§ Mr. W. THORNEasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture (1) whether he can state the number of persons employed by the various fox hunts in this country of military age who have been exempted from military service on account of the alleged national value of their occupation; whether he can further state the number of persons employed by these hunts for regular wages, both over and under military age; whether any statistics exist as to the number of persons employed as grooms, stablemen, second horsemen, etc., by the members and subscribers to these various hunts; and whether, in view of the dearth of agricultural labour, steps will be taken to make use of this available labour; and (2) whether, in view of the demand for economy, he has considered the advisability of suppressing for the period of the war fox-hunting; whether he is aware that there are something like 250 of these 891W hunts in existence; that, despite war reductions, an average of 40 or 50 persons are associated with each of these hunts, maintaining valuable animals for this purpose alone, and that, as these animals must at least cost 25s. a week to keep, not less than £20,000 a week is expended in hay, oats, straw, etc., thereby rendering much dearer the cost to those who have to keep horses for purposes of trade industry; whether he is aware that each of these hunts on the average spends £200 in compensation for poultry killed by foxes, which for the 250 hunts represents a destruction of £50,000 worth of food annually; and, seeing that, in addition, these hunts maintain packs of dogs or hounds, which are often fed on butchers' meat, whether steps will be taken to shoot or trap the bulk of the foxes now to be found in this country?
§ Mr. ACLANDI will answer these questions together. I cannot give the figures asked for in the first question or verify those given in the second, though -some of them seem to be overestimates. I have never heard of butchers' meat being given to hounds—it is generally old horses and donkeys. The question of the necessity of maintaining hunts in war-time is rather for the War Office than the Board of Agriculture, and their view of its importance in connection with light-horse breeding was explained in an answer given on the 6th of January last. Hunt servants are, of course, in no sense in a reserved occupation, and I hope that very few would now be found who are of military age and not many who would be of any considerable use in agricultural work. Foxes undoubtedly do a very great deal of harm to the poultry industry, but such evidence as I have is to the effect that hunts generally have succeeded in reducing their numbers very considerably, and this has been and can be done in other ways also.