HL Deb 17 April 1956 vol 196 cc1047-57

2.51 p.m.

Amendments reported (according to Order).

Clause 1:

Offences relating to rabbits

1.—(1) Subject to the provisions of this section, a person shall be guilty of an offence under this subsection if,—

  1. (a) he—
    1. (i) sells, or offers or exposes for sale, or gives away a live wild rabbit or transfers to another person the property in a live wild rabbit (whether with or without any further consideration) for a consideration which consists of, or includes, the transfer by that other person of the property in other goods; or
    2. (ii) buys, or offers to buy, or accepts as a gift a live wild rabbit or acquires from another person the property in a live wild rabbit (whether with or without any further consideration) for a consideration 1048 which consists of, or includes, the transfer to that other person of the property in other goods;
  2. (b)) he conveys, procures to be conveyed or consigns for conveyance from one place to another a live wild rabbit; or
  3. (c) he turns loose a wild rabbit.

(4) In this section "wild rabbit" means a rabbit other than one which is of a type commonly kept in captivity and has been born in captivity and kept continuously in captivity since birth.

LORD SHERWOOD moved, in subsection (1) (a), to leave out "wild" (where that word first occurs). The noble Lord said: My Lords, the list of Amendments in my name may seem formidable and I have no doubt that I could speak for an hour on each of them, but I will not ask your Lordships to endure that. Obviously the first Amendment is the one on which I stand. This Bill has been through a rather painful process, and that process has not been one which I, at any rate, have enjoyed. We are now getting to the stage where Bills are introduced by Private Members which provide for the imposition of penalties, and various loose phrases are brought in. The reason I have put down this Amendment is that I cannot understand the definition contained in the Bill of the term "wild rabbit"; I cannot understand the difference between a wild rabbit as defined and a tame rabbit. The definition in the Bill has been drafted, I presume, by the Law Officers of the Crown, and the Lord Chancellor, no doubt, has approved. They put it this way—in Clause 1 (4) of the Bill. In this section 'wild rabbit' means a rabbit other than one which is of a type commonly kept in captivity and has been born in captivity and kept continuously in captivity since birth. A lot of the lions and tigers which figured in events in the Colosseum were born in captivity. Yet what consolation would it have been to the Christians, when they were put into the arena at the Colosseum, to be told that it was only a tame tiger or a tame lion that was approaching them?

On the basis of this definition, what is the difference between a tame animal and any animal that is born in the Zoo? I am myself a member of the Zoological Society and I know that large numbers of animals are born, including such strange hybrids as the "liger". According to this definition animals born in the Zoo, I presume, are tame, and therefore they should be let loose amongst us all. If you pass this Bill you will have accepted this definition as explaining the difference between a tame and a wild rabbit. I do not agree with the definition. How many tame rabbits do you think there are? It is no good your saying that you can pass a Bill like this and leave out tame rabbits, including merely wild rabbits. I have made a good many inquiries, and my information is that more than half a million householders keep tame rabbits—tame rabbits, that is, according to the definition in this Bill, which, as I said, has been drawn up no doubt by the Law Officers of the Crown—and a large proportion of these animals are breeding rabbits. Millions of young ones are born every year. If you think you can get rid of the rabbits in this country by exterminating merely wild rabbits you are going to make a great mistake.

I know there are people who say that the tame rabbit never can become a wild rabbit. That, of course, is not true. I know they say it in Scotland. I could cite a number of cases to your Lordships: here is one of them. One Christmas I gave a children's party and I had a very reputable conjurer down to entertain the guests. He was named, I think, Professor Beaufort. He brought some tame rabbits with him for the purposes of his show. A short time after his return to London he wrote me a letter—and his letter was followed by a lawyer's letter—saying that I had stolen his rabbits. He declared that when he got home his rabbits were missing. In the beginning, I took no notice but when I received the lawyer's letter I said, "This is silly," and I made inquiries to find out what had happened. Well, certainly it was a cold day that Christmas when he came to my place, and the Professor had to be entertained in the kitchen. I could not say what happened, but I was told that he was eventually put on the train by a police sergeant. They stopped plaguing me on this matter when I refused to admit the validity of a claim for £50. Then in the Spring I looked out of my bedroom window down on to the lawn. There I saw white rabbits, black rabbits and speckled rabbits running about. Sherwood Lodge is now in the hands of the Coal Board; it has been taken away from me. But if any noble Lord likes to go there he will still see in the woods white rabbits, black rabbits and speckled rabbits. So it is no good saying that tame rabbits do not breed and breed on. They do. The tame rabbit is just as dangerous as the wild rabbit.

The noble Lord, Lord Merthyr, has said that only wild rabbits are included in this Bill, and he has put in, and the Government have supported him in it, a thing which I dislike very much. That is the new idea that the Minister can make special areas, within which scientific research or scientific experiments may be carried out. I asked before what is to be the size of such an area, because, after all, the rabbit is not an unproductive animal. It has been proved that something like £15½ million is produced through the fur trade in consequence of the use of rabbit skins. To my mind, it looks as though questions which are not purely scientific and not purely connected with research are going to arise out of this proposal. Can you lay down areas in which rabbits can be developed under the restrictions which I presume the Minister will impose, if he is able to do so?

There are many people in the hat trade, and in various other trades who are dependent for a livelihood on rabbits. We do not want to have the situation again as it was, but the control that is being offered by the Government is merely for scientific research and not for any form of industry. It may mean nothing to the Government, but there are many people who deal with the rabbit trade and who will be bankrupted. A tame rabbit can still be sold for something like 2s. a pound and its pelt for up to £1—I believe that that is the highest figure, and I am told that the average price paid by the fur trade is 12s. This Bill is going to put that trade out of existence, by allowing tame rabbits only for scientific research. I never like words of this sort. I am always suspicious of a Minister who says that anything is in the interest of "scientific research".

By this Bill we are allowing rabbits to be kept in this country under control: but they are coming back. I have warned your Lordships several times of what has happened in the Isle of Wight. There were none there in December, but since then I have killed 600 rabbits. They are also coming back elsewhere. I read in The Times yesterday that they were returning in Hampshire. It is suggested that the only way to deal with them is through pests officers. But we cannot afford pests officers. They cost a great deal of money and have to cover a great deal of ground. The only thing we can do is to make it possible for people to sell rabbits when they are dead. That cannot be done now, because there is no market. No tenant farmer of mine would employ a rabbiter at £7 10s. 0d. a week unless he could sell what that rabbiter might produce. It is an impossible situation, and unless we are careful, we shall have a position worse than we had before. If the noble Lord, Lord Merthyr, wishes to make sense of this Bill, he must include all rabbits and not merely one type of rabbit. That is why I beg to move this Amendment.

Amendment moved— Page 1, line 9, leave out ("wild").—(Lord Sherwood.)

LORD MERTHYR

My Lords, I have listened with great care to what the noble Lord has said, and I can only repeat, with great respect, that I find it sometimes a little difficult to discover whether the noble Lord is in favour of rabbits or against them. I should like him to answer a few questions in his reply in order to try to answer that conundrum. To accept the noble Lord's Amendments, which, as he says, are a series dealing with the same point, would considerably extend the scope of this Bill. He has told us that half a million people keep tame rabbits. I agree with that figure, and I might add that approximately 50,000 rabbit fanciers exhibit tame rabbits at shows. Bearing these figures in mind, what is the effect of these Amendments?

At an earlier stage of the Bill the noble Lord said [OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 196, col. 946]: I heartily dislike this Bill. Why, then, does he wish to extend its scope? The noble Lord said: It is growing ever greater. Why does he want to make it greater still? He told your Lordships (col. 947): I dislike adding to the scope of this Bill. What is he doing to-day? He said: It offers more and more opportunity for people to give away their neighbours. If this Amendment is passed, it will enable another half a million people to give away their neighbours. On Second Reading the noble Lord said [OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 196, col. 772]: I do not like the penalties which are provided in the Bill. Why, then, extend those penalties to another half million people? Finally, the noble Lord said (col. 773) that it would torture every child who lets loose a tame rabbit. With respect, that statement was not correct, because the Bill as it stood applied only to wild rabbits. But if the noble Lord's Amendments were passed, his statement would become correct. Then, to use the noble Lord's own words, it would "torture every child who lets loose a tame rabbit." That is not what I want to do but that, apparently, is what the noble Lord seeks to do by this Amendment. These are the questions I would like to ask him, if he would be good enough to answer, so that your Lordships can decide on the merits of this Amendment.

In his speech just now, the noble Lord commented upon the fact that this was a Private Member's Bill and that it used loose phrases. I admit that perhaps that is a common fault in Private Members' Bills, but the definition clause has been most carefully drawn, as I pointed out on Second Reading. I also said then, and say again, that this definition clause has been accepted by the interests to which the noble Lord has referred: the fur trade and the organisations which represent the keepers of domestic and tame rabbits. They do not object to it. But what would happen if this Amendment were passed? A whole army of people would then object to the Bill. Fifty thousand people would then be prevented from exhibiting their tame rabbits, and half a million people would be seriously inconvenienced in keeping their tame rabbits.

Surely, one answer to the noble Lord's difficulty is the word "commonly", which appears in the definition clause. If the noble Lord would study that word, in all its implications, I suggest that some of his difficulties would be removed, and he might then be able to understand the definition clause, as he is not able to do at present, as he has told us. The noble Lord says that I should never get rid of rabbits by this Bill. I never said that I could. This Bill does not attempt to do more than try to get rid of a few rabbits. What it really does is to prevent people from increasing the supply of rabbits. There is not a word in the Bill about exterminating rabbits or getting rid of rabbits, and I do not pretend for one moment that this Bill will get rid of the noble Lord's rabbits in the Isle of Wight, or rabbits elsewhere. As I said on Second Reading, what I am attempting to do is to prevent people from quite deliberately, and with a purpose, spreading rabbits all over the country and increasing them for their own ends. That is a very different thing from trying to get rid of rabbits.

The noble Lord dealt with these areas of experiments. That Amendment was moved on behalf of Her Majesty's Government, and I think I had better let the representative of the Government defend that clause. However, I would say to the noble Lord that I myself know of one of these areas, because it happens to be near my own home. It is a small area, and it is wired in extremely carefully. The point of this clause, which was moved on the Committee stage, is that if the clause had not been put in the Bill, that experiment would have had to be ended, because that wired-in enclosure would then be removable under the Pests Act. The noble Lord will see that this clause is, in a way, an Amendment to the Pests Act, and it is in order to enable these experiments to continue that the clause was put in. Although I did not myself move the clause, I believe that there is value to the country in these experiments, and therefore that the clause is justified and is a good one.

The noble Lord says that rabbits are coming hack. I entirely agree with him. The question between us is whether this Bill, if it is passed into law, will help rabbits to come back or will prevent them from coming back. I say that this Bill, if it is passed into law, will do something—it may not be much, but something to prevent rabbits from coming back, because it will prevent people from deliberately, and, I might almost say, with malice aforethought, helping rabbits to come back. The noble Lord, with, I think I am right in saying the same objects—though I am not sure—says that it will have the opposite effect. We must wait and see. Finally, the noble Lord says that the tame rabbit will escape. That I cannot deny, and I must face it. On that point I have only this to say. I ant prepared to take that risk, and I believe it is better to do that than to do what the noble Lord wants and extend this Bill to cover all tame rabbits. If we extend the Bill to cover all tame rabbits, as we are asked to do, then the consequences will be most unfortunate. It will harm a large number of entirely innocent people, who will then have a considerable grievance and will be justified in opposing the Bill. If we do not pass these Amendments, then I can see at once that we run a small risk—and I do not think it is more than a small risk—that a few tame rabbits will escape and populate the countryside. Opinions may differ as to the fertility of tame rabbits which have escaped into the country, and I will not go into that point this afternoon.

With regard to what the noble Lord, Lord Kinnaird, said on the Committee stage of the Bill, I have, as I promised, gone into the point he raised—it was much the same point as I have just mentioned. On the whole, I am convinced that this Bill is better than the original draft in that respect, and that it is wise altogether to exclude tame rabbits from this Bill. There was one respect in which the original Bill included all rabbits, but that is altered in the present Bill. I concede that there is some case for making it an offence to turn loose any rabbit—and that is one of the noble Lord's Amendments—but on all the other Amendments on the Order Paper I must say, most emphatically, that in my humble opinion there is no case for their being accepted. I must ask your Lordships to reject these Amendments because, in my view, if they were passed this Bill would fail completely in its purpose; it would arouse considerable opposition and cause a lot of trouble. Therefore, I ask the House not to accept the Amendments.

THE EARL OF LISTOWEL

My Lords, I cannot help feeling that some of the surprises that the noble Lord, Lord Sherwood, has sprung on us in the course of this Bill are almost as startling as the surprises achieved by the man who produces a rabbit from a hat. A short time ago, the noble Lord asked us to accept an Amendment of his which would have meant the rejection by your Lordships of the Bill. If that had happened, the number of rabbits in the country would have increased considerably. The noble Lord is now submitting an Amendment to your Lordships which, if it were accepted, would decrease the rabbit population, both wild and tame. He is adding tame rabbits to the class of rabbits which would exist in far smaller numbers in time to come if his wishes were acceded to by your Lordships.

I have one powerful objection to the Amendment moved by the noble Lord which I should like to submit to your Lordships for consideration, and which, indeed, was alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Merthyr. It is this. The noble Lord's Amendment would at once make this a controversial Bill, because, as the noble Lord, Lord Merthyr, pointed out, the people who are interested one way or another in tame rabbits are quite numerous, and they would express their opposition in a proper but no doubt emphatic manner. I have no doubt that your Lordships will take that opposition into consideration and, having done so, will probably decide in favour of the Bill. On the other hand, I am certain that if the Bill went to another place with this prohibition of the keeping of tame rabbits the matter would at once become controversial and the likelihood that the Bill would be passed would be small indeed. Therefore, I hope your Lordships will reject this Amendment, in order to preserve the uncontroversial character of the Bill, on which its survival, certainly in another place, and possibly here also, will depend.

LORD SALTOUN

My Lords, when I read the ancient laws of my country, I am astonished and envious at the simplicity of their language and the exactitude with which they are observed. I am very willing to support a Bill couched, as this one is, in quite simple language, and to leave to the courts of our country the task of defining on any occasion what a "live wild rabbit" is.

LORD REA

My Lords, the matter is purely one of clarification, but I should like to ask the noble Lord, Lord Merthyr, whether he said, as I understood him to say, that he would not oppose the Amendment relating to the turning loose of a rabbit, irrespective of whether it is tame or wild. I understood him to say in the later part of his speech that he wished to oppose all the Amendments. I may be a little previous in coming to the fifth Amendment now, but it might be helpful to know at this stage, whether he does accept that Amendment.

LORD MERTHYR

My Lords, if I may have your Lordships' leave to speak again, the answer to the noble Lord's question is that I do oppose all the Amendments. I did concede that there was an arguable case for that particular one; but, on balance, I am convinced that the disadvantages outweigh the advantages.

LORD SHERWOOD

My Lords, I should like to say a word or two, as I moved this Amendment. Having been a Whip in another place, I am not entirely as politically foolish as I may appear. I opposed this Bill, and I still oppose it: it is the one way of making it almost impossible that the Bill would pass if it went to another place. That is the reason why I have moved this Amendment. I think it is fundamentally a bad Bill, and because it is a rural Bill it can be imposed only by the rural police, of whom there are few. It can be done only by people giving away their neighbours, which I dislike. And I do not think it is workable. It started by a wrong method. It has been encouraged and brought on by the Government and by the Minister, who added curious addenda to it, including the proposal regarding scientific research, which had nothing to do with the ideas of the noble Lord, Lord Merthyr, when he started this Bill. It is a Bill which is not going to help at this time. It is not going to get rid of the rabbits, if you really want to get rid of them, as the noble Lord obviously does—it will remain a mystery to all your Lordships whether I do or not, because I have not disclosed it. All I am saying is that if the noble Lord wishes to get rid of the rabbits he must get rid of the lot; it is no good going half way. These methods are wrong, and therefore I still wish to press my Amendment.

LORD MILNER OF LEEDS

My Lords, are we not going to hear the Government's view on this matter? I am not particularly interested in the Bill, but I am sure noble Lords will wish to hear the Government's view on it. Apparently they have drafted the Bill, and the noble Lord is entitled to an answer to the case he has put forward.

THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY of AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD (EARL ST. ALDWYN)

My Lords, this is a Private Member's Bill and my feeling was that the noble Lord, Lord Merthyr, had dealt more than adequately with all the points brought up. As I am on my feet there is one point I should like to make, and that is that, while I do not pretend to be an authority on the Standing Orders in this House, it seems to me extraordinary that we should have a long discussion on a clause in the Bill to which there is no Amendment on the Paper at all. I do not think I should add anything to what the noble Lord, Lord Merthyr, said about the Amendments on the Paper, and I entirely support what he has said.

On Question, Amendment negatived.