allow the occupier of land to ask his friends to go out with him and shoot rabbits. As I said earlier, I do not think that shooting is the normal way in which rabbits will be killed. But I can say that, if the obligation is placed on the occupier, it is only fair that he should be given the means of carrying out that obligation. The noble Earl will see that the Minister can give consent only if the owner, in his turn, has unreasonably withheld his consent. But I think my right honourable friend the Minister has quite an open mind, and I am prepared to have conversations with the noble Earl before the next stage, and put forward an Amendment agreeable to both of us.
The noble Earl also asked me about Clause 1 (6), regarding powers of entry. This provision, of course, does not in any way widen the scope of powers of entry; it merely repeats Section 106 of the 1947 Act. As the noble Earl knows, the committee are obliged to give notice when they are about to visit a farmer.
EARL ST. ALDWYN: To the occupier only, that is.
LORD CARRINGTON: I thought that that was what the noble Earl meant.
EARL ST. ALDWYN: I did say "the owner".
LORD CARRINGTON: They are obliged to give notice to the occupier.
The noble Earl also asked me whether or not the owners of woods would be consulted before these clearance schemes were laid down. I think that will need a small Amendment to the Bill, which I shall be glad to move on the Committee stage, because I think it proper that that should be done. He rather questioned, too, whether or not it was necessary to go as far as he thinks we have done in Clause 2 (1), which might possibly require an owner to fence in a large area of land. As I also said in my opening remarks, that is not the intention of the clause. I think this is really a drafting point; it is difficult to think of words which would meet his point adequately. Here, again, however, if we can find words, we shall be only too happy to do what we can on Committee stage. As regards these clearance schemes, he asked me how long they would continue. They will go on for ever, so to speak, because the object is to clear the rabbits out for all time, and the more successful an occupier is in clearing out the rabbits, the less he will have to do in the future.
The noble Lord, Lord Merthyr, asked me the same question as the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. Of course, these powers will be used—I can give that assurance. The penalties for failing to observe the directions are the same penalties as those to be found in Section 100 of the Agriculture Act, and they are applied under Clause 1 (7). The noble Lord also asked me why there was a difference between England and Scotland. The position at the moment is that night shooting of rabbits is forbidden in Scotland but allowed in England and Wales. We are not doing anything to alter that. The reason for that is that a different interpretation of the Ground Game Act of 1880 was given in the courts of Scotland from the interpretation made in the courts of England, and we do not intend to do anything about that.
The main debate has been about the gin trap. There are those who want to see an early end to the rabbit problem, and those whose main concern is to see the end of the gin trap, by which, as your Lordships know, millions of rabbits are destroyed every year. I hope I have made
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it plain, although I do not think that I convinced the noble Lord, Lord Elton, that the Government are by no means out of sympathy with those who want to abolish the pain and suffering which the gin trap causes. Indeed, if the noble Lord, Lord Elton, will recall the debate on the Bill which he initiated some two years ago, he will remember that I gave an assurance then. This is what I said (OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 174, Col. 569):
"When we are satisfied that we have an adequate, efficient and humane alternative to the gin trap, and when the state of the legislative programme permits, then the Government will consider introducing a Bill on the lines I have indicated."
We have done rather more than I said on that occasion we would do, because, although we are not satisfied that at the moment we have
"an adequate, efficient, and humane alternative to the gin trap,"
we are introducing legislation on this subject.
I was not quite sure where the Labour Party stood on this matter. I thought that the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, swerved a bit, and I thought that the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander, wobbled distinctly, because in the debate two years ago the noble Earl, Lord Listowel said—I hope that he will forgive me for quoting his words back at him: they appear in the OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 174, Col. 574:
"Large numbers of land owners, farmers and workers, all use these traps;"—
that is, gin traps—
"there are over 3 million traps of this kind in use at present in the farms and cottages of our countryside. To deprive these people of these traps before we can provide them with an effective substitute would undoubtedly lead to an increase in the rabbit population and to a corresponding decrease in food production."
He then went on a little later:
"I am satisfied with the assurance given by Lord Carrington that he and his colleagues will make an honest effort to introduce a Bill as soon as an equally effective trap has been found. I do hope that that assurance will satisfy the noble Lord, Lord Elton.…"
I very much hope that the noble Earl has not changed his mind in that short time.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: I have not. I agree with the noble Lord opposite that that was the view I took at that time. I am not conscious that anything I have said this afternoon is inconsistent with that view. I do not think the noble Lord

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is suggesting that it is, but I should be prepared to defend my position if he suggested that I had said anything which conflicted with the view which I then expressed.
LORD ELTOIN: May I ask the noble Earl, did he not express regret that this Bill does not include an actual date for the abolition?
LORD SALTOUN: The question arises as to whether the Government are prepared to sacrifice the gin trap or the rabbit. May I hope that they will sacrifice the rabbit, because I want to see rabbits exterminated.
LORD CARRINGTON: I am coming to that.
THE EARL OF LTSTOWEL: I did express regret. I did say that I thought that such a date could only be fixed when a satisfactory alternative trap was available in sufficient numbers, and so on, for the general public. My view about the alternative trap—I may be entirely wrong—is that there is a trap at the moment, at any rate in design, which is an effective substitute for the gin trap. I thought that that was what I said.
LORD CARRINGTON: No, I am sorry that I misunderstood the noble Earl. At any rate, he has reassured me about his own feelings on the subject. He agrees with Her Majesty's Government and with me that, until such time as we have an effective substitute for the gin trap, it would he wrong to ban it. I hope he will convince the noble Viscount sitting next to him, because that is not what he said in his speech.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: We meet in this House fur the purpose of exchanging views in an open debate, and as the debate goes on we hope we teach each other things. I started from the point where the Minister in charge of the Bill had said something, not specific, about the fact that one manufacturer considered that now we had something which was both economic and efficient. I do not want to twist the words of the Minister we will look at them in Hansard in the morning, and see how far we disagree. Then subsequently we learned something of the life of the gin trap. What is the expected life? We are debating two years after my noble friend made his first
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specific statement. Barring the use of tide gin trap does not matter at all; I am proposing the prohibition of its manufacture. Those in use will last for three or four years and no more, and therefore banning the gin trap would stimulate the production of the substitute.
LORD CARRINGTON: I am grateful to the noble Viscount for his explanation of his point of view. I should not like it to be thought that I had said anything of the kind about a new trap being available now. I will read out what I did say
"I am able to tell your Lordships that ore of the most experienced manufacturers of gin traps in this country has for several years been engaged in the development of a completely new design for a humane trap which he fees may stand a chance of wing so perfected as to compete with gin traps on level terms."
I do not think that by any stretch of the imagination I could be taken as saying that we had found an effective alternative.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLS-BOROUGH: That is a fairly optimistic estimate.
LORD CARRINGTON: We can all be optimistic until the result is arrived at. The point is that the Government, in their responsibility to the public, have to try to reconcile both these points of view—the killing of the rabbits and the abolition of the gin trap. This Bill may not meet with the full approval of extremists in either camp, but it should commend itself to the vast majority who, like the Government, want to see an end to the rabbits and the gin trap but realise that this objective must be approached in a realistic way, with due regard to the hard facts of country life and economy and the practical considerations involved. I have tried hard, in my earlier speech to your Lordships, to bring home not only to those who live in towns but to land owners and farmers as well, the extent of the damage caused by wild rabbits to crops and woodlands. The more effort we put into increasing our food production the greater the struggle against these pests becomes. We cannot go on indefinitely expending vast sums of money and energy on producing more and more crops for rabbits to eat.
With regard to the total amount of damage, the noble Lord. Lord Archibald, suggested that rabbits caused about £20

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million worth of damage a year. I think he puts his estimate rather low. I should say that it is much more like £50 million a year—and I do not think that even that figure is an exaggeration of the damage done by rabbits, when it is realised that on wheat alone tests have established that the equal of the produce of 130,000 acres of over £5 million in value is destroyed by rabbits in one year. There is, quite rightly, an increasing clamour for this damage to be stopped, and the Government, who are responsible for food production, could not expose the country to the risk of increasing that loss by abolishing the gin trap before a suitable substitute was available; and still less by abolishing trapping altogether.
Those who advance these extreme measures (and I say that with the greatest respect) have not the responsibility that the Government carry. It has been claimed by several noble Lords today that trapping is not necessary to keep down rabbits—that other methods will do just as well. I am not so sure about that, but even if it were so, I do not think that that really is the point. The fact is that at the present time an enormous number of rabbits are killed with gin traps, and if we prohibited this method of killing them now, there would be no way of ensuring that rabbits would continue to be killed at the same rate by other methods. The Committee on Cruelty to Wild Animals, to which I referred earlier this afternoon, went fully into this question and they did not recommend that trapping should be abolished. I do not know what really is the view of the noble Lord, Lord Merthyr. Does he think that trapping should be abolished, however effective and humane a destructive weapon it may be?
LORD MERTHYR: I would say that it should be abolished progressively, because, as I have said so often, the way in which it is now being used does not diminish, but increases, the number of rabbits. The emphasis is on the words "in the way in which it is now being used." If it were abolished progressively, and not all at once, I believe it could be done successfully.
LORD CARRINGTON: With great respect, that is not the question I asked
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the noble Lord. I asked him whether he thought trapping should be abolished, and he said that he thought commercial trapping should be abolished.
LORD ELTON: As the noble Lord is on this question, perhaps I might ask him what is his attitude to the leaflet published by his own Department, containing an article by Dr. Smith, which says that trapping is the wrong method to use for getting rid of rabbits?
LORD CARRINGTON: In certain circumstances, trapping may be the wrong method to use for getting rid of rabbits, but I think there are places where trapping is necessary in order to get rid of them. But that is not the point. All I am saying is that the noble Lord, Lord Elton, and the noble Lord, Lord Merthyr, have suggested that we ought to stop commercial trapping—which I suppose means trapping animals for money. But a farmer who keeps down his rabbits by trapping is, I should have thought, perfectly entitled to the money he can get for them; and the professional trapper is merely doing the farmer's work for him. I dare say there are some people who deliberately leave some rabbits behind to make sure that there will be another crop next year. But it is extremely difficult to single out those people from anybody else. I hope that my noble friend behind me is not suggesting that there should be a Ministry inspector following every trapper around. We are told that what is wanted is the progressive abolition of the gin trap. We agree with that, and our proposals are designed to secure the progressive displacement of gin traps as others capable of taking their place become available. But as I said earlier on, in answer to a Question before this debate started, we do not seem yet to have found a trap that is the equivalent of the gin in catching efficiency, weight, price and other qualities. The Imbra trap, to which the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, referred, is at present under tests with county agricultural executive committees, but I am afraid that results so far received are not conclusive, and I am not yet able to say whether this or any other trap would qualify for approval by the Minister.
This question of how we should decide whether or not a trap qualifies for approval is one to which we have been giving

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some thought, and we feel that there would be advantage in getting the traps tried out by farmers, landowners, game keepers and the like, so that we may have the views of those people who will be using them on the ground. We are arranging, through the representative organisations, for this to be done in the case of the Imbra and other traps, so that we can get representative views as to their merits. We think that, now that this Bill has been introduced, the tendency will be for more and more humane traps to be put on the market and, if they are humane and efficient, and otherwise acceptable, for them to be purchased to replace gins as they wear out. In that way there should be a progressive replacement of the gin. I should point out that it is not necessary for the Minister to set a date for the prohibition of the gin before he approves alternative traps to take its place. He can do that as soon as he is satisfied that suitable and acceptable alternatives are to be found.
On Question, Bill read 2ª, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

SUMMARY JURISDICTION (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]
5.26 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Home, I beg to move that this Bill be read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2ª.—(The Earl of Selkirk.)
On Question, Bill read 2ª, and referred to the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills.

HOUSING FOR EX-REGULAR SERVICE MEN
5.27 p.m.
THE EARL OF LUCAN THE EARL OF LUCAN rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are aware of the housing difficulties confronting married Regular Service men on their leaving the Service and having to quit married quarters; whether they are satisfied that housing authorities are acquainted with, and are applying, the
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provisions of Circular No. 8/52 of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government; whether the Service authorities inform these men in good time of the steps they should take to secure places on local authorities' housing lists; and what further action Her Majesty's Government are contemplating to relieve the anxieties of this class of Service man. The noble Earl said: My Lords, in asking the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper there is no need for me to make a long speech, because the main headings on which I am asking for assurances and information are set out in the Question. I should, however, like to spend a few minutes in explaining the situation in connection with this subject as I see it, and my reason for raising it. That reason becomes obvious when one reads the recent statements on Defence or on the Services, all of which have complained of difficulty in regard to, and pointed out the need for, an increase in the Regular manpower of the Forces.
Numerous schemes have been introduced in the Services to encourage men to make the Services their life career, or at any rate to serve for a long period. The Memorandum accompanying the Army Estimates last year said:
"We are having more and more difficulty in finding long-service warrant officers and senior non-commissioned officers. We want men to stay in the Army and are trying hard to improve conditions of service so that they do stay."
In another section of the same Memorandum the Secretary of State says:
"There has been some tendency …for Regular married non-commissioned officers to leave the Army. We are doing everything possible to reduce and limit the cause of this trend."
My Lords, I ask: are the Services in fact doing everything they can to reduce the disabilities under which some of these men are serving?
May I say that if I speak of "soldiers" I hope it will not be taken to mean that conditions are not the same in the other two Services? I have no first-hand knowledge of conditions in the Royal Air Force and the Navy, but I can speak from some experience of the Army; and some up-to-date contacts with soldiers have convinced me that there are a number of cases of great hardship where senior soldiers of long service are subjected to quite needless anxiety and worry at the

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close of their service. I have in mind in particular three current cases of soldiers with an aggregate length of service of sixty years, living in married quarters with their families—their wives and a total number of twelve children. Of these three cases, two have already been taken to court by the Army authorities, and eviction orders have been made against them. It is only by the extreme forbearance and patience of the Army authorities that those families are still occupying married quarters. However, they have this hanging over their heads—that they may be evicted at any time at a week's notice, and that they will then be cast on the civilian housing world which, as we all know, is a very difficult one.
The problem has been recognised by Governments for a number of years. In 1945, the Ministry of Health issued Circular No. 109, which stated, among other things, that serving officers and men are recommended by the Service authorities to apply to the local authority for the area in which they wish to reside, or intend to take up employment, after discharge, giving particulars of the size of their families and of their present accommodation. And local authorities were asked to consider the claims of such applicants as though they were local residents. Two years ago, in January, 1952, the Ministry of Housing and Local Government issued a circular on similar lines pointing out the difficulties. This circular stated:
"Many of these serving men have no established association with any particular district. If, therefore, a rigid residential qualification is imposed by the local authority for the area in which they wish to settle after discharge they would, because of their service, be prejudiced in their application for housing accommodation. The Minister is confident that this is a position which local authorities will be anxious to avoid and that they will agree that these applicants should be given equal priority with others for consideration on the basis of relative housing need."
That was the situation which these circulars were designed to remedy.
Before going further, I should perhaps say that this applies only to soldiers who are not in a position to buy their own houses. A number of soldiers, no doubt, are in a position to do so, and for them the prospect of return to civil life is comparatively easy. But in the case of those who have to depend on local housing
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authorities for their future homes, what happens? I am quite sure that the local authorities—certainly in some cases—give all possible weight to these circulars. They have them in mind, and they do the best they can for the soldiers and their families. But what can they do if a soldier applies to them only within a short time of his discharge? They receive a soldier's application for housing and they put him on the housing list. They cannot give the soldier absolute priority—and, in fact, they are not asked to do so—over civilians on the housing list; because, obviously, there are civilians living under conditions of great hardship. All that the Ministry asked was that the soldier should be given
"equal priority with others for consideration on the basis of relative housing need."
The local authority cannot straight away allot the soldier a house; that stands to reason, when they have long waiting lists. So what happens? Time goes on and the soldier is discharged, the Army require his quarters for other soldiers, and, after warnings, the soldier is taken to court—where, incidentally, he will probably have to pay the costs amounting to a few guineas—and at the court an eviction order is made against him, with a certain number of weeks' notice. From then on that man and his family live in a state of anxiety which no one would wish a soldier or anyone else to suffer unnecessarily.
As I have said, the Army authorities, I am sure, exercise great patience and do not proceed to eviction for a considerable number of months, I believe, after a soldier's discharge. But, sooner or later, they will have to evict him. Then the onus is on the local authority, because the family are homeless, and they are accommodated in one of two ways. If they are lucky, they may go to what is known as a "halfway house," where the family are together, it is true, but in very unsatisfactory conditions, with communal feeding and living rooms—conditions in which it is impossible to make a home. If they are not accommodated in the "halfway house," the wife and children may be sent to an institution and the husband may have to find lodgings for himself. In either case, the home is broken up and the family have to start their career in civil life under the worst possible conditions. There is no other way, so long

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as soldiers cannot give long enough notice to the housing authorities to earn points for hardship to qualify them to take their place at the top of the housing lists.
And there is another small worry that faces soldiers. All their Service lives they have lived in Government quarters with Government furniture. Suddenly they have to go to civil life. They have to equip their new homes, and it is entirely beyond the means of most of them to do so. But there are provisions, of which most local authorities know, by which people can borrow money to equip their homes, and I wonder whether soldiers are told about those provisions. The responsibility for housing these people is a dual one: it rests on the local authorities and on the Service authorities. If the Service authorities do not do their job, the local housing authorities are helpless, and they cannot do what they should be able to do for these families. I should like to know that the Army authorities have this matter in mind, and that they regard it as at least as important as finding a man employment when he leaves the Service. Some years ago we heard a great deal about resettlement of Regular Service people, and I believe that a great deal is done to help them find employment. But it is at least as important that they should be helped to find houses when they transfer to civil life. Discharge at the end of a long period of Service is always a painful business. A soldier who has lived within the four walls of Service administration and regulations suddenly has to fend for himself and go out into the competitive world. It is bound to be difficult. Surely the Service authorities must do everything they can to ease this transition of the men to civil life.
I would ask your Lordships to think of the effect on younger soldiers when they see their seniors who are coming to the end of their service suffering this totally needless anxiety—dispersion of their homes, interference with their children's schooling, and so on. I maintain that all this is because the Service authorities do not give to the soldier in sufficient time information of what he must do in order to get on a housing list The soldier is not helped and given the advice he deserves. I hope the Government will be able to assure me that they do regard this matter seriously, and that it will be brought constantly to the atten-
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tion of the soldier that he must give his name in several years, before his discharge in order to get the chance of a house.
5.41 p.m.
VISCOUNT GOSCFIEN: My Lords, I will not detain your Lordships for more than a few minutes. I think this is a very important question. As the noble Earl opposite said, it divides itself into two parts: what the Army can do to help, and what the civilian, authorities can do. I understand that there are still in the Army what used to be called vocational courses for men to learn a new trade, and I think that in every unit—this may be done already in some units—lectures should be given to soldiers quite a long time before they leave on what they should do about putting their names down on housing lists. I think that these lectures should be given particularly to those men who have been abroad for some time, and they should deal not only with the question of housing, but also with social affairs, which may have changed while the men have been abroad. Many of them have been abroad for a very long time, and new civilian rules and regulations have been brought out; and when they get home they want to know what they are all about.
As the noble Earl said, if men in the Services are worried about the future of their homes and families, their morale and efficiency are bound to deteriorate. They will be looking over their shoulders all the time, and thinking more about the future than about doing their jobs. That is one thing we want to avoid. It also may have an ill-effect on other soldiers who are thinking of staying on for a further term of service. These men may say to themselves that it would be better to get out now and not wait until they become older, because then it would be all the more difficult for them. That is another thing we want to avoid. The question of hostels, to which the noble Earl has referred, is also a difficult one. I have personal experience of this matter, and I know how difficult they are to run. Soldiers get married in the various countries in which they have been serving, and we get wives from all parts of the world coining into these hostels and living together. It is hardly a question of "Welcome home" if they have to start their civilian lives again in hostels.
5.45 p.m.
EARL ALEXANDER OF TUNIS: My Lords, I can certainly assure the noble Earl, Lord Lucan, that Her Majesty's Government are fully aware of the housing difficulties to which he has drawn attention in his Question. These are due partly to the shortage of houses which, though much alleviated, still persists, especially in certain areas, and partly to the special position of the Service man on account of the conditions under which he is serving. I can also assure your Lordships that local housing authorities are acquainted with the circular of January 31, 1952, issued by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, to which my noble friend refers. But this circular, which asks local authorities to give ex-Service men equal priority with other applicants on the basis of relative housing need, can only recommend to the authorities vested by Statute with the management of housing matters that they should give all possible consideration to the special difficulties in which Service men and their dependants are placed in seeking housing accommodation
Her Majesty's Government have no reason to think that this advice is not generally followed by local authorities in considering individual applications. If, however, any council appears not to be carrying out these recommendations, my right honourable friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government is always willing to use his powers of persuasion, and I am sure that in the vast majority of cases the local authority concerned will be ready to reconsider their attitude. The Service authorities publish information from time to time about the steps which it is necessary to take to secure places on local authorities' housing lists. I will read later a copy of a notice exhibited on Army notice boards, which explains to the Service man how he should make his application.
Her Majesty's Government will always consider sympathetically any special steps open to them to improve the position generally, but if my noble friend has any cases in mind where local authorities appear to be disregarding their obligation to married Regular Service men in their areas, I shall be glad if he will send full particulars to Mr. Macmillan, at the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, who, as I have already said, will
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be pleased to examine them in consultation with the local authorities concerned.
That is the official answer, my Lords. I am glad that we have had a short debate to-day because I am just as keen as, if not keener than, anybody else to see that our Regular soldiers, sailors, and airmen are properly provided with houses when they leave the Services. The trouble, of course, is that there are still not enough houses. That is why the present Government are building them so energetically. We hope that this will be a problem which will disappear. It has not disappeared yet, though, to put your minds at rest, a good deal is being done. As I have said, we have no powers over local authorities and do not wish to have them. What we ask for is fair and equal treatment between the ex-Service man and his civilian brother. I think local authorities will be satisfied with our arrangements, but some useful suggestions have been made about ensuring that serving soldiers know what to do early enough, so that they get their names on to a housing list.
I do not want to detain your Lordships but I should like to read out a notice which is pinned up in canteens, barrack rooms and elsewhere, and we can only hope that Service men read it. But, happy-go-lucky fellows, some of them probably do not take the trouble to read it. I think the noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, made a good point when he said that we should give lectures to the men and make certain that, though they do not read this notice, the information it contains is brought to their attention. I think this is a good notice and if your Lordships will allow me, I propose to read it. It is headed, "It is important that you should read this"—which is probably the reason why it is not read!—and there then follow, under the heading
"Housing—Application for Accommodation in the United Kingdom."
these words:
"Although substantial progress has been made in housing since the war, there is, in most districts, still a large unsatisfied demand for houses"—
and now, in bigger type—
"so if you are soon leaving the Service and will need civilian accommodation for your family, this N.B.I."—
which is short for Notice Board information—
"tells you how to apply for it."

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"Local authorities are entirely responsible for the allocation of council houses. These authorities deal with applications for council houses on the basis of relative need. Where there is a housing shortage, therefore, it is probable, for instance, that a family without children would be less likely to obtain a house than a family with children. Also it would not necessarily be the family which had been longest on the list which would obtain the next available house.
Local authorities are usually disposed to give more favourable consideration to applicants who have previously resided, or have secured employment, in their district, although they do not all of them insist on this when dealing with Service applications.
Regular personnel, therefore, who wish to apply for council houses, are advised to write first of all to the local authority in the district where they may have some residential or employment qualification. They should write as follows:—
'I am a serving member of the Army and I desire to apply for a council house for my family.'
Information on the following points should be added:—

(a) Whether or not the applicant's wife has a separate house or flat. If so, give the address, and the number of rooms occupied.

(b) Whether or not he has already applied for accommodation.

(c) Particulars of the family, divided between adults, children, sexes and ages.

The local authority may require their own form to be completed, in which case the applicant should complete and return the form without delay."
THE EARL OF LUCAN: May I ask the date of that Notice Board Information?
EARL ALEXANDER OF TUNIS: This N.B.I. refers to A.C.I. 273 of 1951. I will ask my Service colleagues to satisfy themselves that there are sufficient of these notices, and that they are displayed in prominent places so that they may be seen by everybody; and to see that married men are told by their company or platoon commanders, or whoever is responsible, of the notice which I have just read out. I will also ensure that it shall be brought to the notice of all married men, or of potentially married men, as early as possible in their careers.