HL Deb 22 November 1954 vol 189 cc1755-87

After Clause 11, insert the following new clause—

Spreading of myxomatosis

(".A person shall be guilty of an offence if he knowingly uses or permits the use of a rabbit infected with myxomatosis to spread the disease among uninfected rabbits and shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding twenty pounds or, if he has been previously convicted of such an offence, a fine not exceeding fifty pounds:

Provided that this section shall not render unlawful any experiment duly authorised under the Cruelty to Animals Act, 1876.")

5.14 p.m.

EARL ST. ALDWYN

My Lords, it is more than seven months since this Bill left your Lordships' House and during that time myxomatosis has spread to every county in Great Britain except Selkirk. Much publicity has been given to reports of farmers deliberately introducing the disease to their farms; and although I believe these reports to have been greatly exaggerated they have led to a growing public demand for the wilful spreading of myxomatosis to be made an offence. The Myxomatosis Advisory Committee considered this position on July 26 and again at their meeting on October 20, and, while reaffirming their view that no attempt should be made to assist the spread of the disease or to introduce it into uninfected areas of the country, the Committee unanimously recommended that, in view of the course the disease had taken and might be expected to take in the future, no good purpose would be achieved at present by making it an offence for any person to take steps to spread the disease.

This new clause was put down by an honourable member in another place and there was obviously strong feeling in the House in favour of it. My right honourable friend, although he had accepted the recommendation of the Advisory Committee, recognised the strength of the feelings which were expressed that something more should be done to discourage the deliberate spreading of myxomatosis than just a statement of the Government's disapproval. Perhaps I may quote the actual words which he used when giving his reasons for accepting this new clause. He said he accepted it: so that there should be no doubt whatever about the Government's attitude towards the practice and to meet the sincerely held views of many honourable members who are reflecting the views of a wide section of public opinion. I must be frank with the House. I do not think this clause will generally affect the course taken by myxomatosis in this country, since it will inevitably spread widely next spring and summer from the many centres of infection that are now established in Great Britain. The time when there was a possibility of preventing the establishment of this disease was twelve months ago, when the first outbreaks occurred, and it is well to remind the House that the Government then took every possible step to stamp out the disease, but found itself unable to do so. We do not know, though research continues, the many causes which may have led to the spread of this disease this summer, but it would be quite wrong to suggest that human agency has been the main factor in its spread to every part of Great Britain, any more than human agency led to its spread throughout France a year ago.

Reports of farmers spreading the disease have inevitably attracted a great deal of public attention, but I myself am convinced, from what I know of the farming community, that such cases must have been very few indeed. Certainly the Government's acceptance of this clause should not be taken as implying that we think the practice which it prohibits is widespread. I am sure the House will agree with me that the countryman is no less humane than his brother in the towns, and that there is no reason to suggest that farmers generally have played a major part in the spreading of this disease. It has spread inevitably; and, whatever action we may take, it will continue to spread. I beg to move that the House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment.

Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment.—(Earl St. Aldwyn.)

5.18 p.m.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, it is a matter of great regret to me that circumstances should oblige me to address your Lordships for the first time on a subject like this; indeed, I can think of hardly anything in the world on which I should more greatly prefer not to make a speech than the subject of myxomatosis. I have felt very strongly indeed, however, that it is my duty to give your Lordships and Her Majesty's Government at least an opportunity of reconsidering a decision to create an entirely new offence in criminal law, taken on the spur of the moment, at the tail end of a Parliamentary Session, only a few days before this Bill was due to reach the Statute Book, after the most perfunctory discussion in another place lasting only some twenty minutes, and in complete disregard of the carefully considered and unanimous advice which had been repeatedly tendered to the Government by all those who were most qualified to advise the Government on this subject and who had, indeed, been appointed by the Government for the specific purpose of doing so. The advice of the committee that the spread of the disease should not be made a penal offence was first given to the Government in July, and it was agreed unanimously at our recent meeting on October 20, three or four weeks ago.

The decision of the Government to accept this new clause has taken everybody completely by surprise. It was entirely unexpected. I myself read of it for the first time in a newspaper a few days later, and I have not had time to consult any of my colleagues on the advisory committee. However, I received the day before yesterday a letter from the Secretary of the National Farmers' Union which he asked me to bring to your Lordships' attention. He says in this letter that the Parliamentary committee of the N.F.U. were very much disturbed and concerned by this decision of the Government. He ends up by saying: … as a result of the Minister's action in ignoring the considered advice of his own Advisory Committee, Mr. Woolley "— that was the N.F.U. representative on this Committee— has sent a letter to the Minister resigning from membership of the Myxomatosis Advisory Committee and indicating that neither he, nor I as his deputy, will attend any further meetings of the Committee. I thought that you ought to know this, particularly as Mr. Woolley's resignation from the Committee may well be misinterpreted as being based upon resentment among farmers at the creation of the new offence. In fact that is certainly not so; it is simply based upon a feeling that no useful purpose would be served by continuing to attend meetings of a Committee whose unanimous recommendation is ignored. There was no representative of the Scottish N.F.U. on this Committee, and I think I was the only non-official Scottish member on it. No one at all representing any interest or responsible body of people concerned has ever been consulted about this by the Government. I hope your Lordships will agree that if it is a good thing to make this a penal offence, it really ought not to be introduced in the last two or three days of the Session in the form of a private Member's Amendment to the Pests Bill. I earnestly hope that the Government will at least agree to withdraw this new clause and then, if they still think that the matter should be pursued, first consult with the representatives of those who will be most closely affected by it. I am sure that the representatives of the farmers are always eager to agree with the Government about the right course of action to take.

Myxomatosis is a very complicated subject, for there are so many different questions which may be confused and which, indeed, very often have been confused in discussing it. There is the question of whether or not we think it a good thing to have any rabbits at all. There is the question of whether this disease is likely to be effective in ridding us of the rabbit pests, and there is the question of the suffering of the animals. If your Lordships will allow me, I should like to begin by saying something about this question of animals suffering, because I think it is one which has made the strongest impact on the minds of most people of this country, and certainly upon my own mind. I have been making a close study of the effect of the disease on infected rabbits within the last few weeks, and if your Lordships will allow me I will tell you the result of my investigations in a minute. But when I first agreed to serve on the advisory committee I had never seen an infected rabbit, and I had to rely on what I was told by my colleagues who knew more about it than I did. They included the Deputy Director of the National Institute for Medical Research, the Deputy Chief Scientific Officer, Ministry of Agriculture, the President of the Royal, College of Veterinary Surgeons and the Chief Veterinary Officer, Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. I do not think that, in a Parliamentary debate, it would be right either to quote any of these gentlemen directly or refer to them by name, butt I am sure that if any of your Lordships would like first-hand information front them they would be glad to give it, no doubt with as much caution and circumspection as they did to me.

The only Member of your Lordships' House, apart from the Chairman and myself, who has been serving on this committee is my noble friend Lord Merthyr, who also knows a great deal more about this subject than I do. I hope the noble Lord will not hesitate to interrupt me if he hears me say anything which he thinks is not quite accurate. When I first heard about this disease, it was reported to me by everybody that it inflicted severe and prolonged pain on the rabbit. Indeed, I had been assured by many people that the pain was so great that the rabbit ran about screaming with agony. I was therefore both surprised and relieved to learn that in fact this disease has a narcotic effect on the rabbit, which renders it at least partly insensible to pain. These distinguished scientific gentlemen who were my colleagues were not able to assure me that the rabbit suffers no pain at all. They told me, for one thing, that it does have difficulty in breathing which may be compared to that experienced by a man with a heavy cold.

Of course, it is even more difficult to assess or measure animal discomfort or the mental concern of an animal about itself, if there is such a thing, than it is to measure the actual physical pain which an animal feels and of which we can at least observe the visible and audible symptoms. But the fact which impressed me most strongly at that time, which was still before I had had an opportunity of studying the subject for myself, was that the diseased rabbit continues to feed normally until the end of its life. As a rule, a diseased wild animal in mortal pain cannot feed, and it dies fairly soon, but these rabbits go on eating until they are killed by the disease, and they are found dead with grass in their mouths. While their cheeks and eyes are badly disfigured by the disease itself, their bodies are still in a plump and well-fed condition.

Within the last two months this disease has become particularly rife in my neighbourhood, and I have spent a great deal of time in the last few weeks observing the movements and behaviour of the infected rabbits. I did this, of course, in the hope that my own observations, although unskilled, might be of some help to my colleagues on the advisory committee. What people see most of is the diseased rabbits which wander on to the road and, since they cannot see or hear the approach of motor vehicles, get run over. I have tried to spend as much of my time as I could spare in watching the rabbits feeding on grass fields and in the stubble fields, and as they are quite unconscious of the proximity of a human being it is possible to observe their behaviour at very close quarters. I have spent a great deal of time in the last week or two watching rabbits, sometimes in the most advanced stages of the disease, feeding within a few inches of my feet. They feed quite normally, nibbling and munching the grass until they have finished all they can reach, and then they move on a little and start on a fresh patch in the same way as a healthy rabbit would do. I lifted up a great many of these rabbits as gently as I could, examined them and put them back on the ground. In every case after a minute or two they settled down and started feeding again, none of them having shown any signs of alarm at being handled.

I am not a skilled naturalist. I am a completely untrained observer. I certainly should not be rash enough to say that those diseased rabbits which I had been studying were suffering no pain at all because they appeared to be enjoying their meal. For all I know, they may have been suffering some pain, or at least some discomfort, though not enough to prevent them from feeding normally. What I can be sure of, though, is this: that I have never seen—and I do not suppose that any of your Lordships has seen—a rabbit eating grass when its leg is held and lacerated in the jaws of a steel trap. I was glad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, suggest just now that the trap, too, may have some numbing effect. I think I can say this with perfect confidence; that the pain suffered by a myxomatised rabbit, if any (I am quite prepared to believe there may be some), is far less—in fact, I should say incomparably less—than the pain suffered by a rabbit which is trapped, by a rabbit which is snared or by a rabbit which, owing to an unskilled shot, gets away with its hind quarters full of pellets. If we exclude gassing, which kills a rabbit almost instantaneously in the burrow, it would be true to say that the pain endured by a rabbit with myxomatosis is less than that inflicted upon it by any of the normal methods of killing rabbits in this country.

It is not only a question of the pain which may or may not be suffered by the rabbit itself; it is also a question of the distress which is felt by the people who see it. Again and again we have seen letters in the Press demanding some legal action because of the unhappiness which is caused to people by seeing great numbers of blind, deaf and disfigured rabbits crawling about the lanes and public roads. Lord Macaulay said that the English Puritans objected to bear-baiting, not because of the pain suffered by the bear but because of the pleasure derived from it by the spectators. I have always thought there was something to be said for this Puritan attitude, although Macaulay may have meant it as a parody, because we do not really know how much real suffering a bear is capable of feeling but we do know that human enjoyment of the spectacle of animal suffering is a bad thing. Therefore, it is not entirely absurd to say that you object to bear-baiting primarily because of the entertainment which it affords to the spectators; and, conversely, it is certainly not at all absurd to say that, even if the rabbit with myxomatosis suffers no appreciable pain, you may still wish to punish the people who spread the disease simply because of the revulsion which is experienced by people who are compelled to witness the spectacle of a disfigured rodent.

I am not seeking to dissuade your Lordships from giving the fullest weight to that argument. I only ask your Lordships to remember that pain and ugliness are not the same thing. It is quite possible to be very ugly without suffering continual agony—which is a fortunate thing for most of us. If it should be found that the spread of myxomatosis would bring incalculable benefits to agriculture and forestry but that we could obtain those benefits only at the expense of inflicting great pain on a great number of dumb creatures, then that would be a very strong argument against doing it. If, however, we find that the only price we have to pay is the disgust which we ourselves feel when we see the diseased rabbit, that also is an argument against it, but, in my submission, not so strong as the former one. I have thought it right to dwell at some length on this question of animal suffering. I apologise for taking up so much of your Lordships time on it, but I think it is a question which strongly appeals to most of us. But, of course, it is not conclusive either way. Even if the myxomatised rabbit suffers no pain—which I hope may be the case—I could still imagine circumstances in which it might be right to make the spread of the disease a penal offence; and, even if it suffers a great deal of pain, which I hope and believe is not the case, I could certainly imagine circumstances in which it would still be justifiable to spread the disease. May I, therefore, try to put before your Lordships the considerations which I think ought to govern our decision in this matter?

When myxomatosis kills very rapidly, as it sometimes does, all the rabbits which are capable of being killed by it, there are usually one or two left behind—I think usually about 1 per cent.— because they have anti-bodies which render them immune to the disease; and there is a widespread popular impression that the progeny of those immune rabbits is also immune. That is not so. The progeny of the immune rabbits is no more immune and does not contain a higher percentage of immunity than any other rabbit. So that, if this one in a hundred, or ten in one thousand—which is quite a considerable proportion—which are left behind are not dealt with, if they breed very quickly, as rabbits always do, then, when their numbers increase the disease will come back again and we shall have the same thing all over again in the course of time. It may even be that in the course of centuries a rabbit will be evolved which is not immune to the disease but which does not die of it. That is what has happened in South America, whence this disease has been imported in the twentieth century, to Australia and to Europe. In South America, myxomatosis has existed probably for centuries, and now the South American rabbit, though it still gets the disease, recovers without permanent injury to its health. But it would take a very long time for that to happen in Europe.

Meanwhile, the disease has become endemic here. It is not possible to eradicate it. As my noble friend Lord St. Aldwyn told us just now, a year ago we did try, with the approval of the advisory committee, to contain and stamp out the first outbreak in Kent; but that effort was quite futile. The reason we did so was that even those people who thought that myxomatosis would do good did not want to have it here until we knew a great deal more about it. We did not depend on human decision. In 1952, the aged French scientist, Dr. Armand Delille inoculated only two rabbits, which he let loose with the virus; and in three or four months, over two-thirds of France, most of the rabbits had been destroyed. But very soon afterwards the disease spread to Holland, Belgium, Western Germany, and now has reached Great Britain. There is nothing that human agency can do to eradicate it. Among the many demands for action by the Government which have come from the public was one letter in the Press a few weeks ago from a lady who claimed that it was the plain duty of the Government to capture all the wild rabbits in Great Britain, to inoculate them all against myxomatosis and to let them go again. But even if the entire Cabinet, assisted by all the Under-Secretaries and Ministers of State, could spare enough time from their other duties to perform this operation successfully, you would still not get rid of the disease, because by the time you had caught and inoculated the last rabbit the progeny of the first ones would have started getting the disease and spreading it again. The only way to get rid of the disease is to exterminate rabbits entirely.

The disease does not behave in the same way in every area. Its behaviour is sometimes unpredictable, because it depends partly on the weather, partly on the insect carriers, and partly on a great number of other factors which are so numerous and which can interact in so many ways with each other that it would not be possible to discuss them comprehensively in a debate. But whether the disease spreads quickly or slowly, it never seems to spread evenly. If your Lordships will try to imagine a clearly defined area, say of some 5,000 acres, over which this disease has spread with its maximum effect, you will then probably find 500 acres completely clear; then perhaps a pocket of 50 acres which the disease has not touched at all, pos- sibyl owing to some peculiarity of the ground which makes it unlikely that the rabbits will move in and out of it; then another 500 acres completely clear, and then perhaps some very small pockets of only 10 or 5 acres which are completely immune. If those pockets are not dealt with, what will happen? They will not remain immune permanently; sooner or later the disease will reach them, and for a long time—possibly for months, possibly for years—the people in the district will have the worst of both worlds: they will still have some healthy rabbits, which will be a pest to the farmer, and also diseased ones which cause disgust to everybody. If I may quote the words of Professor Andrews of the National Institute for Medical Research, in a pamphlet he published a short time ago in Nature he said: Maximum suffering over a long period would be caused if the disease kept going spontaneously around the country like a travelling circus. What can be done about this matter? If there is in the district some wealthy person who can afford to employ 7 or 8 gamekeepers (not a very common thing now), and if he can spare half a dozen of them for six or twelve months, they may be able to "mop up" these temporarily unaffected pockets by trapping, gassing and shooting, so that the whole area will be cleared. If there is no such surplus supply of gamekeepers, it is possible that the local farmers and landowners, by clubbing together, may afford to take on six or seven casual labourers at £7 or £8 a week to do the job. But if any number of people were trying to do this at once you would not be able to get the labour. Casual labour in the country is very scarce and the job of "mopping up" rabbits is tedious and unpopular. I have not yet had an opportunity of examining the areas, but it is reported to me from several places that, by spreading the disease more evenly through these uninfected pockets, by distributing infected carcases among them, the local farmers have in three or four months succeeded in completely clearing the area of rabbits.

My Lords, I wish I did not have to give an opinion on this question now, because I have been entirely in agreement with my colleagues on the committee in deprecating the spread of the disease in any circumstances. I should not have wished the committee to make any change in that recommendation until we knew a little more about it. But the Government have forced the issue by accepting this new clause, and I am therefore compelled to say now that, so far as our present knowledge goes, I think that in some circumstances this practice of evening out the spread of the disease throughout the temporarily uninfected pockets within an area already infected, with the purpose of shortening the duration of the disease, may be thoroughly justified, both on grounds of humanity and on grounds of common sense. But if this new clause is accepted, the farmer may be liable to be prosecuted and fined £20 or £50 for doing something which is both humane and sensible.

More than that, he may have neighbours who are not as well qualified as he to judge the position. Some of those neighbours may perhaps have a grudge against him and, whether or not he himself is actually doing it, he may find himself continually subjected to spying by snooping busybodies who are doing their best to collect enough evidence to bring a prosecution against him. I think your Lordships will agree that there is an obvious distinction between accelerating the disease within an area which is infected anyhow and importing it from a great distance into an area which is entirely uninfected, but I do not think it is possible to frame a law which will make it a criminal offence to move the disease from one county to another, but not a criminal offence to move it from one field to another. Therefore, I do not think we ought to make it a criminal offence at all.

I am not going to evade the question of whether it might be a good thing to spread this disease as a matter of policy. I have been told by many people that in 1955 this disease may spread through the country like wildfire, and it will not make a great deal of difference what the Government may do. People say, "Let the Government make their mistakes. now; they will probably not have very much effect in the course of events." I do not think it a very courageous attitude, that we should try to shuffle off our own responsibility in this matter, in the expectation that nature may do more slowly and painfully what we perhaps ought to do more quickly and mercifully. We do not know enough to anticipate a decision. We have learned a lot, we are learning more every day; but we have a great deal more to learn.

Last summer I hoped very much that this disease would not make its appearance in Scotland, because I thought that in our Scottish climate, which as your Lordships may sometimes have noticed is not very much better than the English climate, it would kill not more than about half the rabbits, which of course would be worse than useless. It was introduced into Scotland and for the first few months it seemed that I was right. Large numbers of healthy rabbits were still to be seen in the infected areas. But since the autumn began there has been a complete change in some parts of the country, and it now seems probable that I shall be proved wrong. Not only has the disease begun to spread much more quickly, but in some places it has destroyed 95 per cent. and in others, according to the people who live there, 100 per cent. of the rabbits. This has happened only in the Eastern parts of Scotland and within the last two months, and I do not yet know whether the same thing is likely to happen in Argyll, where the climate is much wetter, or in Caithness, where it is much colder.

I think there is one condition which would have to be satisfied before we recommended the deliberate spreading of the disease, and it is that effective measures should be taken before, and not after, we do it, to "mop up" the remaining 1 per cent. of immune rabbits, so that the disease can never come back. That depends, in great measure, on another part of this Bill which provides for clearance areas, and I hope very much that the Ministry are faking advance measures to consult with agricultural executive committees to prepare schemes for effective clearance of rabbits within those areas.

I say to the farmer: You will be sadly undeceived if you think that, because your land has been cleared of rabbits by myomatosis, you can now sit back and do nothing. The Government are to give a grant for scrub clearance and for wire netting, but nothing more; and as it will be necessary to have squads of mobile anti-rabbit police somebody will have to pay for it, and the farmers will have to put their hands in their pockets. Agricultural executive committees will have to organise the administration. I do not yet know whether that will be done, and therefore cannot yet know whether it will ever be right that we should deliberately spread this disease; but I do know that it is utterly wrong to prejudge this now by making it a criminal offence. Noble Lords should put themselves in the position of the farmers and imagine how this new penal clause must strike a good many of them. They are encouraged by the Ministry of Agriculture to poison their rats with War-farine or similar concoctions which cause the rat to develop a painful tumour of which it dies. But the rat behaves like a gentleman, and does not come out to show off his disease to the public. He dies decently in his home, and therefore there is no public agitation. But what is the farmer to think, when he is told and encouraged to use an artificial poison to rid himself of a comparatively minor pest like the rat, but is forbidden to spread a natural disease to rid himself of a major pest like the rabbit?

The farmer may be puzzled by the attitude of the Ministry on this question. In a Press statement on April 9 the Ministry stated: This disease should be allowed to take its full toll in any given area—and every advantage should be taken of this unique opportunity. So the Ministry recommend that the disease should be allowed to take its full toll, so long as it is not made any fuller by the acceleration of an outside agency. Then in another place, when this Amendment was accepted, the Minister stated that he had tried his best to find some method of marking the disapproval of the Government of the spreading of this disease, apparently so long as it fell short of actually stopping it; but he said he thought it very unlikely that there would be many prosecutions because it was so difficult to get evidence. He ended by expressing the hope that the moral effect of the new clause would be to prevent farmers from transgressing, so that in fact there would be no prosecutions. I wonder whether the Law Officers of the Crown have given any advice to the Government on the principle which seems to be involved in making an important addition to our criminal law which does not seem seriously intended to be enforced but which is meant only to be a kind of moral gesture whose morality is open to most serious question by anyone who has taken the trouble to study the problem.

One other matter will puzzle farmers: the alteration in this new clause made on the Report stage in another place. The clause lays down that a person shall be guilty of an offence if he knowingly uses or permits the use of a rabbit infected with myxomatosis to spread the disease among uninfected rabbits. Then comes the proviso added on Report: Provided that this section shall not render unlawful any experiment duly authorised under the Cruelty to Animals Act of 1876. My Lords, what experiments involving the infection of rabbits with myxomatosis to spread the disease among uninfected rabbits are authorised by the Cruelty to Animals Act, 1876? I know of only one such experiment; that is one which the Scottish Department of Agriculture have been carrying out for several years in a remote Hebridean island where, year after year, they have been inoculating rabbits with myxomatosis and letting them loose to see what happens. I have no doubt that that may be a useful experiment, although its usefulness is somewhat diminished by the fact that the climate of the island bears no resemblance whatever to the climate of any other part of the British Isles. The Department, however, have continued with it, although they have not yet managed to communicate any useful result to anybody. I do not know whether any similar experiments are being conducted in England, but farmers can hardly fail to perceive that, while they are now made liable to a penalty of £50 for doing something which may be sensible and humane, the Government have been careful to protect themselves against a similar penalty, so that there will now be one law for the farmer and another law for the bureaucrat. The laws which we make should not only be good laws but should be laws of such a kind as to maintain the confidence of the people in the wisdom of their rulers. It is dangerous to enact a law which fails to appeal to the conscience of those who know most about the subject and which is, at the same time, unenforceable by the police.

It is hardly necessary to do more than just mention the final point, whether or not we want to have any rabbits in this country, because, although it has sometimes been disputed, probably most people are convinced that it would be a good thing if we had no rabbits. The value of rabbit meat and rabbit fur together has been estimated at about £15 million a year. It has also been estimated that the damage which rabbits do to agriculture, or the amount of additional food which would be produced if we had no rabbits, amounts to some £50 million a year. I believe that that is a conservative estimate, because we know that four or five rabbits eat as much as one sheep, and that fifteen or eighteen eat as much as one bullock. I am told on good authority that the Agriculture Research Council are rather concerned because they think that if, next year, myxomatosis spreads as quickly as is anticipated by some people, we may be unable to increase our stock quickly enough to eat up all the abundant pastures which will become available to us.

In regard to forestry we have often been given figures of the amount which would be saved in the cost of wire netting to the Forestry Commission and to private planters, but that is a small item compared with the great wealth in natural tree regeneration that we should enjoy, often in those indigenous types which have become much more difficult to regenerate in this country since we became a great rabbit farm. Whether or not myxomatosis will have the effect of exterminating rabbits we do not yet know—and I hope that I am not trying to pre-judge this question. But, for the sake of argument, let us suppose for a moment that myxomatosis, aided, as it would have to be, by other methods, does relieve us of the pest of rabbits. And let us suppose that in ten years' time a foreign visitor who had not been in this country since 1954 were to come back here, and see thousands of acres of ground which had been covered with ragwort and thistles converted into rich pastures for sheep and cattle, and hundreds of acres of what had been useless scrub and bracken growing thriving young woods. He might perhaps say to us: "What a wise and efficient Government you must have had to bring about this wonderful transformation in the appearance of your country." Would it not be rather a pity if we had to reply: "No, the Government did not do that. What the Government tried to do was to punish anyone who helped to bring about this transformation by fining him £50. Fortunately, no one paid very much attention to the Government; therefore, we have now doubled our food production."

I have only once in my life been privileged to visit the United States of America—that was when I was an undergraduate at Oxford. At that time, the Eighteenth Amendment had not yet been repealed, although it was repealed almost immediately after my visit—not, of course, on account of it. I remember that at that time two opposing views—as there often are on questions of great public importance—were held by the Americans. One opinion was that of the American who said. "I think this is a bad law; but since I am a good citizen of the United States, I feel bound to obey the laws of my country, however bad they may be. Therefore, I am afraid I cannot offer you anything to drink. "The other opinion was held by those who said, "I think this is a bad law, and consider it so unreasonable that it is not binding on the conscience of a good American citizen. Therefore, I hope you will allow me to offer you…" and then, of course, they mentioned the available drink, whatever it was. But no one said—or, rather, very few people said— "This is a good law." If your Lordships accept this new clause, there will be a great many farmers—in my view, the vast majority—who will say: "This is a bad law, but since we are good and law-abiding citizens we will scrupulously observe it, even though it may mean protracting the duration of this ugly disease in our own neighbourhood." There will be others—I think the minority—who will say: "This is a bad law, and since the Government have almost hinted that there are not likely to be any prosecutions, perhaps it may be that this law is intended merely as a moral gesture to placate some good and well-meaning persons who may not be fully acquainted with the subject." But no one will say: "This is good law." Therefore, I earnestly beg your Lordships not to enact it.

6.4 p.m.

LORD MERTHYR

My Lords, if I heard the noble Earl aright, he informed us that this was the first occasion upon which he had addressed the House. I think it is just as well that he should tell us that, because I ant sure your Lord- ships will agree with me when I say that no stranger to the House to-day could have detected that the noble Earl was anything other than a practised and an experienced debater—indeed, almost an orator. Your Lordships will, I know, agree with me when I say that it is to be hoped that he will address us on many occasions in the future. I think your Lordships will also agree that the noble Earl stated his case with moderation and in no way spoilt it by over-statement. That made it, to my mind, the more formidable to answer. But I will say at once that there is a great deal to be said on both sides of this question, and I would just give as shortly as I can one or two reasons why I think, on balance, your Lordships should agree with the Commons in this Amendment.

In the first place, speaking as another member of the Advisory Committee on Myxomatosis—to which fact, the noble Earl was good enough to refer—may suggest that members of an advisory committee should not be in any way disturbed if a Government choose to reject their advice. After all, it is an advisory committee and no more. If it was more, then clearly that would have been stated before it was set up. And I must admit that the Government are not bound to accept my advice as a humble member of that committee. Much as I should like them to do so, I do not think they are in any way bound to. The noble Earl spoke at some length upon the question of whether the effects of this disease were painful and cruel. All I want to say about that question is that I think none of us knows very much about it either way. What I think has happened is that there has been a great public outcry in this country. I believe that that is the main reason why the Government have introduced this Amendment into the Bill. There has been a great public outcry because the effects of this disease are—unlike the effects of the gin-trap—visible and open to the world.

I think the noble Earl is almost certainly right when he says that the cruelty of myxomatosis is less than the cruelty of gin-traps. The fact is that the effects of gin-traps are not visible to the public. I have said before in your Lordships' House, and I may have occasion to say it again, that if you had gin-traps set all round Parliament Square, a Bill to abolish them would pass through Parliament in a day. But the consequences of the use of gin-traps are hidden from the public gaze and, mostly, fortunately, from the public hearing. The consequences of myxomatosis are not, Rabbits come out on to the roads and are visible to all of us. I think that one reason for not rejecting this Amendment is that, quite apart from the question of cruelty to rabbits, the effects upon the public are very unpleasant. That is a point that should be taken into consideration. I believe that in reality there will be little difference whether this Amendment is passed or not. The noble Earl, Lord St. Aldwyn, who moved that we should agree with it, made that point, but I think he overstated the case somewhat when he said that in all probability there was little deliberate spreading of myxomatosis. My information is to the contrary. I cannot prove that I am right any more than the noble Earl, if I may say so, can prove that he is right. I think that he has underestimated the deliberate spreading of myxomatosis in the country to-day. But, be that as it may, I still believe that whether this Amendment is accepted or not, the difference in practice will be very slight indeed.

That leads me to my final point, which is this. If the Commons Amendment were not accepted, what would happen to this Bill? It might, I presume, mean that the Bill could not be passed this Session. If that were so, I think it would be a bad reason for accepting the Commons Amendment, although it would be a real and practical reason for doing so. Sorry as I am to say it, I believe that there are occasions when it is desirable to accept Amendments, or reject them, as the case may require, merely for the purpose of getting a Bill through Parliament. And I want this Bill to pass because I think, on balance, and whether this Commons Amendment is in or out, that this Bill will do a great deal of good. So I would urge your Lordships, for those reasons—which frankly I do not think are very worthy reasons, though they are real and practical reasons—to agree with the Commons in their Amendment.

6.11 p.m.

THE EARL OF LISTOWEL

My Lords, I should like to join in congratulating the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, on his maiden speech. I think your Lordships will agree that we listened to a maiden speech of exceptional interest, exceptionally well-informed and carefully considered; and we are grateful to the noble Earl for addressing the House, on a subject of which he has made a thorough personal study. I agree with him in the plea that this is a matter which should be reconsidered by the Government. In saying so, let me make it plain that I do not regard this issue, or any issue connected with myxomatosis, as a matter of Party politics. I shall express my own personal view. I am sure that there are opponents and supporters of this clause in all political Parties. The noble Earl, Lord Dundee, put the case for reconsideration from the farmer's and from the humanitarian points of view, from what I might call the practical and the humane points of view. I should like to put the case from a different angle. I should like to put it from the logic of the Government's arguments for and against this clause when the matter was considered in Parliament. I should like your Lordships to judge whether the arguments used by Ministers, when the Bill was in this House and up to and during its Second Reading in another place, were not stronger than the arguments used during the second stage in another place when this new clause was brought forward.

I do not think the noble Earl, Lord St. Aldwyn, has suggested for a moment that making this action into a criminal offence will prevent the spread of the disease throughout the country. The noble Earl, Lord Dundee, gave us a graphic description of the state of affairs at the moment and of how the disease is likely to spread. I think it will not be an inaccurate summary of the situation if I say this—I hope the noble Earl will interrupt me if I am not correct. There are patches of the disease now in almost every county of Great Britain, and within a not very distant period of time most of these patches will have joined up—that is to say, nature will continue to carry the infection into those parts of counties which are not at the moment infected, and this will happen whatever we do to try to stop the disease. Thai, I think, was the first argument put by the Ministers when they said that there was no point in making this matter an offence, because, whether it was made an offence or not, the disease would continue to spread.

Nor would the noble Earl deny (though he did not refer to this explicitly in his speech) that the taking of this action, when it is made into an offence, would be extremely difficult to prove, and that in a court of law it would be almost impossible to make a strong enough case for a judge to decide that an offence had been committed. That is almost painfully obvious. If a man picks up a dead rabbit, puts it in his pocket, takes it home and drops it in a field of his farm, who but the man himself will know? The only chance of proving the offence, so far as I know, would be if farmers got into the habit, peculiar to rabid Communists, of making public confession of their misdeeds. I cannot conceive of any other way in which sufficient evidence would be available to other people by which they would know what had happened and on which a conviction could be given in a court of law. I thought the Parliamentary Secretary in another place put the case very fairly when he said: It would be virtually impossible ever to secure a conviction. So that is the kind of offence which is to be made into a criminal offence, while the Government themselves are aware that it would be virtually impossible ever to secure a conviction. I ask your Lordships: is this the standard of legislation which is customary in Parliament? Is this what the public expect of Parliament'? If it is not, should we not ask the Government to reconsider this matter, in the light of comments made in another place and elsewhere, and from the point of view of a reasonable person who is anxious for an efficient and effective code of law?

What were the reasons given by the Minister for changing his mind. He gave, I think, two reasons. One was the moral or deterrent effect of making the spread of this disease an offence. Although I should like to believe the best of human nature, I find it rather hard to believe that people are deterred from certain actions simply because they know them to be illegal. I believe that as a general rule people observe the law more from the fear of being found out and punished than because they regard the law as an extension of the Ten Commandments. When people realise that they can break the law with impunity, they will certainly disregard it. What will be a matter of general experience will not apply in a particular case. The very mischief of a law of this kind is that it tempts people to become law-breakers because they think they can do so with impunity; and that brings law generally into disrepute.

The other reason given by the Minister for this change of front is the strong feeling in another place, which of course reflected public opinion, against the deliberate infection of animals with a painful disease. The degree of pain is a matter of argument, but it is generally admitted that the probability is that the animals do suffer a degree of discomfort or pain. I think I am right in saying that Parliamentary opinion, and public opinion outside Parliament, would be predominantly against an infliction of suffering, even if it were only a certain degree of suffering, and not very acute suffering, on animals. But surely it does not follow—and I think this was the conclusion which the Minister wrongly drew—that, because we disapprove of certain behaviour or regard it as morally wrong, that action should be made a criminal offence. In many cases it is possible, and in some cases it is even desirable, that behaviour of this kind, of which we disapprove. should not be made a criminal offence. Most people disapprove of drunkenness and lying; but they are not offences, and nobody would make them offences against the law. Surely, the spreading of this disease—which is really a moral question, about which there are sincerely held moral judgments, some of which have been expressed in the debate this afternoon—is a matter that should be, and I am confident could be, safely left to the moral judgment and humane instincts of our fellow countrymen. That is how I had hoped the Government would leave it. I very much hope that the Government will be willing to reconsider the matter in the light of the discussion we have had this afternoon.

6.21 p.m.

VISCOUNT HUDSON

My Lords, I venture to approach this subject from a slightly different angle. We have been told for many months, indeed years, past that there is a predominant need for increasing food production and for reducing. so far as we are able, the handicaps under which farmers inevitably suffer in this climate of ours. The original object of the Bill was the more effective control of rabbits, and I feel that it would have been far better if the Government had taken their courage in both hands and said that the supreme need in this country to-day was to control rabbits more effectively, and had taken advantage of every means in their power to do so. It would have been better openly to have said that this was a first-class opportunity in this country substantially to diminish—I would almost say to exterminate—the menace of and the damage done by rabbits. That is what I believe they ought to have done.

Had they done that, they would have met the point so rightly put by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, instead of advancing no real reason in favour of accepting this change in the other place—because, with all respect, the right honourable gentleman the Minister of Agriculture made no attempt to defend this change. What he ought to have done, and what the Government ought to have done—and in that way they would have gained more respect—was to explain to the country at large why it was desirable to extend the spread of this disease, and to disabuse people's minds of the idea that its spread necessarily involved great suffering and was inhumane—a point which the noble Earl rightly dealt with, in the light of his experience. The British public, on the whole, often give way to sentimentality; but in the final result usually they are sensible, and if the Government had explained what a great advantage it was from the point of view of food production and of reducing the cost of the food we require, I am sure that they would have received the overwhelming backing of the nation, and this, what I may call, weak-kneed acceptance of the Amendment in another place at the last moment would not have taken place.

I am not going to weary your Lordships by reciting—because I imagine you all know; you heard the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, explain it at great length the last time—the damage done by rabbits in this country. I am bound to say that I am sorry for the Parliamentary Secretary, the noble Earl, Lord St. Aldwyn, at having on his maiden speech in that position to get up and throw over what his predecessor said on two occasions about this disease. I commiserate with him, because in the nature of things he had no arguments with which to defend the change of heart of the Government. As I see it, one of the real dangers of the procedure which is being adopted to-day, if we agree to the Commons Amendment, is that these pockets of free animals will, at all events in the immediate future, spread and coalesce all over the country.

Take, for example, the position on Salisbury Plain in the county of Wiltshire, where I live. There is a large area around Imber which has been taken over by the military as one of their training grounds, where, up till comparatively recently, the trappers were catching, I am told, a matter of 10,000 rabbits a week. Since this scare about the spread of myxomatosis people have refused to buy them. Therefore, around Imber the population of rabbits is increasing by at least 10,000 a week, and these would otherwise have been caught. In my view, it is expecting rather a lot to ask farmers living around that area, who see this immense increase in the rabbit population and who know that in the comparatively near future these rabbits will spread all over the neighbouring farms, to accept this decision of the Government with any equanimity. It would have been better for the Government to say that they admitted the danger of the myxomatosis-free rabbit, and that they would deliberately spread myxomatosis as part of Government policy. There was a reasonable chance, then, that you would have rendered Imber relatively free and reduced the danger to surrounding farmers.

I do not know why the Government have had this change of heart. Surely, among the leaders of the Government there are men who are farmers, or who profess to be farmers. I should have thought that they would realise the danger of the rabbit plague, and do everything in their power to try and diminish it, instead of accepting an Amendment the result of which may be substantially to increase the danger. I know that in a matter of sentimentality like this it is not easy for your Lordships to take an opposite point of view from Members in another place; but, after all, we have a certain moral obligation towards the country at large, and I think we ought to protest against this wave of false sentimentality. The most reverend Primate, in a speech the other night at the Pilgrim Club, describing his recent tour in America, said that he discussed with an American bishop the question of pacifists, and the American bishop said: "You must always remember that a pacifist has such a warm heart that it has melted his backbone." I am not at all sure that the sentimentalist in England is not in much the same sort of case. Therefore, despite the possible political danger of refusing to accept the Commons Amendment, It hope that my noble friend the Leader of the House will realise that all the speeches so far have been against accepting this Amendment, and that he will change his point of view and allow us all to vote against it with a free conscience,

6.28 p.m.

LORD SALTOUN

My Lords, I rise a little unhappily to say that, against my will, I have been convinced by the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, and if he presses this matter I shall support him. There is only one remark that he made that I should like to challenge. He said that if the rabbit population was very much diminished it would be the duty and the task of the county rabbit officers to kill off the remainder. I submit that, with wire netting costing what it does today, and the necessity to plant large areas, no rabbit officer is likely to see even traces of the last rabbits, and certainly will not deal with them. The only person who can deal with them is the man whose whole business and heart and soul is set on getting the last rabbit out of that planting. I have had some experience of that, and I believe it is incontrovertible. That is one reason why I oppose the coming abolition of the gin-trap—but I need not elaborate on that matter. I was quite determined to oppose the noble Earl until I heard his speech, but after the pains he has taken to ascertain the facts I will certainly support him if he presses the matter.

6.30 p.m.

THE EARL OF PERTH

My Lords, I rise to support the noble Earl and others who have spoken against this Amendment. I do not think I need detain your Lordships long, because the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, in his remarkable and comprehensive maiden speech, has covered so many of the points which one might ordinarily have wanted to make. What is quite clear is that this change and this new Amendment we are considering has been dictated rather hastily by pressure of public opinion. That public opinion was motivated largely, it would appear, upon humanitarian grounds. What we have heard makes it quite clear that the grounds are extremely doubtful. It can certainly be argued that, far from it being humanitarian, it is indeed the opposite to try to prevent the spread of myxomatosis. I would say that at best the case is non-proven, and under those conditions I would ask most earnestly that the Government reconsider the position before they make this a crime. Surely, it is a serious matter to decide that something is criminal in a case where the whole of the balance, one way or the other, is so uncertain.

We have been told that if we press our opposition to this Amendment we may find that the whole Bill is in danger. I am ignorant on these questions, but I should like to put forward one suggestion for the Government to consider as a possible way out of the difficulty which we face. That is that something should be done similar to what has been done in relation to the gin-trap: that the Government should tell us that they are pre-pared to pass an Amendment which would make this a crime at a date to be determined or, if you wish, at a date laid down but some little way off. It would then be for the Ministry of Agriculture, perhaps with the Secretary of State for Scotland—because Scotland is particularly concerned with this matter—to decide when the law should be introduced and when this deliberate spread of the disease should be a crime, if it should be a crime, in the light of any recommendation received from the Advisory Committee on Myxomatosis. It seems to me that, when the Government have a committee specially set up to advise them, it is a valuable thing, unless there are very good grounds to the contrary, to follow their advice. In this instance, we know that the only ground, or the main ground, has been public opinion which, I submit, is ill-founded or built up on a case that is non-proven. I hope, therefore, that the Government may consider (I do not know whether this would meet the wishes of the noble Earl, Lord Dundee) saying that they will not press the Amendment as it stands, but will be prepared to consider a time limit such as has been put in effect upon the gin-trap, which I think is a parallel case.

6.34 p.m.

LORD SEMPILL

My Lords, I will detain your Lordships only a few minutes. I should like to agree completely with the noble Lord, Lord Merthyr. While paying a high tribute to the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, on his maiden speech, I am sorry to have to disagree with him, particularly since my forbears fought beside Bonnie Dundee, and the noble Earl is the Hereditary Standard Bearer for Scotland. None the less, I feel in full agreement with the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Merthyr, and I believe that Her Majesty's Government are perfectly correct in taking the action which they have on the grounds of humanitarianism, and on the grounds referred to by previous speakers. The children of to-day see much that is ghastly in these horror comics and other things, but for those in the countryside to go about the lanes and roads and see these ghastly, crawling, swollen-headed objects once called rabbits, is a terrible thing, and every attempt should be made to stop the deliberate spreading of this disease.

6.36 p.m.

EARL ST. ALDWYN

My Lords, first I should like to add my humble congratulations to those already expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Merthyr, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, to the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, on his maiden speech. I sincerely hope that we shall hear a great deal from him in the none too distant future. I am extremely sorry that the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, cannot support this new clause, and I am even sorrier that he should have found in the Government's acceptance of it a reason for resigning from the Myxomatosis Advisory Committee. As your Lordships know, my right honourable friend originally accepted the committee's recommendation on the subject of the deliberate spreading of the disease, and he said so on the Second Reading of the Bill in another place. Since then, it has become clear that the very strong public demand for legislation, which has found such successful expression in Parliament, should not go unheeded. May I remind the House again of the last recommendation which the committee made to my right honourable friend on this subject? They said that no attempts should be made to assist the spread of the disease or to introduce it into uninfected areas of the country. There is no disagreement on that point. I am not quite sure whether the noble Earl is now advocating the spreading of the disease or a qualified spreading. I can only say that this was never in any form a recommendation of the advisory committee of which he was a member.

The committee recommended that, in view of the course the disease had taken and might be expected to take in the future, no good purpose would be achieved at present by making it an offence for any person to take steps to spread the disease. I hope the House will agree that there is no great issue of principle at stake that would have justified my right honourable friend in resisting the undeniable public outcry in favour of prohibition, The noble Earl is displeased with the Government, for not sticking to the letter of the committee's recommendation. I submit that we have not departed very far from it. If, in his opinion, we have erred on this occasion, I really cannot accept that as evidence that my right honourable friend has treated the committee's advice lightly. On the contrary, with this one exception, he has in the past consistently accepted the committee's advice entirely.

Indeed, on this occasion he accepted the committee's advice until it became clear that the advice was not acceptable to the House and that the House truly reflected a strong feeling in the country. He has, in fact, specifically asked me to stress how much he has valued the committee's work in the past—and in this he would wish me to include my noble friend who, I know, has given up a great deal of his time and made most valuable contributions to the committee's work. Myxomatosis will continue to present us with difficult problems, and the Minister will greatly need the advice of this committee in the future. I am only sorry that in future the committee will not have the help of my noble friend.

The noble Earl, Lord Dundee, also referred in his speech to the question of suffering and went into considerable detail on that subject. May I draw his attention to the findings of the self-same Myxomatosis Advisory Committee which went into this subject very carefully? They said that a myxomatous rabbit" — I hope I pronounce "myxomatous" rightly; I am never quite sure about it— is unsightly and is plainly in distress, and strong representations have been made to us on humanitarian grounds against a policy of spreading the disease. We are satisfied that there are clear and obvious objections on humanitarian grounds to infecting an animal deliberately with an unpleasant disease in order to reduce its numbers. My right honourable friend accepts this view, and I must say it seems to me a sensible view to take. The noble Earl also asked me what was happening with the advisory committees in the various counties. I am afraid that I cannot give him any specific information on that matter, but I do know that already they have met in a number of counties and are all ready to operate as soon as this Bill is passed.

The noble Earl further asked me what was likely to happen under the latter part of this new clause: Provided that this section shall not render unlawful any experiment duly authorised under he Cruelty to Animals Act, 1876. I would refer the noble Earl to what my hoonurable friend the Parliamentary Secretary in another place said on the Report stage of the Bill. He said [OFFTICIAL REPORT, Commons, Vol. 533 (No. 180), col. 162]: As the House will know, we have been doing a certain amount of work in order to learn more about the behaviour of the virus. Despise its existence in our country, we still know very little about it and, therefore, a certain amount of work is going on in regard to that and for the development of an effective vaccine to give full protection to domestic rabbits. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, is apparently convinced that this new clause is unworkable. I would not wish to argue with him at length on that point. I think it will be difficult to enforce, but to dwell too much on its enforceability is to misunderstand my right honourable friend's purpose in accepting the Amendment. His purpose is threefold. He wishes to show his recognition of the public demand for prohibition; he wishes to make absolutely plain the Government's attitude towards the deliberate spreading of this disease; and he hopes that the passing of legislation on the subject will act as a deterrent to any who might otherwise be tempted to spread the disease.

6.42 p.m.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, I do not know whether, with the leave of the House, I am allowed to say a further word. I am most grateful to my noble friend for his exceedingly courteous reply, but, while it is painful to me to differ from him, there were two points in his reply with which I could not quite agree. My noble friend said that the main reason for the change in the Government's views was the strength of feeling in another place. I do not know how far lit is in accordance with the Rules of the House to refer to what happens in another place, but in the short time available to me I have done my best to consult my friends there and they have all told me that they knew nothing about this; they were not aware of any pressure in another place and, if they had known about it, they would have supported the Government in standing firm on this question. I beg the noble Earl to reconsider what appears to be a "snap" decision after a very short discussion.

The other point is this. My noble friend said—and I think it is right—that there is no great division of principle on this matter. I entirely agree. Surely that is the best reason why this should not be made a criminal offence. There is a division of principle about most criminal offences—for instance, there is a division of principle about whether or not one should be allowed to steal. It is quite clear that there are some people who think they should be allowed to steal; therefore it is made a criminal offence. So it is with all other legal crimes. But, because there is no great division of principle about this question I urge the Government to consider that that is the hest reason for not imposing a new criminal offence which will not be acceptable to the consciences of a great number of loyal subjects of this country. I beg the Government to see whether they cannot still reconsider their attitude on this clause.

6.45 p.m.

THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY)

My Lords, perhaps I ought to say a few words—and they will be few, because my noble friend Lord St. Aldwyn, replying for the Government, dealt effectively with the points which were raised. I have listened carefully to the debate, as indeed I am sure we all have, for it raises very difficult and thorny questions. I cannot say that I was convinced by the arguments used by the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, powerful and extremely well expressed, if I may say so, though they were. The majority of them have already been dealt with by my noble friend, but there was one point about which I should like to say an additional word, because it seems to me to have a certain importance in the House's assessment of the rights of the Government in this matter.

The noble Earl, Lord Dundee, made a complaint that an advisory committee of which he was a member had given certain advice to the Government not to make this a penal offence. He said that the advice of this committee had not been accepted. I would entirely agree with him that the advice of a committee as important as that was a relevant factor, and the Government have, in any case, every reason to be grateful to the committee for their advice, which I understand they have taken in almost every point except the one at issue to-day. But surely the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, who himself has been a member of a Government, would not suggest that Governments are morally bound to accept the advice of any advisory committee. That would be an entirely new constitutional doctrine, which I should not expect him to support. The Government represent the country as a whole, and they are bound to come to their own decisions, and to assume responsibility for their own decisions on considerations which are, very often, as we all know, very much wider considerations than those that can be before any technical advisory committee.

It would in any case, I think, be quite wrong to assume, as did the noble Earl, Lord Perth, that the advisory committee were in entire agreement with the views on myxomatosis which were expressed by the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, to-day. I have a copy of the committee's report here. One sentence has already been quoted, in which the Committee said: We… are satisfied that there are clear and obvious objections on humanitarian grounds to infecting an animal deliberately with an unpleasant disease in order to reduce its numbers. Whatever may be said—whether or not, the disease is painful for the rabbit I have no knowledge. and therefore I do not wish to pontificate on the subject—the fact remains that it is undoubtedly an unpleasant disease. The committee said that there are clear and obvious objections on humanitarian grounds to infecting an animal deliberately with the disease. To that statement the noble Earl lent himself only about six months ago. Then the next paragraph, paragraph 36, of the committee's report says this: … there are also legal reasons for not recommending deliberate spreading of the disease. Whatever may be the position in law of a person who transports a diseased rabbit from one place to another, we are advised that it is likely that a person who deliberately takes a rabbit and inoculates it with the virus would be committing one or both of the offences of 'doing an act causing unnecessary suffering to an animal' and 'administering a poison to an animal without reasonable cause or excuse'. Then the committee quote the Acts involved and say: Furthermore we are advised that, under Civil Law, a person who deliberately spreads such a disease on his own land might be held liable for damage caused to a neighbour as a result of the disease spreading on his land or to his stock of domestic rabbits. So that, if it were merely a question of a civil prosecution, I take it that there would not be the same objection; the issue is narrowed down to the question of whether it should be a civil or a criminal prosecution.

Nor can I quite accept the argument which was put forward by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, in favour of delaying the decision to-day. As I understood it (he will correct me if I am wrong), the point he made was that this Amendment was likely to be quite ineffective, and that ineffective laws are bad laws. Broadly speaking, that is the gist of his argument. Personally, I would agree with him—as I think would everybody else—that this clause is not likely to be entirely effective, if by that we mean that every offender against this law is likely to be apprehended or punished. I think that opinion has been expressed by numerous other speakers. On the other hand, I could not follow the noble Earl, and those who feel like him, if he holds that the Act will not, for that reason, be a deterrent, because many laws which are constantly broken yet act as a considerable deterrent to large numbers of our fellow citizens. In spite of what the noble Earl said just now, we all know that there are large numbers of people who are, on the whole, naturally law-abiding—they simply do not like breaking the law; and when something becomes law their instinct is to keep it. There are others, as he said, who are not so law-abiding but who, after even a few prosecutions, might find that enough to deter them. Therefore, I cannot accept the view that, because the law is difficult to enforce, it is for that reason a bad or a useless law.

It seems to me that the real point we have to consider this afternoon is: would it be right for your Lordships, on the broadest ground, to disagree with the other House on this Amendment? Obviously, as we all recognise, when we get an important issue, it is not only our right but our duty to disagree with another place; we have not hesitated to do it when we have been placed in that position. Is this such a matter? Without seeking to pre-judge the issue or the arguments (I hold one view and some noble Lords hold another) I ask: is this, on the broadest grounds, one of those occasions when your Lordships' House should decide to disagree with another place? I do not think it is.

The noble Earl, Lord Dundee, has undoubtedly (I expect on very good grounds) modified his views since the committee of which he was a member reported this spring. Certainly none of us would blame him for that. But the views which that committee expressed, the views which I have read out, are still widely held by great numbers of people in this country who have been repelled by what they have seen; and no doubt that fact has had a considerable influence upon the decision of the House of Commons. Moreover, it appears to be generally agreed by the critics of the Government—they have practically all said it—that even if it does act as a deterrent, this clause will not make a great difference to the spread of the disease one way or another, simply because human agencies are not the only agencies that spread the disease, and probably are not the most important, and that even if everybody was put off by this clause the disease would still spread.

In those circumstances, whatever our personal views may be, I cannot feel that it would be wise or justifiable for your Lordships, in what we see is a very thin House (a very small representation of your Lordships is here at present), to outrage large sections of public opinion and take a big step towards provoking a dispute between the two Houses, which might well mean, I would say to our peril, losing a Bill on which your Lordships have spent many hours of most valuable debate, and which I believe most noble Lords feel contains very much that is good. Therefore, I hope that, having rightly expressed their views, the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, and those who think like him, will not press this matter to a Division. If that is done, I should have no option but to advise your Lordships to vote against the noble Earl. I think this is a difficult problem—there is much to be said on both sides; but the arguments which I have urged, especially those which I urged at the end of my speech, are those which, to my mind, should prove decisive in this particular case.

On Question, Motion agreed to.