I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

May I take it that it would be convenient to the House, and that it has your approval, Mr. Speaker, for us to discuss at the same time new Clause 7—Application of section 1—and the following amendments:

No. 1, in Clause 1, page 1, line 5, at beginning insert—

'Subject to the provisions of section (Application of section 1) of this Act'.

No. 11, in Clause 2, page 1, line 14, leave out from 'on' to end of line 15 and insert:

'such day, not being earlier than six months from the date of the passing of this Act, as the Secretary of State may by order appoint, and different days may be appointed under this section for the coming into force of this Act in different areas.

(4) The power of the Secretary of State to make orders under this section shall be exercisable by statutory instrument and any statutory instrument containing such an order shall be subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament'.

No. 12, in page 1, line 14, leave out 'one month' and insert 'twelve months'.

The three amendments stand together.

Yes.

I am much obliged, Mr. Speaker.

The effect of new Clause 3 is plain from its terms. I should explain that new Clause 3, new Clause 7 and the three amendments are all based upon the assumption, whether a valid one or not, that the Bill will one day receive the Royal Assent. Of course, whether it does so depends upon economic and political circumstances which it would be out of order for me to invite the House to discuss. At any rate, for the purposes of these new clauses and amendments, that is the position.

The effect of new Clause 3 would be to give the Act a clear run for five hare coursing seasons. Then, all that would be needed for it to continue in force indefinitely, if the House and another place considered that it should be continued indefinitely, would be the passing of an Affirmative Resolution in both Houses. I shall have more to say about new Clause 3 later.

The effect of new Clause 7 would be to allow local option to operate on a district basis in much the same way as there is local option in Wales for the Sunday opening of pubs. It is not dissimilar from the way in which for many years we have had local option concerning Sunday cinemas.

I find the suggestion of local option most attractive. I hope that the supporters and opponents of the Bill will also find it so, because it involves the exercise of local democracy, community politics and public participation which is just what we want. Let the people decide for themselves in this controversial matter which is said to be socially divisive, not as between the upper and lower strata of society, but socially divisive in a vertical manner. Therefore, I believe that there is a great deal to commend new Clause 7. I shall say no more about the matter, but I understand that some of my hon. Friends will deploy the case for it more fully.

I turn to the effects of Amendments Nos. 1, 11 and 12 which, as I have said, stand together. The first amendment is merely a paving one. These three amendments would postpone the coming into force of the Bill until six months after Royal Assent and then would enable the Home Secretary to appoint different days for the Bill to come into force in different areas. That introduces a measure of flexibility which I hope will commend itself to the House. However, again I shall leave my hon. Friends to deploy the case for that.

I should like to revert to new Clause 3. In my view the supporters of the Bill are on the horns of a dilemma which I shall describe. Therefore, I hope that they will welcome the new clause. The dilemma seems to have been created for them by the introduction of the Bill against all really knowledgeable advice.

On the one hand, the Bill is very controversial, unwanted by many thousands of country people of all classes, and makes into a crime a traditional sport which has been enjoyed since the advent of history. On the other hand, the Bill will not achieve its purpose of preventing cruelty, or alleged cruelty, and it will fail in its purpose, not because it will be unenforceable against small-scale coursing but because many hares which might have had a quick and certain death by being coursed will have a slow and lingering death in snares or after getting away from being shot at and wounded.

That is the dilemma, and we want to lift the supporters of the Bill off the horns of it. New Clause 3 would do just that. Surely it would be wise to give this controversial Bill a trial run of five seasons to see whether the experiment of banning coursing and turning it into a crime was in every way justified and acceptable to the people. If it were justified and were found to be fully and reasonably enforceable, it could be extended indefinitely merely by a resolution of both Houses, introduced perhaps by the Government. It might not be the same Government as we have today, and it would not be right for me to start speculating about that matter, but this is a fair approach. Five seasons is not a short time for a controversial experiment such as this.

If the Bill were found to be justified and if it were wanted, all that would be needed would be an Affirmative Resolution of both Houses. However, if public opinion, especially among country people, were that no good had come of the Bill, or if the police found that enforceability presented problems, the legislation could simply be allowed to become a sleeping dog—if that it not an inappropriate expression. If it became a sleeping dog, one would hope that it would be a permanently sleeping dog.

Death has been described as

"a dreamless sleep without an end."

From it there is no awakening, and that is perhaps the best thing that could happen to the Bill.

Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman saying that if the Government were to accept his proposal for a trial period of five years those who oppose the Bill would give it a Third Reading and we could all go home?

It is not for me, a mere back bencher, to start making bargains of that sort with the Government. I am speaking for myself. I cannot speak for members of the Opposition Front Bench. I cannot speak for all my hon. Friends, although I know that many of them agree with me and, I hope, will vote with me on this proposal. It would be presumptuous, I think unseemly, for me to start entering into bargains with the Government.

Unreasonable.

Yes, unreasonable. I therefore hope that the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, Central (Mr. McNamara) will not tempt me further along that course.

I am not a coursing man, as I have previously told the House, but I have witnessed coursing events to see what coursing was like.

Before the right hon. and learned Gentleman leaves the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, Central (Mr. McNamara), may I remind him that he has claimed to be speaking on behalf of many thousands of country people who are in favour of a form of hare coursing? I assure him that there are many thousands of country people who take the opposite view and are altogether against cruelty to animals.

We should be grateful to the hon. Gentleman for trying to enable me, and I am sure other hon. Members, to see this controversy in its proper perspective. This is a matter of our own evidence and experience. All that I can say is that in my constituency, where, I suppose, there is as much coursing as there is anywhere else in England, the vast majority of country people seem to want me to oppose the Bill. I am opposing it partly for that reason and partly because I do not consider that it is necessary or right to have a self-defeating Bill which turns a traditional sport into a crime.

The hon. Member for St. Helens (Mr. Spriggs) has suggested that I claim to be representing thousands of country people. I claim to represent only what I believe to be the feelings of most of my country-living constituents and, for what they are worth, my own views. I did not say, and I have not claimed, that I represent thousands of country people in other constituencies who are opposed to the Bill, indifferent towards it or in favour of it.

The intervention of the hon. Member for St. Helens (Mr. Spriggs) sought to show that many country people were against cruelty. Nobody here is in favour of cruelty, but is it not part of the case against the Bill that its passing would increase cruelty?

Yes. My hon. Friend's intervention brings me back to what I was about to say. I do not doubt the sincerity of hon. Members who wish to turn coursing into a crime, although some of them have never seen it. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) has made a close study of it and has seen a number of courses, perhaps even more than I have. I have seen coursing only three times, but I have seen rabbits and hares which have been snared. I have found them in snares, in which they have been suffering for many hours, perhaps days, and have despatched them. I have seen hares shot and I have hunted with harriers, and I must confess that coursing provides a quicker and more certain death or, as an alternative, a free escape.

Therefore, in this vale of tears in which we and all our fellow creatures live, I do not believe that from the point of view of cruelty the case for the Bill has been established. That is why I think that after a five-season trial of the experiment it would be right for Parliament to take stock of the situation if the Bill were to receive the Royal Assent. I trust that none of the supporters of the Bill will be totally self-confident that they are right about this matter, but the vote on the new clause will give them a chance to prove their modesty and to prove that there is room for two honest views about this matter, however mistaken either of them may be. In a matter so uncertain and controversial as this, it would be much better for Parliament to take stock of the matter after five years, as was done with the Capital Punishment Act 1967. A five-year look was taken at it and then there was an Affirmative Resolution of both Houses.

The case is perfectly plain and there is no need for me to elaborate upon it further.

I have not intervened in debates on the subject of hare coursing hitherto. It is not a matter that I know much about and I have only once witnessed a coursing meeting. I was moved to postpone other engagements for today—indeed, also for tonight and tomorrow—because I was concerned that we should find ourselves dealing with this subject at this particular time, when there are so many more important things to deal with.

Does the hon. Member consider this Bill to be as important as, for example, the Community Land Bill? If so, would that be the reason for his presence here today and the fact that he was not present for the discussion we had the other night on the Community Land Bill?

I was here during the discussion on the Community Land Bill, and I think the hon. Gentleman will find that I registered votes throughout that day, based upon a firm conviction that that was also a waste of time of the House. The Bills which we should be discussing are not being discussed, and the actions which should be taken are not being taken by the Government. That is what is so frustrating for people such as myself who are deeply worried by the economic crisis and find ourselves day after day presented with irrelevancies. Today is no exception.

There comes to mind the miraculous escape yesterday of my right hon. Friend the Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. Fraser). That was a matter in which cruelty was involved. It is to me obnoxious that we should be discussing hare coursing when there are really serious crimes being perpetrated against human beings around the world.

One of the worst vices of the British character is that the British are much more concerned about animals than about people. This is the only country which has an RSPCA, and probably does not need one, whereas the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children does not bear the affix Royal. It would seem that we get our priorities wrong, and this day is no exception.

I do not think that hare coursing is more cruel than some other things, or cruel at all. It is not in any degree different from many other ways in which animals are killed, both by men and by other animals. What I dislike is the singling out of this particular prejudice in the minds of the supporters of the Bill, and their attempt to impose their will on the rest of the citizenry. This is why I am attracted to new Clause 7, which at least seeks to allow local option.

One of the blind spots of the Labour Party is that it is so convinced in its prejudices that it believes it to be right to impose them upon others without consulting them or asking them. The whole history of this Government has been to single out something which in their opinion is wrong and to force their opinion, or ram it, down the throats of the rest of us.

I recognise that there are strong opinions both ways on this matter of hare coursing. I agree with the country view that the traditional sports are sports which are no business of those who do not engage in them, and are sports which should be allowed to continue. I cannot believe that the country people would be right if they were to impose on people who live in towns some sort of control over pets and the keeping of pets. There is very much cruelty involved in keeping pets. In 99 per cent. of cases they are properly kept but there are those who do not feed or look after pets properly. There are those who put birds in cages which are too small. There are many ways in which cats, dogs, birds, mice, tortoises, horses, and other animals can be treated cruelly. It would be possible to draw up regulations and legislation making it wrong to do so. I am not in favour of so doing.

My prejudices in this matter may not be shared widely, and what I think is cruel may not be thought to be cruel by other people. It is this lack of humility in imposing one's own selective judgment on others that is offensive in this Bill.

If I gather correctly what the hon. Gentleman is saying, it is that those who are particularly interested in something should have the right to decide about it. Would he be in favour of bringing back bear baiting, bareknuckle fighting, cock fighting, and so on? These seem to me to be similar, and that is the direction in which his argument appears to be going? Would he clear up this point?

The hon. Member has given me my point, when he says that "these seem to me" things which should be stopped.

Throughout the whole of South America cock fighting is still practised, and people there do not think that it is cruel. I have no doubt that there are countries in which bear baiting is still practised. There are countries in which all sorts of things are still done. I am not an expert. It is not right to assume that this particular prejudice is shared by the whole House.

It seems to me that the hon. Gentleman quite honestly and sincerely believes that there is no cruelty whatever in hare coursing and that it is the best way of bringing a hare's life to an end. Would he try to appreciate the suffering of an animal whose one important indication of pain and cruelty is its screaming when one, two or more dogs grab it and start to tear it to pieces while it is alive? Is not that a sign of pain and suffering?

I do not think the hon. Gentleman can be a very great naturalist. I remember as a young boy wandering about in the countryside and once witnessing a rabbit being attacked by a stoat. The stoat ran round the rabbit several times and the rabbit was petrified and paralysed. It sat shivering with fear. After a while it started to scream. The stoat continued to dance round it, delighting in the screams, until finally it delivered the mercy killing bite in the back of the rabbit's neck, putting the rabbit out of its pain. This is an example of one animal being cruel to another.

It is nature's way that animals are cruel to each other. Every animal lives on another animal, except for those which are vegetarians. All animals which are insectivores or carnivorous are involved in some degree of cruelty to other animals. It is no exception when dogs are chasing hares. It is the natural function of the dog to chase the hare. Who am I to intervene in what nature has provided in this matter?

In my opinion, hare coursing is less cruel—if cruel it is—than many other sports, because man himself is not involved. It is animal being cruel to animal. It is not possible, in my view, to weigh up whether it is more cruel to shoot a hare or to snare or course it or just to let a fox take a hare in the wild. It is impossible, in my opinion, to make any value judgment about it at all. If I were forced to make a value judgment it would be that where man is involved in doing a cruel act it is more likely that man himself will discipline himself than where it is one animal being cruel to another.

I apologise for intervening but I can assure the hon. Gentleman that this is the only point that I shall be making today because hon. Members opposite will be doing enough speaking anyway. The difference between the stoat taking and killing a rabbit or a dog chasing and killing a hare or fox in the normal way and hare coursing is that in the latter human beings intervene and it is done for their enjoyment. There is a moral point here which I see the hon. Member does not understand. It is precisely on that point that there is a difference between hare coursing and the normal course of events of animal against animal.

What about fishing?

The hon. Member's intervention illustrates the difficulty that we now have with this new suggestion prefixed by the word "moral", which I always treat with the greatest respect. The moment that someone accuses another of morality or immorality I suspect that we are getting near a piece of shaky ground, and this is no exception. If it is immoral for man to get pleasure from something involving the death and suffering of animals, one has to start along the whole road of fishing and shooting and all the other activities in which man husbands-animals with a view to sport, pleasure or even food.

Let me rehearse with the hon. Member, whose researches into this subject I am sure are very great, what happens on our farms and in our slaughterhouses. There, in order that the hon. Member may have his steak, there are the unpleasant processes of castration of young animals when they are born and the disgusting sights which take place in slaughterhouses. All of these are for the enjoyment of the hon. Member when he eats his roast beef. As he sticks his fork into his roast beef and licks his chops as he sets about the Yorkshire pudding, is he taking enjoyment in the cruel and unpleasant processes which have gone into producing that roast beef? Where are his morals? If he accuses the coursers of immorality, he should quickly turn vegetarian, because the chain is there throughout nature, that one animal eats another.

The hon. Member is no exception in this unless he is a vegetarian. I remember that he once missed a vital debate on Report stage and came in just as the winding up speeches were concluding because, he said, he had had to have his supper. He was sorry that he had not been here. The debate—it will come to me in a moment—was on worker participation.

indicated dissent.

My hon. Friends had to carry the day on that occasion in explaining the rights and wrongs—

Order. Would the hon. Member come back to the new clause?

Of course, Mr. Speaker. I merely say that the hon. Member may not be so moral if he remains a carnivore.

I will get back to the new clause, particularly new Clause 7. We do not have the right to impose our own fine judgment as to which way of killing hares or other animals is right and which is wrong. The least that we can do, seeing that we are now on Report and not on Second Reading, is give people the option in this matter on a local basis. I have no doubt that the country districts would vote, if given the opportunity, to continue this traditional sport. I am certain that the two district councils which I have the honour to represent, if a proper balance were arranged, would both produce a positive vote to continue coursing.

I cannot see why those who live in London or Liverpool or the other big cities should be allowed to impose on my constituents the decision whether they may continue with what they think to be right.

To avoid misunderstanding, it would help if my hon. Friend could make it plain that it is the local government electors for the area and not the councillors themselves who would exercise this local option.

That is very helpful. I should not be quite so certain if it were the councillors. But if it were the electors themselves, we could with confidence predict that the country districts would wish to retain coursing. That seems at the heart of this debate. Is it right that those who may not have full knowledge of these sports, those who do not have to live in country districts with the problems perhaps of too many hares—I know that the constituency of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) is over-run with hares, which can do great damage—should deprive country people of the right to decide this matter for themselves?

To put the case the other way, suppose that this were predominantly a rural country with a 75–25 per cent. rural industrial split, as many countries are, would it be right for the country people to decide to ban football because of the damage to trains and stadiums and the chaos which is caused in big cities by riots at football matches? No, emphatically no. I would advise the country people not to ban football because it is none of their business. So it would be wrong for those who live in towns to seek to impose their will on those who live in the countryside.

I therefore commend to the House the new clause which gives the local people the right to decide. As my right hon. and learned Friend said, if we want to consult people more, to allow them to shape their own pleasures and pastimes rather than having them imposed from the centre, if we are to avoid value judgments which may seem right to hon. Members whose prejudices may be offended by such things as hare coursing, surely we must give them the right to decide.

I should prefer the Bill to be withdrawn, but if the Government are not prepared to withdraw it, my hon. Friends should continue to urge strongly the case for local elections in this matter.

I mean no discourtesy to my right hon. and learned Friend when I say that I prefer new Clause 7 to new Clause 3. The latter is one that I would certainly support but I would like it better if, during the five-year period, coursing could continue and we then decided whether to stop it. I think he has the onus the wrong way around. But if he would let me place the weight of my argument on the local option clause, I would be satisfied.

I will speak for only a few minutes and only because I was enraged by the speech to which we have just listened. I have always regarded the hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) as a mild-mannered man, but at the end he revealed the real reason for his speech when he said that he would prefer the Bill to be withdrawn. I think that he has been trying to defeat the Bill by means of two new clauses and has tried, rather inadequately in my opinion, to justify them.

For example, he told us at some length that it is wrong to impose our will on people who do not agree with the Bill. But every Bill that we consider imposes something against the will of some section of the community, as any MP must realise from his mail. I suppose that a large number of burglars, for example, object to our passing laws to make burglary an offence. But we do not hesitate on that account to pass them, because we believe that what we are doing—and what we owe the electorate is our judgment—is for the benefit of the community as a whole. That is why I support the Bill.

To give a catalogue of other sports which the hon. Gentleman imagines are even more-cruel is no reason for withdrawing the Bill or modifying it. If there are other sports which the hon. Gentle man regards as cruel, he ought to do something about them and not come here and attack those who have had the good sense to tackle the problem which they see as a first priority. If the hon. Gentleman has other priorities, let him do something about it. If he can demonstrate to me that those other sports are as cruel as or more-cruel than hare coursing, he will have my full support for his Bill.

As for the suggestion that there should be a five-year period during which this matter should be tested, this again is a strategy by which the Opposition hope that the Bill will be defeated in the end, because they know that if there is no record for five years of cruelty in this sport they are likely to get support if they pursue the argument that the sport should be permitted again.

Those who object to the Bill should vote against it and demonstrate to those who have made representations that they wholeheartedly support the petitions and letters that have been sent in. There is nothing to be ashamed of in doing that. There is no need to try to conceal things by means of specious amendments and new clauses. Let hon. Members make quite plain where they stand on the Bill. They should do that so that they reflect the feelings of all those who, they claim, have written to them. I shall vote in the way which I think is best and which I am confident will reflect the feelings of many people in my constituency.

I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Oldham, East (Mr. Lamond). I think he said he was satisfied that the Bill was in the interests of the community. If that is his conviction, I cannot see why he should oppose new Clause 7, which would give people in all districts affected—indeed, throughout the country—an opportunity to express their view. If that is the interest that he is putting forward, his place today is with us in the Lobby should we divided on the new clause.

There are many other aspects to this complicated matter. We who had the good fortune to serve on the Standing Committee are aware of them but they have not been aired all that widely in the debate today. It is not solely the welfare of the community as a whole or the benefit of the community as a whole with which we are concerned. We are also concerned with the benefit of the hare population.

That brings me to the main purpose, as I conceive it, behind the amendments and new clauses refered to so eloquently by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton). They all have one aspect in common, although they ask for slightly different things, and that is delay of some kind. As my right hon. and learned Friend put it, the Bill should be stopped and should go to sleep after five years. The purport of the amendments is to have the delay first so that a further inquiry can be carried out.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley). I prefer the latter rather than the former approach to this problem—that is to say, we have manifestly not had the time to conduct anything like as deep an inquiry as we should into the welfare of this species, into its way of life and into the possible effects of this legislation. Therefore, by some method or another—and I am not particularly choosey as to how it should be done—delay should be imposed, whatever the merits of the Bill in the long run, so that a further inquiry can be undertaken.

11.45 a.m.

During the last century we had a most unfortunate experience of legislation over ground game—that is to say, hares and rabbits. The effect of that legislation turned out to be near disastrous. That Act was the result of the disastrous harvest of 1879, as any student of these matters will know, when the farmers, who were in an appalling condition, protested that amongst the causes for that disaster were the activities of rabbits and hares. That Act, which was known also as the rabbits and hares Act, was brought in with catastrophic results for the hare population in a short time.

To emphasise what happened, I do not think I can do better than quote from the able and deep study of aspects of this matter by Stable and Stuttard, although they admit that not enough is known about the hare population. I quote from their quotation of what the Rev. H. A. Macpherson said shortly after that Act came into force:

"A great change has taken place in the number of hares that are annually bred in England. Go where you may, one meets almost universally with the same lament, that where you would formerly have seen 20 or 30 hares feeding in the fields on a summer evening you will now hardly see a single animal."

As his colleague Richardson said at the same time,

"In the South of England big and important coursing meetings have ceased to exist, except at Newmarket in Essex. All those magnificent downlands in Berkshire, Wiltshire and Dorsetshire furnish possibly one course for every score that used to be run less than a quarter of a century ago. At Ashdown, Amesbury and a few other places in the same district"—

I hope that hon. Members who represent these places have the good fortune to be with us this morning—

"where the conditions were one simply perfect, occasional small and unimportant meetings are held; but the fact is that the disappearance of the hares has caused the greyhounds to disappear in like manner, and in disgust."

There is no need to emphasise it any further. That was the result of legislating for hares without sufficient knowledge of the hare's life, the dangers that it faces or the likely results of what was being done, and we are engaged in doing much the same thing now.

An inquiry is necessary, and I should like to suggest the form that the inquiry should take. We had inadequate time to deal with this in Committee. We did our best but there were a limited number of sittings and we never got round in a serious way to the matter of conservation. We are discussing the welfare of animals, yet nobody has bothered to look in any depth into conservation of the hare. What dangers does it face? It faces many threats as it is. Very little work has been done into diseases affecting hares. A lot more is known about this in France and the Scandinavian countries, but we were not able to go there to find out more about it.

My hon. Friend has talked about diseases affecting hares. Does he agree that far more cruelty was perpetrated by the introduction of myxomatosis than will ever be perpetrated by hare coursing?

My hon. Friend has taken the words out of my mouth. I was coming to deal with myxomatosis, but there are other and important diseases affecting the hare. In particular, there is one that has been identified as a form of tuberculosis which is contracted from the parasite known as strongylus commutatus which attacks both forms of hare in this country, both lepidus timidus and the common brown hare. Once myxomatosis was let loose in this country we would have expected the hare populalation to increase rapidly because the competition of the rabbit would have been removed. For a short time in certain areas that was the case.

This points indisputably to the fact that this creature faces a great many other threats about which we are relatively ignorant, one of which is crop spraying. The weedkiller Paraquat, which is manufactured by ICI, is used fairly widely in down land districts. I do not know what it contains. It has been established and admitted by the manufactureres that hares have been found dead, sometimes in large numbers, as a result of its use. I understand that ICI is conducting an analysis or inquiry to determine the extent of the danger. It is a pity that it did not do so earlier.

Anyone who is familiar with the countryside in East Anglia will know of the enormous increase in traffic to the East Coast. If one drives in that direction, at any time of the year one will find the road literally littered with dead hares and leverets. This trend must be on the increase.

However, without doubt the greatest danger is that of shooting. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury pointed out, in many respects the hare is a menace to farming. That cannot be denied. Not every farmer is guilty of shooting, because many farmers prefer to see hares in the wild as well as having economic efficiency on the farm. However, there are those who do not view the matter that way, who have no use for animals and who regard them with suspicion even if their detrimental activities cannot be proved. Shooting takes place on a large scale and has recently increased. It will continue to do so whenever there is no counter force at work. This is an old story.

In no sense am I exaggerating. I commend to the House "The Leaping Hare" by George Ewart Evans and David Thomson. It says:

"A Norfolk farmer of the old school estimated that"

—this is as recent as the 1950s—

"in the farming year one hare would cost him two sacks of corn. Consequently, if there were forty hares on the farm his yield would suffer by eighty combs—a loss that no farmer could afford to stand. He said that hares work during the day; and they eat the 'knots' out of the wheat-stems thus preventing the plants coming to maturity. Moreover, they work out in the middle of the field, unlike the rabbits which keep to the edge where damage is immediately visible. But as the hare likes to live in the open where it can use its speed to best advantage, the farmer will suddenly come across huge, ruined patches in the centre of his corn, perhaps the first indication he has that hares have been at work."

The book continues:

"In recent years, too, hares in East Anglia have done extensive damage to sugar-beet crops. This happened particularly in the 1954 season when hares were unusually plentiful. At that time West Suffolk farmers estimated that in some areas hares had reduced the crop of sugar-beet by as much as two tons an acre."

As long as that continues, the shooting of hares will continue to increase and the species will be in danger and will continue to be in danger.

The evidence taken by Stable and Stuttard shows that five years ago in some places in Lincolnshire 150 to 200 hares were shot in an afternoon, but now only 20 to 30 are shot. It is indisputable that if co-operation exists between coursing clubs and farmers, the hare population keeps steady. Hare coursing conserves. The evidence adduced by Stable and Stuttard and by other studies in this matter proves it. The species may have to face dangers in other respects, but there is no doubt whatever that, regardless of its other merits or demerits, hare coursing tends to conserve.

The cases I have adduced so far have been confined to the brown hare. I would admit, if I were to give a complete picture of the state of affairs, that the blue hare, the mountain hare or Arctic hare—lepidus timidus—is in a different category because it does not compete with man in the food which it pursues and eats—lichen, cotton grass and coarse grasses on the mountain. The numbers of these hares are very large and they do not live below about 1,000 ft. It could not be said that the menaces that the Arctic hare faces are the same as those which the brown hare faces, except that more predators menace it on the mountain than at sea level. For instance, among the predators there are the eagle, the buzzard and the hen harrier, which take a large number of hares.

If we conducted a full and deep inquiry of the kind I have in mind, a case could be made for coursing the lepidus timidus instead of the brown hare, which those who have been to coursing meetings know is the normal quarry. I hope we shall be told today whether that is a feasible proposition. Deer hounds have been used, but I do not want to go too deeply into that matter in the context of these amendments. Perhaps later during the debate there may be a chance to do so.

Threats to this species are different for the mountain hare than for the brown hare. Without question, shooting not only by farmers but by syndicates will continue and is the biggest menace. Hon. Members who have experience of these matters—I am glad to see my hon. Friend the Member for Holland with Boston (Mr. Body) agreeing—will know that there is a vast difference between syndicates and syndicates. There are those which for the best reasons enjoy sport in the open air but which, perhaps because they are town bred and have an urban background, do not have sufficient knowledge of the balance of life in game in the countryside always to judge effectively whether they are overshooting. This is an additional reason for shooting probably being the greatest menace.

There is no doubt that the hare population is menaced. Equally there is no doubt that we do not know by what or how. When coursing takes place regularly and is properly regulated there is no doubt that it tends to conserve, as do all field sports. We would need a separate inquiry from the one I have in mind to settle this matter once and for all and to demonstrate to those who, for their misfortunes, have always lived in towns or in an urban atmosphere that field sports conserve and that in the long run the disappearance of such sports would mean the end of all the game involved.

And foxes too.

And foxes too, as has happened elsewhere. I have been to France and seen what has happened there.

However, be that as it may, all that we can ask for in this context is a full inquiry into the hare species itself. Coursing tends to conserve. Its abolition will add to the threat to the hare population, not reduce it. Thus, anyone who supports the Bill as it stands and is not prepared to accept these amendments must face that inevitable consequence of his action, if it should succeed.

Since the effect of the Bill, therefore, is adverse to hares in the various ways I have described, some moratorium or delay should be imposed. The proposals now before us give the answer, and I earnestly hope that the House will support them.

The hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Hastings) has just asserted that hare coursing tends to conserve. I have never in my life heard such an extraordinary interpretation put on the term "conservation". The hon. Gentleman tells us that his object is to conserve, and I gather that his reason for supporting hare coursing is that the hare is responsible for taking many tons of farmers' produce every year. Thus, in supporting his idea of conservation, the hon. Member supports the loss of food which the farmers produce. That must follow from the meaning which he applies to conservation when he speaks of conserving the life of the hare.

The most important matter before us, in my view, is new Clause 7. We ought strongly to oppose any effort to take from Parliament the responsibility of enacting measures on behalf of animals which cannot speak for themselves. We can only take evidence from what we see and hear at hare coursing. I have myself witnessed hare coursing, and I am arguing the case today only after having gathered firsthand evidence for myself.

It is not possible to deal with this matter on a national basis, applying to it the strength of law, without putting a Bill on the statute book to protect hares—the same applies to other animals—against cruelty. We cannot leave it to certain local authorities which, as we well know from what has been said this morning, would favour the retention of hare coursing.

Will the hon. Gentleman allow me to draw his attention to the fact that new Clause 7 places power not in the hands of local authorities but in the hands of the local government electors?

Yes, it would be the responsibility of local authorities to hold a local poll. I acknowledge what the right hon. and learned Gentleman has drawn to my attention, and I correct what I said. The electors in a local poll would decide. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why not?"] That interpretation is quite correct, but the point here is that we must deal with this matter on a national, not a local, basis.

The hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) described the antics of the stoat when seeking its natural food, when encircling the rabbit or hare, after which the creature becomes virtually paralysed and is an easy victim to the stoat. We can all understand that story. It is a story of natural life in the countryside. But that is entirely different from the hare coursing with which we are here dealing, in which man makes a special job of training dogs to chase and catch hares. I remind the House that it is when the hare has been caught by the dogs that we see and hear some of the most-cruel aspects of hare coursing.

I wish that those who have had nothing to do with hare coursing, the general public who have not seen it for themselves, would take the opportunity to do so. Invitations are openly sent out by those responsible for organising hare coursing, and it has been and remains for the moment quite possible for people to go and see for themselves what happens.

The hon. Gentleman is making an impassioned speech against hare coursing. With great respect, I must remind him that the Bill is directed to hare coursing matches. He will not abolish hare coursing under the Bill as it stands.

I understand the intention of the Bill. If it is enacted, it will on a national legal basis remove hare coursing matches. It will remove organised hare coursing. Most of us realise that there is hardly a law in this country which is not broken at some time by someone. I do not imagine that the Minister or his Department believes that it will be possible to eradicate hare coursing completely, even on an organised basis. We know the history of cock fighting. In some parts of the world cock fighting still goes on, though outside the law, because there are small groups of people who are still prepared to organise it illegally. I could discuss other forms of law breaking too, but I know that the Chair would not allow me to stray from the Hare Coursing Bill.

Will the hon. Gentleman go back to what he said a minute ago, with which I very much agreed? He wishes that the vast majority of people who know nothing about hare coursing would take the opportunity to go and see it for themselves. If the hon. Gentleman will support the amendments now before us, people will be able to do just that, because an opportunity for delay and for consideration will be imposed.

What the hon. Gentleman calls for has been possible already for a long time. It has been possible for people to look into the matter for themselves, and these clauses and amendments are not necessary for that purpose. For 10 or 20 years this matter has been brought to public notice, publicity has been given to it by the media at various times and most of those interested to do so have been able to witness hare coursing at first hand.

I ask the House carefully to consider the difference between what the hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury told us about the natural habit of the stoat and the true character of this man-controlled so-called sport. Hare coursing on an organised basis is done for the entertainment of a comparatively small minority, and I deeply regret that there are still those who enjoy watching dogs chase a hare until it is caught and who stand watching with relish the tearing to pieces of a living animal.

What justification does the hon. Member have for saying that people watch hare coursing with relish? The relish for a fisherman lies not in knocking a fish on the head with a priest, but in pitching a fly one foot in front of its nose. It is not the kill but the art which is interesting.

We find the same group of people attending and supporting organised hare coursing meets. It is obvious that they have enjoyed watching previous matches. That is why I appeal with all my passion and moral feeling for the House to reject the new clauses and amendments.

Before winding up on this group of amendments, I must say that we deplore the absence of the Home Secretary today. If the Government believe this is an important enough Bill to announce in advance that the rule will be suspended at four o'clock, the Home Secretary should be here, at least for the start of our proceedings. If he and the Home Office are right behind the Bill, he ought to be here.

Does not my hon. Friend also find it rather surprising that there is only one person on the Treasury Bench—the Under-Secretary, who has always been diligent in her attendance—and only three hon. Members of the Government back benches for what has been presented as a necessary Government Bill?

I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend. He is absolutely right. The House has been put to considerable inconvenience over this Bill. A lot of time and effort have been spent on it at a time when the House had better things to consider than a Bill of this nature.

The hon. Member should realise that there are many meetings taking place this morning. In particular, there is one to which the Home Secretary is having to give special attention. It is wrong for any back bencher to criticise the Home Secretary when he has such important matters to deal with.

The hon. Member might be more specific about those meetings. He seems to speak with some authority. It is certainly the right and privilege of any Privy Councillor on the Opposition benches to criticise the Home Secretary.

This is perhaps the most important group of clauses and amendments that we shall be discussing today. We have put them down because we believe that this is bad legislation founded on misconceptions. My hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) was right when he said that the prejudice involved in the Bill could be boiled down to the fact that those who wished to ram this process down the throats of other people are showing a lack of humility. This is bad because the Home Office is repudiating its own inquiry set up several years ago and it is bad from the point of view of democracy because it victimises a tiny minority.

12.15 p.m.

The object of the new clauses and amendments is to give time for second thoughts. If the Government are determined to get this Bill, despite our efforts to bring wiser counsel to prevail, it is our job to see that the legislation is soundly based. There have been too many examples of poor legislation passed in a great hurry and repented at leisure. We have only to look at the abortion law to see an example of that. There have been numerous Private Members' Bills trying to change it and Select Committees have been set up and have absorbed and wasted the time of the House. The onus is very much on the Opposition to see that legislation is soundly based.

I freely admit that this is a subject which stirs up emotions, and we have already heard several emotional speeches. But emotion is not a good parliamentary draftsman, and legislation must be based not on emotion but on common sense. The purpose of the new clauses and amendments is not simply to delay, though that may appear to be so at a casual reading. Each has an element of delay in it, but we want to allow time for the Government to set up an inquiry Amendment No. 11, which provides for the Bill to come into operation at different times in different areas, has precedents in legislation, the main one being the 1968 Town and Country Planning Act. A similar provision has also been allowed for in the Community Land Bill.

Under Amendment No. 11 the Home Secretary could draw up a code of rules and send his inspectors to each coursing area where meetings were held. If the coursing club did not abide by the strict and stringent code, which could improve provision for muzzling, the Home Secretary could bring the Act into operation by order. Amendment No. 11 is really consequential on new Clause 7, which would allow for polls to take place in each local government district. My hon. Friends have already explained very well the merits of this proposal, which would be good for local democracy.

We hear a lot about local democracy these days. The place in which this arrangement is allowed from time to time is in Wales in connection with licensing. I have a recent Press cutting about a referendum which we all forget. It states:

"The Welsh seven-year itch is upon us again. How many dry areas will vote for Sunday drinking? How many wet areas will go dry? How many people care?"

People care about these local government polls. This particular poll causes great excitement in Wales. That is local democracy. I therefore advise the Under-Secretary to look with some care and interest at the amendment.

Will my hon. Friend make it clear to the House that, from a coursing point of view anyhow, we should prefer new Clause 7 with its safeguards to the new clause moved by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton)?

I tend to agree with my hon. Friend that new Clause 7 is a more satisfactory method and should be regarded as the main clause of the group.

Apart from local government polls, there are other examples. There was the Northern Ireland border poll which dealt with a somewhat different situation, but it was nevertheless an adventure into local democracy. It set a precedent. Although there were those of us who argued that it was not good for Parliament and parliamentary democracy to have such polls, I willingly concede that the Conservative Government created the border poll in Northern Ireland. Although I believe that the EEC referendum should not have taken place and that Parliament should have decided, it nevertheless set another precedent.

I understand from the advice of the learned Clerks that if we had put down our amendments and new clauses before the EEC referendum became law they would automatically have been ruled out of order, but the referendum breached the old principle and, therefore, we may discuss them today.

We have to consider whether polls have come to stay. Local polls would be very popular on other issues such as capital punishment, nationalisation and even fluoridation, on which people feel passionately.

Since my hon. Friend has raised the point, may I ask whether it would not be very much better if this House were today discussing capital punishment for terrorists rather than this Bill?

I had intended to touch on that aspect during Third Reading, because after what we have been through this week we should bear in mind why we are in this place. We have to decide which are the real issues of the day, whether they are terrorism, the economic crisis, unemployment or anything else. In a way it is somewhat embarrassing for us to have to be here on a Friday discussing matters of this sort when we should be discussing really important issues.

Although I do not favour the new clause moved by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire as strongly as the other proposals, it would, if accepted, nevertheless give time for an inquiry to be held. The origins of the Bill are to be found in the Stable Report and in the late Mr. Chuter Ede's statement. Page 101 of my reference book shows why the original proposal to bring in a hare coursing Bill was rejected by the Labour Government of the day. It was because

"(i) the Bill was based on the false premise that its provisions would lessen cruelty;

(ii) the suppression of hunting and coursing, without effective and efficient alternatives would lead to much less satisfactory activities."

It was as a result of that that the Government agreed to set up the inquiry by Mr. Scott Henderson.

In her Second Reading speech the Under-Secretary made great play about the Scott Henderson Report and its so-called obscurities and what she called its classical text. Of course, it is a classical text because it is the only authentic inquiry ever held on field sports and coursing. The most surprising comment on the report was the hon. Lady's remark that it was too neutral. I have never heard of a Government setting up a committee of inquiry and then complaining because it was too impartial or too neutral.

If I had time, I should like to go on to explain how unbiased that report is and how unbiased were its authors. It was published 24 years ago. I do not think that there has been an advance in the standards of morality, if this is a moral question, in those 24 years. In fact, several backward steps have been taken and, therefore, one cannot argue that-times, and certainly not moral attitudes, have changed. If the report is so obscure and worthless, why not bring it up to date and provide something on which to base sound legislation. That is part of the object of our amendments.

There was the Stable and Stuttard Report to which the Under-Secretary objects. If she objects to it, why not ensure that there is a soundly-based, up-to-date report to take its place? I guess that she does not want an objective report because it would not serve her purpose or the purpose of those who are behind the Bill. That is why we shall divide on this group of new clauses and amendments.

For the convenience of the House, I shall deal with each new clause and amendment in turn.

New Clause 3 would have the effect of restricting the prohibition of hare coursing to five years in the first instance, after which time it would become legal again unless Parliament decided otherwise. I listened to the brief explanation given by the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton), but it did not include an answer to the Government's objection to hare coursing: that it is a cruel sport. If it is cruel in 1975 it will be cruel in 1980, and the same argument will apply at any later date.

The hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Hastings) is passionately concerned to ensure conservation of the hare. He exhibits a very worthy motive. If it is so uppermost in his mind, I suggest that we find some other method of promoting its conservation and do not rely on a brutal and cowardly sport.

12.30 p.m.

The suggestion of an inquiry into the hare population sounds academically interesting. I am surprised that it has not been done before by those interested in the welfare of the hare. There is nothing to stop us from carrying out an inquiry into the hare population, but meanwhile we do not wish the sport of hare coursing to be continued.

I turn to new Clause 7 and Amendment No. 1, which seek to introduce a system of local options. Hare coursing would continue to be legal unless in any particular area not less than 500 electors requisitioned a poll on the question and the poll was decided in favour of banning hare coursing. The new clause, as I understand it, would also give the Secretary of State power to make regulations by statutory instrument for the purpose of arranging such a poll.

The hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) seemed to feel that the whole issue of hare coursing was a matter of town versus country, and that in some way London would vote against hare coursing and that some remote part of Britain where it was carried out would vote in favour. I believe that there is no such clear delineation of opinion.

There are a few precedents for local polls, but the circumstances to which they relate are wholly different from the subject of the Bill. The best known example is probably Sunday licensing in Wales, where every seven years the population has an opportunity of deciding whether alcohol should be sold on that day. That provision recognises the deeply-held conscientious and religious objections of a substantial minority of the community in Wales. It has been pointed out by the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire that the similar precedent of Sunday cinema opening has been brought to an end. However, those precedents are of no relevance to the creation of what is a new criminal offence, the justification for which has nothing to do with legal circumstances.

The justification for the Bill is that hare coursing is a barbaric sport wherever and whenever it occurs. It is the Government's view that hare coursing is cruel per se and should be made illegal irrespective of whether in particular areas some people take a different view. It would be indefensible to have a situation in which, because of local feeling, hare coursing was permitted to take place in some areas but not in others.

Amendments Nos. 11 and 12 are similar in intention and effect. Amendment No. 11 would provide for the Act to be brought into effect by order not earlier than six months after its enactment. The order could provide for its coming into operation to date from different days in different areas.

The substitution of a six-month minimum period before the Act may be brought into effect in place of the one month in the Bill as drafted would have the effect of allowing the coursing season which has just begun, including the Waterloo Cup, to be completed. It may be argued that this would allow the coursing fraternity to make arrangements for the disposal of staff and dogs. This argument has been raised before. It has been pointed out that the coursing world has had notice of the Government's intention for a considerable time and cannot possibly claim to have been taken unawares.

There is no justification for bringing the Act into effect by order as there is no administrative machinery to be set up or preparatory work to be completed to enable the Act to function effectively. The Bill provides for its provisions to come into force one month after its passage. That is the normal interval for criminal law. It would also be most unusual for a commencement order procedure to be made subject, as the amendment would make this one, to further parliamentary proceedings.

Similarly, there is no reason for the Act to be brought into effect at different times for different areas. If coursing is unacceptable in Yorkshire, it is unacceptable in Essex. The Government's objection to coursing is that it is cruel wherever it is practised.

Amendment No. 12 provides for the Act to come into force 12 months after its enactment instead of after one month. The same general arguments apply.

For those reasons, I invite the House to oppose all the new clauses and amendments before it.

I seek leave to withdraw new Clause 3. It seems that the weight of support that we have heard is in favour of new Clause 7, the local option clause, which I also commended to the House. So that we may make progress, I suggest that we do not take time on a Division on new Clause 3. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

With the new clause we are to take the following amendments:

No. 5, in Clause 1, page 1, line 6, leave out from 'for' to 'he' in line 8 and insert 'hare coursing matches'.

No. 8, in Clause 1, page 1, line 11, at end insert—

(2) For the purpose of the foregoing subsection a hare coursing match is a competition between two greyhounds as to their ability to course hares, being a competition—

(a) for which entries are invited before the day of the competition;

(b) for a prize for money or money's worth;

(c) for which official judges are appointed; and

(d) of which the results are announced publicly.'

I believe that it would be helpful to have an interpretation clause to guide those who will seek to implement the Bill in the months and years ahead if it should reach the statute book. With that in mind, I have selected what are probably the four most significant words in the Bill and have suggested their interpretations. These words are "coursing", "dogs", "place" and "competition", all of which are highly significant and highly loaded in respect of the Bill.

Before giving my reasons for the suggested interpretations, I shall give my reasons for thinking that we should have an interpretation clause. Most major Acts of the past 30 or 40 years have had interpretation clauses. In some cases some of the simplest words, with the most obvious meanings, are included in the interpretation clause. Let me give an idea of what I have in mind. If we look at the Public General Acts and Measures of 1973 we shall find some guidance to past procedure. I have chosen many short Acts because this Bill, if it becomes an Act, will be a two-section Act. I draw attention first to the Concorde Aircraft Act which is a two-section Act. There is no interpretation section in that.

On the other hand, if we turn the page, to the Coal Industry Act—a public Act of great significance and importance but only a short Act—it will be seen that there is a comprehensive interpretation section, Section 12. That Act has only 14 sections.

I was surprised to hear my hon. Friend say that here was no interpretation section in the Concorde Aircraft Act. I would have thought that this was an excellent example to reinforce the case for the new clause since, if we had had such an interpretation section in that Act, we might have been spared all the trouble we have had with this aeroplane.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. It would not be right for me to refer to the Concorde Aircraft Act in detail. One would think that with a Bill of the type we are discussing today, "coursing" should be defined, just as one would have expected that in the Concorde Aircraft Act the word "Concorde" would have been defined. As my hon. Friend has pointed out, the aircraft has caused a great deal of discussion.

Section 12 of the Coal Industry Act takes up half a page in defining, for instance, that

"'the Act of 1946' means the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946;

'the Act of 1965' means the Coal Industry Act 1965."

There are other examples when obvious interpretations of this nature appear in what is a relatively short Act. In view of that it would seem that this Bill ought to have an interpretation clause.

If we skip through the Public General Act and Measures of 1973 a little further we come to the Matrimonial Causes Act which is a long and substantial Act. I remember it going through the House. It amounted to over 50 sections. Section 52 is the interpretation section. My point is that the most-simple words imaginable are defined here. It even defines what "child" means.

The Bill we are discussing today has such complex words as "coursing" but there is no interpretation. Yet in the Matrimonial Causes Act there are such words as "the court", "education" and many other simple words, of which even the densest person knows the meaning. There are several lines of closely printed type in Section 52. The Matrimonial Causes Act even defines what is meant by the word "adopted". Most of us have a ready recognition of adoption and its meaning. The Act refers to the Adoption Act 1958 and deals with what an adopted child is.

Probably a more relevant Act for our help and benefit today is the London Cab Act 1973. This was a three-section Act. This Bill has only two clauses. In the London Cab Act, nearly as short as this Bill, there is an interpretation section. It defines for instance the meaning of "private hire-car". It was defined as having

"the same meaning as in section 4 of this Act."

Two further examples are the Rate Rebate Act, which had only four sections and contained an interpretation section, and the Bahamas Independence Act. That was a short Act of seven or eight sections including an interpretation section.

It puzzles me why the Government have failed to take the same precaution today. Section 6 of the Bahamas Independence Act actually defines the meaning of "the Bahamas". It seems odd that, while most of us have a good knowledge of what is meant by that phrase, there should be no references in this Bill to the definitions I have mentioned. It has to be remembered that it is the practice for our parliamentary draftsmen—when words are in question or meanings in doubt or when there is more than one interpretation of a significant word, sentence or phrase—to act most carefully to avoid any doubt.

I turn to the interpretations which I suggest to the House. In the first I refer to "coursing". I have extracted from several dictionaries the interpretations of that word. My amendment says that

"'coursing' means hunting hares with greyhounds."

That corresponds with the definition of coursing in Collins English Dictionary, which says that "coursing" means hunting with greyhounds. It comes from the Latin word "cursus", which means running.

1.0 p.m.

The short version of the Oxford English Dictionary gives a similar definition of the word "coursing". It refers to "coursing" as the sport of "chasing hares, etc." with greyhounds. The Bible of the English language, the full edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, gives the same meaning to the word "coursing". The full edition refers to coursing as running, racing and pursuing, and as the sport of chasing hares and other game with greyhounds, by sight.

It is important that there should be a definition of the word "coursing". The Under-Secretary, who is well known for her patience, forbearing and understanding, will appreciate that a definition will assist the House. If my definition is wrong—I accept that it may need amendment in some respects—perhaps the Government will say what kind of interpretation clause they would like to include in the Bill.

Will my hon. Friend confirm that he checked the definition in Collins English Dictionary?

I referred to the 1959 edition of Collins English Dictionary, page 120. It is smaller than the Oxford English Dictionary but it refers to the word "coursing", in terms which cannot be confused, by saying that it means hunting hares with greyhounds. The word comes from the Latin "cursus".

I now refer to dogs. I have referred to the shortened and full-length versions of the Oxford English Dictionary. The amendment states that "'dogs' means greyhounds". I gave much thought to that definition.

The purpose of those promulgating this measure is the banning of hare coursing. In Britain the sport of coursing is almost entirely confined to coursing with greyhounds. All the dictionaries refer to coursing as the sport of chasing hares with greyhounds. "Dogs" must therefore be interpreted to mean greyhounds.

The full version of the Oxford English Dictionary says that the origin of the word "dog" is unknown. It refers to Hunting Dogs as being a Northern constellation near the Great Bear, although that has nothing to do with the amendment. Reference is made to the burrowing dog, which is a kind of hyena. Again we are not concerned with that. Another section refers to a dog used for hunting, or a hound. A book published in Britain in 1475, which must be one of our oldest printed books, refers to a person taking "greyhounds" to chase the hare. The shorter version of the Oxford English Dictionary defines a dog used for sporting purposes as a dog used for hunting, which is often a greyhound.

I was not a member of the Standing Committee which considered the Bill. There were, I understand, long and detailed discussions about the meaning of the word "dog" and whether hunting and sporting hounds in Britain would come under the Bill. As practically all hare coursing in Britain and the rest of the world is carried out with greyhounds, it would be sensible to define the word "dog" as meaning "greyhound", as I suggest in the amendment.

The definition of the word "place" should be included in the Bill. I have not extracted this definition from a dictionary. This is a suggestion. The amendment reads,

"'place' means any naturally or artificially enclosed area of land".

The shorter version of the Oxford English Dictionary devotes one page to the meanings of the word "place". It says that "place" means a particular part or spot in a body or surface, or a particular part or page in a book. That is not an appropriate meaning. It also refers to a place as being an open space in a city—a square or a market place. That definition is less appropriate. It goes on to say that it can form a group of houses in a town or city.

In view of these silly dictionary definitions, I strongly urge the hon. Lady to accept the clarification of the meaning of "place" contained in the amendment. The amendment suggests that "place" means

"any naturally or artificially enclosed area of land".

By a naturally enclosed area of land I mean a valley with a river or stream at one end—

Does my hon. Friend regard the Isle of Wight as being a naturally enclosed area of land?

The hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Ross) is not present today. If he were here he would no doubt tell us all about that. I would say that it is a naturally enclosed area of land, as it is, to the best of my knowledge, surrounded by sea water.

A valley with a river at one end and rocky escarpments or impenetrable brushland on two sides which prevents the escape of a quarry is a naturally enclosed area of land. An artificially enclosed area of land can be simply defined as any place which is fenced in, wired in or entirely walled in. The definition of "place" suggested in the amendment would be a valuable clarification.

The last of my interpretations is of "competition". I only wish that I had been a member of the Standing Committee because I understand that discussions took place on the meaning of "competition". If the Bill is to be readily understandable when it reaches the statute book it must give the meaning of "competition". "Competition" is perhaps the easiest word of all to interpret. Clear definitions are given in the three major dictionaries which are available to us for reference here. The 1959 edition of Collins English Dictionary defines "competition" exactly as I have defined it in the amendment, as

"striving against others to win something".

The unabbreviated Oxford English Dictionary refers to "competition" at considerable length but in the first five lines it gives the meaning as

"The action of endeavouring to gain what another endeavours to gain at the same time; the striving of two or more for the same object; rivalry".

It goes on:

"Now largely used in connection with competitive examinations".

That perhaps is not appropriate. The Collins English Dictionary interpretation and the interpretation given in the first four lines of the unabbreviated Oxford English Dictionary are synonymous.

1.15 p.m.

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary interprets "competition" in much the same way, as

"The action of endeavouring to gain what another endeavours to gain at the same time; the striving of two or more for the same object; rivalry".

The interpretation mentions various types of rivalry. It does not mention sporting rivalry but deals with rivalry in commerce and allied forms of rivalry.

Those three dictionary interpretations of "competition" are helpful to the House. From what I have said it will be obvious to all that the interpretation of "competition" contained in the amendment

"the act of striving against others to win something"

is a condensation of the meaning of that word given by the three dictionaries I have mentioned.

The Children Bill, which we are to discuss on Tuesday, was produced by the same Government as were in power when the Hare Coursing Bill was introduced and it contains a whole clause which is devoted to interpretation—Clause 89. It interprets simple words, not complicated words which are capable of a double or treble meaning. "Child" is defined as

"a person who has not attained the age of 18 years".

The clause contains 20 lines on the interpretation of "guardian". It even defines the meaning of "home". Every simple, non-controversial word is spelt out with meticulous care, including the meaning of "United Kingdom national" and "voluntary organisation". The Under-Secretary of State and those who sponsor the Bill have made a grave error in omitting an interpretation clause.

I cannot resist the temptation to express my admiration for the speech made by the hon. Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr) and the research he has done in a valiant effort to prolong discussion on the Bill. I wonder why he did not define the terms by saying that reference should be made to the Oxford Dictionary or another dictionary, or that "place" means "place", "dogs" means "dogs" and "competition" means "competition". Every lawyer knows that the amendment is not a definition clause but a restrictive clause and that its whole object is to defeat the purpose of the Bill.

I must declare a non-interest in the Bill. I have not been hare coursing and I do not believe that I ever shall because, although I have indulged in every other field sport, to the best of my knowledge coursing is a spectator sport and I am not a born spectator.

It has been suggested to me that I should bring the Loch Ness monster into the ambit of the Bill, but I know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that if I did so you would rule me out of order, and rightly so. In any case, I have no evidence to believe that greyhounds are very skilful at swimming. Nevertheless, it is with great regret that I oppose the motion of my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr) because, although it seeks to clarify a bad Bill, it can only make it worse. In my submission, the Bill is essentially an attempt by ignorant townsmen to legislate against the interests of country folk. [Laughter.] The Under-Secretary of State is laughing. I hope that she will soon laugh on the other side of her face.

The one failing of people who live in towns is that they do not realise that there are no geriatric wards in nature. Animals do not go to sick berths and die surrounded by attendant nurses. To all intents and purposes the fate of every animal is to be eaten, sooner or later, in the predator chain. The only animals which achieve old age are domestic pets such as dogs. It is significant that most of us, sooner or later, no matter how valued a family dog may be—mine is now 14½—have to take it to the vet to be put down because it is clear that it would be incapable of supporting itself, even in a domestic situation, let alone in wild life.

It is to the extent to which the clause attempts to clarify a bad Bill that I object. I have referred to predators. I have been through the list of British birds and mammals. The hare and leveret are subject to the attention of 17 different sorts of birds and three mammals; namely, the fox, the stoat and the weasel. In the past the hare's main enemy was the wolf. The wolves were finally exterminated in Scotland, the last one being shot in Kirkcudbright in 1775. However, for many centuries the wolf was the main container of the hare population.

Labour Members wax angry and become upset about hare coursing, but I wonder, from the hare's point of view, whether it makes all that much difference whether it is chased by a pack of wolves or by a couple of greyhounds.

Is my hon. Friend right in his definition of the numbers of predators which prey on the hare? I understood him to mention three mammals in Britain. Is he not forgetting the Golden Eagle? I think he will find that the latest research shows that the staple diet of the Golden Eagle is the Scottish hare. The Bill applies to Scotland. I suggest that my hon. Friend bears that matter in mind.

I am sorry. Possibly I missed out a sentence in my speech. I thought I said that there were 17 birds on the British list which took hares—all the raptores, two owls and one skua. It may interest the House to know that I saw an eagle take a full-grown hare from a hill in Scotland just over a fortnight ago.

Therefore, the hare is at risk from many quarters. It has developed a technique for survival. It has developed great speed, and a capacity to twist and turn. That is how a hare defends itself.

It is not surprising that with the extermination of the wolf men have bred greyhounds specifically with the aim of making them come to terms with the hare—

Order. I am reluctant to interrupt the hon. Member for Dorset, North (Mr. James) but I should be grateful if he would relate his argument to the question of interpretation rather than the question of the mechanics of hare coursing.

I am most grateful, Mr. Deputy Speaker. You will appreciate that the speech I am trying to make was designed for the previous amendment and not for this one. I am doing my best to keep myself within order by pointing out that any interpretation clause makes a bad Bill even worse.

With your warning in mind, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall not deal with the nature of hares, which are stupid creatures, which cannot anticipate death and which have virtually no sense of pain. Therefore, it is a great mistake to impose on wildlife animals the sort of sentiments which you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I feel. This is a thoroughly bad Bill and any attempt to improve its interpretation merely makes it worse.

I believe that we owe a debt to my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr). I do not agree with the hon. and learned Member for Hackney North, and Stoke Newington (Mr. Weitzman).

Surely it would be more honest for those hon. Members who move or support the new clause to say plainly that this is a restrictive clause and not a definition clause.

If the hon. and learned Gentleman is good enough to hear me out in the very short speech that I propose to make I am sure that I shall be able to help him.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harborough has remined us how very difficult legislation is. It is often assumed that if a majority in Parliament wants something done one just introduces a law, pushes it through, votes it through with one's feet and somehow it will produce the desired effect. However, my hon. Friend has illustrated that doubts can arise. Sometimes doubts arise because there is an interpretation clause and sometimes because there is not one. In my opinion we must first try to avoid having unnecessary detail in the Bill. I fear that I do not go the whole of the way with my hon. Friend in the wording of this clause, much though I admire the motive behind it.

Secondly, we must try to avoid doubt. If we are not careful in that respect we shall leave doubts which will have to be resolved by the courts, which are sometimes given an almost impossible task of interpretation. Such a situation can arise because we put in unnecessary detail or, because, with or without detail, we have created doubts.

Therefore, my view about interpretation clauses in general is that necessarily they may add to the detail and to that extent they are unwelcome. However, to the extent that they remove doubts they should be put into a Bill. One has to consider each case in the light of its own terms and decide what should be done.

I see that the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department has just left the Chamber, but I invite the attention of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Privy Council Office to a matter that arises out of my hon. Friend's attempt to give clarity and to remove doubt. Clause 1, line 7, refers to "a competition". However, in the side note we see, not "competitions", but "matches".

1.30 p.m.

In my opinion, those two words are not synonymous but they do to some extent overlap. In other words, every match is a competition but not every competition is a match. The courts are not entitled to use the side notes for interpreting the wording of the sections of an Act, but when different words are used in the side note, as with this instance, it throws doubt on the words used in the section. To the extent that my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough may, by his proposal, remove that doubt, we should be grateful to him. This is the sort of matter that will be discussed in the House on Monday week, I hope, and other hon. Members may wish to follow up the point.

My right hon. and learned Friend has referred to the use in the marginal note of the word "matches" as opposed to the use of "competition" in the clause but the difficulty also relates to the Long Title to the Bill. The Long Title is capable of being used. Certainly it affects our debates. It can also be used and referred to in the courts and it may therefore affect the question of definition.

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend because, through an oversight, of which I should not have been guilty, I had failed to read the Long Title. As the Long Title uses the word "matches" and Clause 1 uses the word "competition", we must assume that the two words are intended to have different meanings. If so, there should be a definition clause in the Bill to describe at least one of the meanings, which my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough has done.

May I try to clarify the matter? Originally we tabled an amendment to amend the Long Title. We were led to believe that it would be ineffective. Therefore, we changed the amendment and tabled a fresh amendment dealing with the point about "matches".

I am much obliged to my hon. Friend, but the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, South (Mr. Cope) and with which I am dealing remains valid in the context of the new clause.

We should not knowingly, now that we have been alerted to the matter, pass legislation which presents the courts with a doubt. It is far better that we should strive, not necessarily in precisely the way proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, to remove that doubt so that the people affected by the Bill when it becomes law need not have recourse to the courts, and, incidentally, so that the police, acting on behalf of the public, know the position when they prosecute people for infringements of the legislation, as they may occasionally have to do. I hope that the Bill will give clear guidance to the police as well as to the courts.

It will be interesting to hear what the Under-Secretary of State says about the new clause. I did not expect the Bill to be dealt with today, because I assumed that, as this is a Government Bill, it would be taken at a more usual time for Government legislation. Therefore, I arranged a long-standing invitation in my constituency a number of weeks ago. I shall not be able to stay indefinitely for the rest of the discussion, and I am sorry about that.

My right hon. and learned Friend is vastly experienced in legal matters and legal phraseology. I am not sure—perhaps because I am stupid or because I did not hear him say it—whether he is saying that the Long Title containing the word "matches" would be taken by the courts as meaning that it overrode the clause.

That is the difficulty. It would be for the court to decide whether the word "matches" in the Long Title meant anything different from the word "competition" in Clause 1 and, if so, whether the word "matches" or the word "competition" should have precedence. I cannot answer that question. I do not think that anyone could. It would be for the court to decide. That shows that my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough has done a service by alerting the Government and the House to the use of different words which, I agree, overlap to some extent. The problem could be resolved only by taking it to court or by a definition clause which dealt effectively with it to prevent the necessity of going to court.

My right hon. and learned Friend is a great expert on legal matters and will be speaking in the House at a later date on the question of the preparation of parliamentary legislation. Is he indicating that the confusion to which he and my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr) have rightly drawn attention could place the courts in a difficulty if the matter needed to be decided on the basis of the Bill as drafted?

Let us suppose that somone was charged with

"the coursing of a hare by two or more dogs in a competition"

and that that was the wording of the charge or indictment. If the defence argued that the word "competition" did not carry out the intention of Parliament as expressed in the Long Title but meant something different from it, the answer to my hon. Friend's question would be "Yes".

Although I understood precisely why my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) sought to withdraw new Clause 3, the fact that that happened, coupled with the fact that the House decided in the Division not to include new Clause 7 in the Bill, has emphasised the importance of putting an interpretation clause in the Bill. If either or both of those new clauses had been included in the Bill, there would have been further opportunity to reconsider the question of the interpretation of certain aspects of it. However, they have not been included. That emphasises still more how important it is that an interpretation clause should be included at this stage or perhaps in another place.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr) has spoken eloquently of the need for an interpretation provision. It is worth pointing out to the hon. and learned Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Mr. Weitzman) that this is not the first occasion on which a request for an interpretation clause has been made in discussions on the Bill. I said during the Second Reading debate:

"It is important to know what we are talking about. It is not good enough to produce a Bill as short as this with no interpretation or clarification".—[Official Report, 13th June, 1975; Vol. 893, c. 851.]

I expanded on that theme a little later in the debate.

I was not lucky enough to be a member of the Committee on the Hare Coursing Bill, but I am extremely disappointed that, for one reason or another, no such clause was included in the Bill at that stage. I can only believe that this was because of the generosity of my hon. Friends towards the Government. I can only suspect that they were desirous of helping the Government with their programme and in consequence did not indulge at that stage in a lengthy debate on an amendment aimed at introducing an interpretation of many of the important aspects of the Bill. But I am convinced that, if no interpretation clause is included, the danger to which my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire referred will come about.

Why should it be right to leave the interpretation of the Bill almost entirely, as will be the case, to the courts? If this Bill ultimately receives Royal Assent, I am afraid that yet again Parliament will only have produced a lawyers' field day. I have nothing against increasing the income of the legal profession—although I suspect that very often their needs are rather less than those of some other sections of society—but in practice, unless there is an interpretation clause in the Bill, we shall be doing no more than legislating to increase the income of the legal profession.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire has described this in much greater detail than I intend to do, and it was perhaps as an act of self-denial on his part, as an eminent lawyer, that he should have expanded on what will happen if the Bill gets on to the statute book as at present drawn.

I do not want to cover the ground already covered so ably by my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, but while I agree in principle with the need for an interpretation clause, as I have already emphasised, I do not think that the new clause proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough is necessarily fully adequate. For that reason I hope that the Under-Secretary, when she sums up, will give an undertaking that the Government at a later stage will introduce a more comprehensive interpretation clause.

I am concerned about the meaning of a number of aspects of the Bill as at present drawn, but I fear that if I were to enlarge in any detail on these aspects I might be going outside the rules of order. I therefore express the hope once again that the hon. Lady will give an undertaking of the type I have requested when she replies.

1.45 p.m.

I am astonished at the fact that the House of Commons is apparently, with the lead of the Government, ready to acquiesce—I say this with respect to my hon. Friends who are not ready to do this—in the passing through this legislature of a Bill which, as stated by one of the leading legal authorities in this country, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir. D. Renton), will simply be left for interpretation to the courts and to the judges. Nobody has yet challenged my right hon. and learned Friend—who has unfortunately had to leave—on his assertion.

What nonsense is this that we are doing? What have we come to in the House of Commons? What are the Government thinking about in bringing in these stupid little measures, which have no sort of validity or general support amongst people who know anything about the subject in this country? What is the matter with them? We are like people who have gone mad and berserk. Here we are asked to accept shoddy legislation from a shoddy Government. It is legislation which, as we have been told, will not be understood until our judges, brilliant as they are—better than the judges in any other country in the world—have been called upon to decide what the Government had in mind.

This is monstrous. But it is all of a part and no different from the Government's action in many of the measures that they are putting before the House these days. What a sorry farce this great assembly of a great nation has come to when the hon. Lady is willing to sit there and cannot get off her seat for a moment in order to deny the words of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire. She was. I believe, present when the statement was made. It was a statement which must have proved to her that the Government do not know what they are talking about, and that the judges will be left to decide what is meant by this legislation. It is tragic.

I only wish to ask the hon. Lady, in conclusion, whether, with her experience and her mother's experience in the work of this House over many years, it does not irk her slightly to be the leading party in telling the judges that this monstrous Bill has nothing to do with Parliament and that it is their job to decide what we mean.

I should like, if I may, to correct my hon. Friend the Member for Yarmouth (Mr. Fell) in one small particular. He was a little carried away at one stage when, in referring to the shoddiness of the Bill and of the Government, he seemed to be including the Minister. Whatever else one may say, whatever else those who served on the Committee may say, the Minister is not shoddy. On the contrary, it was a delight to have her sitting opposite us in Committee.

The Minister, of course, of herself is not shoddy, except that she runs herself down and makes herself a miserable person by being party to this sort of rubbish.

I entirely support that and am glad to have given my hon. Friend the opportunity to correct the impression he might otherwise have left.

The Standing Committee, contrary to what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Morrison), spent some time discussing some of these questions. It is true that some of our debates were a little rushed and that we were not able to discuss the point which was discussed earlier by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) about the difference between matches and competitions as deeply as we would like to have done. In fact, I tabled an amendment to the Long Title but the Chair in its infinite wisdom decided that it was out of order.

One hon. Member complained earlier that the new clause was not solely interpretative but was also restrictive. I agree. It is in part restrictive, but that is not necessarily an argument against it. On the contrary, that is part of its charm. But it is also interpretative.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire, as he explained, has had to leave, and probably he did not speak as fully as he would otherwise have done, but we have the benefit of some more of his thoughts and those of some distinguished colleagues who served on the Committee on the Preparation of Legislation. We are to discuss the whole of that report a week on Monday, but certain of its passages deal with the desirability of definition clauses and are relevant to this clause. Unfortunately, the passages in the report do not come down firmly on one side or the other.

The alternative arguments are put and it might be helpful to refer to them. One side was put in the early evidence by Professor Reed Dickerson of Indiana University. The Committee drew widely in its choice of witnesses and experts.

Professor Reed Dickerson thought that definitions should be used sparingly, which may surprise hon. Members. He thought that the word "includes" in a definition could be helpful and was often preferable. That way, of course, one gets a definition which does not of itself limit the matter being defined. It includes certain things but does not say that something is all that is defined. He went on to say:

"Occasionally, you need a full-blown definition, but most of the time definitions need only to stipulate the meaning in the area of marginal uncertainty."

That is what we have here—marginal uncertainty.

"Marginal uncertainty" is an American expression which I would not have chosen. As my hon. Friend says, we are certainly in such an area at the moment.

The contrary view was put by Professor Driedger of Ottawa University, who advocated the use of definitions not only for extending or fixing the boundaries of meaning but also as a drafting technique to remove from complex Bills some of their lack of clarity. This Bill hardly comes into that category and on that basis probably does not need a definition clause. Nevertheless, the Renton Committee was able to agree fully with Professor Driedger in relation to complex Bills. So we do not get from the Committee clear guidance on whether or not, in principle, interpretation clauses should be inserted in Bills.

But the clause that we are discussing is in part restrictive as well as interpretative. It is also, in my view, wrong. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr) will not take it amiss if I say that at least one of his definitions is clearly wrong and some of the others are less than desirable. The one which is wrong is his definition of coursing. I do not believe that it means hunting hares with greyhounds. I understand from him that that definition is from Collins Dictionary, but he used others from other dictionaries which I think were more accurate.

Hunting essentially means pursuit by means of smell, whereas coursing is pursuit by means of sight. Those of us who have been able to go to coursing matches, as I have although I am not what would be called a coursing man, have seen this to be so. When, as frequently, indeed normally, happens, the hare gets through the hedge or fence at the edge of the ground after a minute or so of pursuit, as soon as the greyhounds lose sight of it they give up. Although they may be only a few yards behind and most dogs would be able to use their sense of smell to continue the pursuit, the greyhounds as a rule do not follow.

I can probably satisfy my hon. Friend's curiosity. The definition in the amendment is that of Collins National Dictionary but it was a 1959 edition, whereas the other two versions to which I referred were from pre-war editions of the Oxford English Dictionary which are available in the Library and one of which went back to the beginning of this century. Over a period, the meaning given to words varies. I would respectfully suggest that the 1959 Collins edition meaning is more up-to-date and appropriate now. To give a simple example—

Order. The hon. Member has already spoken for 30 minutes. He is now going beyond the length of time appropriate for an intervention.

What my hon. Friend says concerns me. If he is correct and the courts hold him to be correct, the Bill will deal not only with coursing as it is generally understood but with other forms of chasing hares. It might cover such forms of hunting as beagling if his interpretation were held to be correct.

There is another point about this, namely, that it very much strengthens the idea that we need a definition clause. If there is this uncertainty between the compilers of dictionaries about what the word means, it needs definition if the courts are to understand what we, the House of Commons and the legislators, intend the Bill to mean.

2.0 p.m.

The second definition is of "dogs", and this is said to mean greyhounds. That is one example of a restrictive rather than an interpretive definition, but I do not quarrel with it for that reason.

The next definition is of "place". I think that in some respects this goes to the heart of the basic argument about hare coursing and whether it should continue. I have found in my constituency that those who have written to me or approached me on the subject of hare coursing have been divided in the first instance roughly speaking half and half between those who are in favour of the sport continuing and those who are against it. When I have discussed the matter in more detail with those in favour of the Bill and against hare coursing, however, I have found that many of them have a false impression of the way in which hare coursing is conducted.

What is involved is summed up in the definition in the new clause which defines "place" as an enclosed area of land. In so far as this is a restrictive element in the new clause I regard it as desirable, though I realise that not all Members would take the same view. Many members of the public who are against hare coursing on the basis of limited knowledge would accept that this is a sufficient restriction to put on the conduct of hare coursing. If the definition were included, the only coursing that could take place would be in an open field where the hare was able to escape. That is the form of coursing that takes place for the most part in this country, though I understand that the position is different in Ireland, and in Northern Ireland to a certain extent, but I cannot speak for that. But the definition seems to be restrictive but desirable.

Then we come to the fourth definition, that of "competition". I dislike the definition used here, though it is difficult to quarrel deeply with it. It seems to me that in the context in which they appear the last three words of the phrase

"act of striving against others to win something"

has the implication of a kill. This again is part of the misunderstanding in the public mind about hare coursing, or at least in the minds of many people who do not know much about the sport. They think that hare coursing necessarily involves the killing of all the hares that are coursed, whereas I am sure hon Members who have studied the matter know that that is not the case. I should prefer a definition that did not carry the implication of killing that this definition seems to have, because it is a little misleading.

Perhaps I might conclude by referring briefly to the definition of "match" because it arises a little in the context of Amendments Nos. 5 and 8. The point that I was trying to put to the Committee upstairs was that a match is essentially a competition between two individuals or two teams of individuals. The definition of "match" in the racing fraternity is exactly that. A horse race may have any number of horses in it—quite often there are 10, 20 or more horses in a race—but if there is a horse race between two horses it is described as a match. I am sorry that the hon Member for Isle of Ely (Mr. Freud) is not here, because not long ago he took part in a notable horseracing match.

There is another element to "match" as opposed to "competition" which has entered into the word in the course of its life, and that is the element of formality. If one plays football, one may kick a ball about in an informal manner on a piece of waste ground or grassland or in the park, but if there is a football match more formalities enter into it. There are rules and a referee, and in general the whole thing becomes a more formalised arrangement.

If someone was out exercising two of his greyhounds—whippet or saluki—and they put up a hare, would he be liable under the Bill? He would be a person out exercising his animals. They put up a hare and perhaps pursue and kill it. Would he, with his two dogs, be liable under the Bill?

That is an interesting question. My own opinion, for what it is worth—I am not a lawyer, and I cannot interpret the Bill in a legal sense—is that he might be liable in such circumstances if it were thought that the purpose of releasing the two dogs at the same moment to course the hare was to compare the abilities of the two dogs. In a peculiar way, however, if it were thought that the purpose of releasing the dogs was to kill that hare, or hares in general, he would not be liable. As far as I can see, he would have a perfect defence against an action under the Bill.

That seems to be a peculiarity of the Bill, because many people who have not followed the debates on this subject might feel that the Bill was about stopping people from killing hares, but if someone sets out to kill a hare in this way that will be a defence under the Bill. It is only if someone is setting out not to kill but, instead, to judge the ability of two or more dogs that it becomes an offence. If someone can say that he was doing it to kill, he would get off scot free.

I turn to what I was saying about the definition of a match. This is an important definition that should be included in any definition clause that is inserted into the Bill. The definition in Amendment No. 8 has an essential element. It refers to two greyhounds, which to my mind, as I explained earlier, seems to be an essential feature of a match. That is certainly so on my old-fashioned definition of it. However, more importantly, it demonstrates that what is attempted to be legislated against in the Bill is a formal competition set up with prizes and with the public able to attend in a formal manner.

The sort of informal occasion to which reference has been made is not the occasion against which legislation should be attempted. If that is the occasion on which hares are chased by two or more greyhounds, or whatever sort of dog is involved, and against which the supporters of the Bill are trying to legislate, they are not doing what many people who might otherwise be sympathetic towards them believe they are and should be doing.

I have not intervened in discussion on the Bill because I recognised that many others know a great deal more about this subject than I ever shall. Some matters cause me considerable concern, in particular the justification of the Bill as it stands without close definition, which has some unsavoury implications.

Many of my constituents have written asking me to oppose the Bill. The Under-Secretary gave as the justification for the Bill that it was a cruel, barbaric and cowardly sport. By implication she is saying that many of those who have written to me are supporting a brutally cruel and cowardly sport. If that is the case, it behoves Labour Members who support the Bill to define it carefully.

In this country we tolerate a great deal of cruelty to animals as well as to human beings. The hon. Lady's great Department tolerates some revolting experiments on animals. They are done under careful control with, as she assured me in a letter the other day, the minimum of cruelty. However, they are done because the ends justify the means and for the better enjoyment of human life. I suggest to Labour Members that that is cruel all the same.

At present in certain areas of my constituency the Department of Agriculture is engaged in exterminating the badger on the ground that it is the carrier of bovine tuberculosis. The Department is doing so in a particularly repulsive and dangerous way—gassing these enchanting animals in their own homes. It is said that the end justifies the means and that it is necessary for the better enjoyment of human life. However, I suggest to those hon. Members who are against cruelty to animals that it is cruel all the same.

The Department of Trade imports films into this country on which horses, for the sake of glorious spectacles, are brought down by trip-wires. Their limbs are broken and afterwards they have to be shot and put out of misery. That is for the better enjoyment and entertainment of our people. We tolerate and allow it to happen but it is cruel all the same.

Unfortunately and regretfully, there are many examples in this country of individuals maltreating domestic animals, especially dogs. I happen to be very fond of dogs. I hate to see the condition of some of the dogs that are wandering about our city streets. One can see that they are suffering, in pain, badly fed and not properly looked after. However, we tolerate it because it would be highly unpopular and expensive to bring in the restrictive measures that are necessary to prevent that happening.

The hon. Gentleman has given a list of items that come under the heading of cruelty. He should not forget the pig farmers who harness down the sow while she has a litter of 20 or so piglets feeding off her. She cannot protect herself because she is fastened down by a steel harness. Is not that cruelty for the sake of profit?

I do not want to enter into the controversy over factory farming. It is a closely argued controversy whether it is more-cruel for the animal to step on a piglet. We could argue about that for a long time.

People want cheap food.

I am trying to impress on the hon. Gentleman that we tolerate a great deal of cruelty to animals when it suits us. It ill behoves Labour Members to tell me that many of my constituents are brutally and cowardly inclined because they support this blood sport, when Labour Members close their eyes to other cruelty that is taking place because the end justifies the means.

That is totally untrue.

It is not totally untrue. It takes place and the hon. Gentleman knows it. [Interruption.]

I have been challenged by the hon. Gentleman's colleagues to say why I regard that as totally untrue. I speak only for myself and as a vegetarian who regards all killing as equally immoral. I draw no difference, as many Conservative Members know, between live hare coursing and any other form of killing. As it applies to me, what the hon. Gentleman has said is quite untrue.

I accept absolutely the hon. Gentleman's explanation and his high morality in this matter. I am not attacking any individual. It ill behoves me or anyone else to attack others for cruelty to animals in this country when we tolerate it officially as well as unofficially. It behoves those who want to stop hare coursing to define what is and what is not cruelty. The Bill is loosely defined. I should like Amendment No. 8 to be agreed so that those who are called cruel in my constituency know what is and what is not cruel. We have to get away from humbug and cant on this subject, and from pretending that one or another of us is holier than thou. We are not.

In the main we are quite a cruel nation, despite the fact that we pretend we are not. We were cruel in the war—I know, because I saw it. We are still cruel in some areas in peace time. That is why I resent the attack on a rural section of the community which does not believe that it is any more-cruel than those who live in cities and who allow their dogs to run about unfed and medically unfit. I resent this attack on one side as opposed to another. If hon. Members want to tackle cruelty and to put a stop to it, let them do so as a whole and not in the partisan way in which they have approached this Bill.

I am in some difficulty on these amendments and the new clause. While agreeing entirely with my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, South (Mr. Cope) that we need a definition, and while at the same time not wishing to disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr), I cannot accept that new Clause 9 which my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough has put to us gives the definitions which we need in this instance.

Definitions of words are included in many Acts of Parliament. As hon. Members know, full lists of such words may be found in the volumes of "Halsbury". In Room A of our Library there are over 43 volumes giving definitions of terms used in Acts of Parliament. My hon. Friend the Member for Harborough made much of his search of two of our principal dictionaries, but I do not know whether he had time to search the third edition of definitions of words and phrases under Halsbury's name. I strongly suspect that had he done so he would have been able to find better definitions than appear in his new Clause 9. For that reason, should we come to a vote, I do not feel that I could support my hon. Friend in adding the new clause to the Bill.

My main objection to the definitions proposed in the new clause lies in the certainty that, if such definitions were added, they would restrict the number of activities in the countryside which could be carried on if the Bill were ever to become law.

It is significant that Messrs. Stable and Stuttard carefully considered what would be the consequence if the House of Commons were ever to pass the present Bill, which is precisely the same Bill as has been trotted out before us some 13 times during the last 11 years. Thus, in forecasting what the position would be, Messrs. Stable and Stuttard were not talking about a hypothetical situation but were directing themselves to something which they could properly forecast. As I say, my reason for opposing the proposed definition clause as it stands is that it would be more restrictive than the Bill as drafted.

As Messrs. Stable and Stuttard saw it—this must be right—if the Bill were to be passed in its present form and without a better definition clause than new Clause 9, both the coursing rules and the field officials associated with the present conduct of coursing would no longer be there. The organisation of matches and the systems of cup, plate and purse would no longer be there. But coursing would still continue.

It is significant that in recent times the owners of Scottish deerhounds have adapted their practices to keep them in line with the Deer (Scotland) Act 1959. That Act made it an offence to set two dogs on a stag, a red deer or a hind, but now the owners of Scottish deerhounds wishing to test their dogs in their natural surroundings go on to the hills and course blue, mountain or Arctic hares with their dogs. We shall never change the genuine desire of enthusiastic breeders of dogs always to test their dogs' natural abilities—and not necessarily their natural abilities one against the other.

What happens today if one runs a fox to ground? Out of every corner of the countryside men appear with their terriers, hoping to be given a chance to see whether their dogs will go to ground and whether they will work. One of the greatest problems at any dig which a master of foxhounds encounters nowadays is to get his own well-trained and experienced foxhounds into the earth and tactfully keep out the mass of enthusiasts who bring their own dogs because they want to test them in doing the job they are bred to do.

The House has no doubt about my interest in this matter. I want to see coursing survive in some form or other, in any possible legal way, even if the Bill becomes law. But, having studied the new clause, I fear that if its definitions were added to the Bill they would make it more difficult for those who own any one of the five coursing breeds to be given an opportunity not necessarily to match one dog against another but to be certain that their dogs still retain the natural characteristics of the breed.

Messrs. Stable and Stuttard predicted what the position would be if the Bill ever became law without a definition clause. We should have to dispense with the judge in a coursing match, the judge who is a symbol and the arbiter in a test of merit and ability. One would no longer be able to test the merit and ability of two dogs one against the other.

I cannot accept that the definition of "competition" in new Clause 9 is sufficiently closely drawn that some form of testing of one dog against another in some other form would still be possible. As I understand it at present, we should find coursing continuing on people's farms and for the control of hares, but without the judge.

We should have to dispense also with the field officials. There would no longer be the slipper. In a greyhound match, the slip is an extremely skilled job. I do not believe that Labour Members realise what they are doing in wanting to remove the slipper from coursing. The slipper is the man who stands where the hares come on to the coursing ground and who decides whether a particular hare is fit to be coursed. If hon. Members have ever stood in the slip, they will understand what a skilled job this is. Is the hare coming forward a wormy ill-bred poor creature on which it is not fair to slip the dogs? Is the hare coming forward an animal which has been balled up on its feet from coming across a lot of plough? It is the slipper who decides whether it is a suitable hare on which the powers of two dogs shall be tested. If hon. Members remove the slipper, they will be removing one of the most important officials from the field.

Moreover, their proposals would remove the pickers-up. We hear a lot of talk from hon. Members opposite about hares being torn to pieces. I have never seen a hare torn to pieces at any coursing match.

Nor have they.

I agree.

Perhaps my hon. Friend would care to invite any hon. Member opposite to stand up and say whether he has seen a hare torn to pieces.

I have.

The hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. Price) and I differ greatly—

I respond to the hon. Gentleman's intervention in this way. I have never seen a woman raped. I have never seen torture. I have never seen a public execution. Yet I abhor them all, and I should expect the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends to share that abhorrence with me.

I cannot follow the hon. Member. I would like to keep to my argument. I am against the new clause, which seeks to add certain definitions, because it would not be helpful to coursing.

Even if the Bill goes through, certain forms of coursing will take place quite legally, but they will not be helped by this definition clause. This coursing, although legal, will be carried on without the present safeguards. We shall be going back to the seventeenth century form of coursing when people went out with their greyhounds to catch hares solely in order to eat them or as an amusing way of controlling hares. There will be nothing illegal in that. If people go coursing with these motives, they will want to make sure that they kill the hare. The hounds will be slipped at short range, at the moment the hare is sprung or at the moment it appears through a hedge.

The National Coursing Club rules lay down that, in competition, dogs must be slipped from at least 80 yards. This makes coursing a fair match and gives the hare a chance. It is not difficult to kill a hare if one does not give it much of a start. The first hare I ever killed with a greyhound died purely by accident. It knocked itself out on the bottom bar of a gate. It had suddenly been sprung in an unsual position and dashed through the first hole it could see.

If Labour Members are worried about hares, they should realise that the best way to reduce the number of hares that are killed by greyhounds is to see that all chasing of hares is carried out under the rules of the National Coursing Club.

Messrs. Stable and Stuttard looked most carefully for a definition of the word "coursing". I have survived various examinations in the peculiar language of Latin and become dependent on Kelly's "Keys to the Classics", but that does not cover the definition of coursing. In trying to define coursing, Messrs. Stable and Stuttard found that it was derived from the Latin "currere". I am rather apprehensive about using Latin words in the presence of my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. More), whose pronunciation is slightly different from mine. He was at school earlier than I was.

I was brought up on the classical pronunciation. One pronounces Latin exactly as one does English.

The particular versatility of the words descended from "currere" is seen in such words as " current", "currency", "curriculum" and "corsair", which is a hit-and-run sea raider upon coastal settlements. A courser may be either a runner, a swift-running horse or charger, a dog used in coursing or the dog's owner. This shows the difficulties we get into in trying to define "coursing". Scientists have also got hold of the word, and the scientific word "cursorial" is a term used by zoologists for certain types of insects, birds and mammals whose legs are specially adapted for running. Cursorial mammals are dogs of the greyhound type. In the excellent report by Messrs. Stable and Stuttard there is a very good appendix which gives in more detail the qualities of dogs of the greyhound type.

When one looks at the problems that Messrs. Stable and Stuttard had in defining the word "coursing", I cannot accept the definition in the new clause that "coursing" means hunting hares with greyhounds.

It is important that the House should be clear on this matter. The definition in the new clause includes only greyhounds, and, as my hon. Friend has pointed out, a number of other dogs are often involved in coursing. As this subject was inadequately dealt with in Committee, and as Labour Members have shown today that their ignorance is profound, could my hon. Friend tell us a little more about the subject?

My hon. Friend pre-empts the argument I was about to develop. This is not the only point to be cleared up if we are to accept, as the new clause does, that "dogs" means greyhounds. We also find ourselves in considerable difficulty about dogs used for hunting purposes being considered as greyhounds.

First, I should like to clear up the definition of "coursing". We have heard that the word means not only swift running or the owner of a swift-running dog but also a hound which hunts by sight. Greyhounds hunt by sight, and one can unsight them very easily. This is why so much coursing takes place in the North-West in the fens, where the Waterloo Cup is held. It is possible to go for miles without being able to unsight a greyhound Whippets can also be unsighted and they, too, will cease to pursue their quarry.

A definition of coursing limited to hunting by sight would exclude lurchers, salukis and Scottish deerhounds, all of which are coursing dogs. They hunt not only by sight but by scent. I do not know whether any hon. Members have been to a saluki meeting, but the moment they become unsighted they set off in pursuit of the hare on its ground scent. One can see owners disappearing into the far distant countryside to collect their dogs after they have chased off after a hare. They may hunt it very slowly, or they may do so quickly according to the scenting conditions on that day. If hon. Members opposite had seen the coursing of the Arctic hares in Scotland—

rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.

I shall accept that motion in five minutes. If the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Kimball) wishes to hear a Government reply he must conclude his remarks almost at once.

On a point of order. If I were to conclude now, Mr. Speaker, to give the Government a chance to reply to these arguments, and the closure were then not carried, would I be allowed afterwards to develop the rest of my argument? I have five other points connected with the amendment with which I have not yet been able to deal. If I sit down now I shall cut myself out of the debate which will follow if the closure is not carried, and I shall be unable to continue with my argument, which is vital to the debate.

The hon. Member is well known for his reasonableness. He has been speaking now for 21 minutes.

But it is all good stuff.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. As one who is seeking to intervene in this debate may I suggest, first, that points of order should not count towards the five minutes—

I can help the hon. Gentleman on that point straight away. They will count.

Is there a precedent for your saying, Mr. Speaker, that you will accept a closure in five minutes' time? It might be that no hon. Member will seek to move such a motion in five minutes. Surely it will greatly truncate the debate if hon. Members have notice that they have only five more minutes to speak. I believe that the precedents are that either you accept the closure when it is moved or you do not. If you do not accept the closure when it is moved, it is usual for hon. Members to delay for another two hours before seeking to move it again. The closure having been moved by the Assistant Whip and having been refused by you, surely it would be within the precedents that no hon. Member should seek to move another closure for another hour or two. For you to announce in advance that yon will accept it in five minutes' time is something which has never before come to my ears in my short experience in this honourable House. Of course, I may have missed it. Is it not unusual to say what you have said, Mr. Speaker?

There is no question of accepting it in five minutes. I shall now accept it in two minutes.

I am in difficulty, Mr. Speaker. I have been unable to speak to my amendment and I do not know whether it is usual practice for the closure to be moved so suddenly without warning the Opposition Front Bench so that we may adust our timing and arrange for a proper conclusion to the debate.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. My hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) has made a fairly fundamental point. There are other implications to giving five minutes' notice of a closure. While I appreciate that probably in your charity it would seem advisable to give that notice, may I suggest that on reflection you might reconsider whether you are setting a wise precedent? I can see that in the future it could cause infinite procedural difficulties to give notice of the time when a closure will be accepted.

I think I took a commonsense line. I thought it was conceivable that Conservative Members would want to hear what the Minister had to say on the debate which, after all, has been going on already for nearly two hours.

Just so that the House may fully understand your ruling, Mr. Speaker, are you saying that there is a delayed agreement to the Question being put five minutes from when the Government Whip moved it, or are you saying that you would accept it if he were to move it again within five minutes of the time when he originally moved it?

Of course, the Whip will have to move it again. I think the time has come when he should do so.

rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.

I call the hon. Member for Esher (Mr. Mather), on Amendment No. 4.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Will you announce in advance, Mr. Speaker, whether and when you will move the closure on this amendment? On the previous new clause some of my hon. Friends were put to considerable disadvantage. My hon. Friend the Member for Esher (Mr. Mather) did not have a chance to speak on the clause and we did not have a chance to hear the complete speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Kimball). Indeed, many of my hon. Friends wished to speak. We did not have a chance to hear the Minister's reply. With the greatest respect, Mr. Speaker, the five minutes which you suggested was not long enough for all those contributions to be made. We are in some difficulty because my hon. Friends did not vote on the substantive matter. We did not vote because we were not in a position to hear the Government's attitude to the points that were made in favour of the clause.

This is a hypothetical point. I call in aid a very distinguished predecessor of mine, Mr. Speaker Shaw-Lefevre, who said something like this:

"I have so ruled, and it is now an established practice of the House."

Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I hope that we may have some guidance whether it is likely to be your practice in the ensuing debates to accept a closure after a fairly short time. The amendment that we are now to discuss—

Order. I am not prepared to allow an irregular debate on this matter. Anyone who has been a Member of the House as long as the hon. Gentleman knows quite well that Members approach Mr. Speaker to know whether he will accept the closure. In this instance I told the House that I would accept it in five minutes. I thought it only fair to those who had spoken in favour of the clause that they should have the chance to hear what the Minister had to say. If they did not want to do so, that is a matter for them. Perhaps we may now get on.

Before moving Amendment No. 4, in view of what went on in Committee perhaps it would be appropriate for me to establish the basis of the debate by means of a point of order. I speak on a point of order to explain to all hon. Members what happened in Committee on this amendment and why we are discussing it again. We had a full discussion on the amendment in Committee but we are now having a further discussion. Therefore, it is right that we should say this, on a point of order, to establish the basis on which we are having this debate.

I do not see what this has to do with the Chair.

I was going to ask you, Mr. Speaker, whether my understanding of the position in which we find ourselves was correct, because we have already debated the words "assists at" upstairs, and are now debating them again. Perhaps I should continue with my point of order, or as part of my speech establish what happened in Committee.

Order. I do not understand the hon. Gentleman. He has his name to an amendment on the Order Paper, in page 1, line 5, leave out "or assist at". I have selected that amendment. It is now for him to continue to move it.

I accept your ruling, Mr. Speaker. I just wanted to ask as an introduction, on the point of order, the basis on which we were discussing the amendment. But I shall continue with my speech in the normal way.

Before we leave the point of order—

Order. We have left what was not in fact a point of order. The hon. Member for Esher (Mr. Mather) is now moving his amendment.

I have very much a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

The hon. Gentleman may put his point of order if it is a new one.

It concerns the way in which the amendment has come to the House, Mr. Speaker. I do not know whether your attention has been drawn to the proceedings in Committee—

Order. I cannot allow the time of the House to be taken up in this way. What happened in a Committee is not a matter for me on Report. I have selected the amendment, and if it is not moved we may have to go on to the next one.

Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Something happened in Committee which should be brought to your attention.

That is entirely appropriate for a speech. It is not a point of order.

I beg to move Amendment No. 4, in page 1, line 5 leave out 'or assists at'.

Perhaps I should begin by saying that there was some confusion in Committee when we discussed the same amendment. It arose because at the opening of our debate there the Minister said that she was willing to accept the amendment and the one before, which was to leave out "procures". The hon. Lady said:

"I was going to announce to the Committee that I would be pleased to accept Amendments 3 and 4."—[Official Report, Standing Committee B, 8th July 1975; c. 149.]

Our amendment then was Amendment No. 4. The Committee agreed to Amendment No. 3 and we went on to debate Amendment No. 4. We had a Division, because my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucesteshire, South (Mr. Cope) disagreed with the amendment, and the hon. Lady voted against it. Therefore, vote did not follow voice, and hence we are now debating the same amendment again.

There are precedents of vote not following voice. There was a famous person involved in 1970—as it happens, on a previous Bill to abolish hare coursing—when Mr. Speaker ruled that it was the practice of the House that a Member's vote must agree with his voice.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I have spent the last two or three minutes considering what you told us a few minutes ago. The more I have thought about the matter, the more I have felt that it would be right for me to raise this point of order while you are still in the Chair rather than to wait for your deputy to take your place.

We are in the odd situation that we are having a debate on an amendment that has been correctly moved and we cannot know when the debate will end. It may be that only two or three hon. Members on the Opposition benches will speak and perhaps one or two Labour Members. Of course, we hope that our side will be allowed to answer any speeches from the Labour benches. We shall wait with ears hanging open to hear the Government's reply to the debate. Therefore, it must be relevant to the discussion which has just started that we should have some idea whether it is likely that you will accept a closure motion in a short time, otherwise we cannot—

I have already ruled. This is a purely hypothetical matter. It is one of the discretions left to the Chair by the House. The Chair may decide to accept the closure motion after five minutes or five hours. It is a matter for the Chair.

We obviously do not want to go over ground that we went over in Committee. Although my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. More) had to curtail his classic speech in Committee, and would perhaps welcome an opportunity to expand it at some length, it might be unfair to the House if we went through the whole debate again. We had a reasonably full debate in Committee. Although it may seem that the leaving out or keeping in of two small words, such as "assists at", is of minor importance, it is a matter of considerable moment because the Bill is very short. The authors were no doubt at some pains to keep it short because they wish to see it go through the House in as short a time as possible. That was entirely up to them.

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I have given a little more thought to what Mr. Speaker ruled. I accept that ruling completely, but may I ask one further question? If there is to be acceptance in advance of a request for the closure, may we at least be assured that the Minister will be given sufficient time to make even the most cursory of answers to the debate?

This is entirely a matter for the discretion of the Chair and should not be pursued any further.

Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. We are in the difficulty that the Government have decided to move the lifting of the four o'clock rule. If they had adopted the other device of giving us a timetable, we should have known how to moderate speeches so that we might be assured of a winding-up speech from our Front Bench and a reply by the Minister. It would be of great assistance, because all the forthcoming debates are important, if we could have an indication of what the Chair has in mind for the provisional allocation of time for the separate debates.

That is not a point of order. It is entirely a matter for the discretion of the Chair.

Both this debate and the debate which has recently been the subject of a closure motion deal with very much the same topic. We were talking about words, definitions and interpretations and how important it was that the courts should know exactly what the words in the Bill mean. We have had the benefit of most expert advice dealing with the interpretation of words from my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton). We shall be discussing his report dealing with the preparation of legislation in a week's time. The opinion he gave was that some of the words in the Bill were in great need of interpretation. He felt that the courts would have difficulty in deciding exactly what the words meant.

This explains our emphasis in Committee upon the importance of the phrase "assists at". We would like to know why the Under-Secretary agreed at the beginning of our debate in Committee that these words were superfluous, together with the words "or procures" and then, when it came to the end of the debate, voted against the amendment.

We deserve an explanation about the Minister's change of mind. The hon. Lady had plenty of time before the debate to take the expert advice of her officials. Presumably it was their advice that these words were superfluous and should be omitted. We should know how it was that she came to vote against her own expression of judgment—whether there was an error or whether she had second thoughts or last-minute advice.

I am sorry to interrupt my hon. Friend, but he is doing me less than justice. I must point out that I spoke after the hon. Lady and before the vote was taken. I spoke against the amendment and I assumed that she was convinced by my speech. Certainly she had spoken one way, but after hearing my speech she had second thoughts and voted in the way I suggested that the whole of the Committee should vote. It is for the hon. Lady to explain, but I do not think my hon. Friend should imply that it was a bolt from the blue or a mistake.

I apologise to my hon. Friend. I have gone into the previous debate in some detail. While I had taken due note of the fact that his words had carried great weight, I am afraid that in the confusion of the moment today I omitted to mention this. A strong speech was made by my hon. Friend. Perhaps when the hon. Lady replies we shall learn whether it was my hon. Friend's words which made her change her mind, whether it was a mistake in the heat of the moment or whether she had last-minute advice from her officials.

I reinforce what my hon. Friend has said. The events in Committee were a great personal humiliation to me since I had moved this amendment, I thought, most persuasively. I thought that the hon. Lady was entirely in agreement with me. After the eloquent speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, South (Mr. Cope), she appears to have been completely swayed the other way, with the result that her vote did not follow her voice. That was true of at least one other Member on the Government side of the Committee.

3.15 p.m.

This raises the point whether public notice ought to be taken in the Chamber that such a thing happened in Committee. "Erskine May" says in Chapter XXIV, dealing with the system of committees:

"A member's vote in a standing committee must agree with his voice."

In the interests of proper debate in Committee and in this Chamber, I feel that this is a matter that should not be overlooked.

I put it to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that we ought, perhaps, to ask Mr. Speaker to come back to the Chair and publicly admonish the hon. Lady. Much as we respect her and much as we recognise that there was a genuine change of view after the eloquence of my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, South, the hon. Lady's action is surely a precedent that will bring our proceedings into confusion and contempt if no notice is taken of it. I know from the good spirit that prevailed in Committee that the hon. Lady will know that there is no personal—

Order. Perhaps I can help the hon. Gentleman, because the ruling in "Erskine May" on page 606 dealing with the procedure in Standing Committees specifically states that

"no appeal can be made to the Speaker regarding the decisions and rulings of a chairman of a standing committee."

Further to my point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I think our difficulty arises from the fact that we had no ruling from the Chairman of our Committee.

Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. May we know whether hon. Members who were on the Committee and who are now filibustering raised this issue decisively when it took place, what ruling they received from the Chair and why they are not prepared to accept the ruling?

Perhaps I can make the comment, which is well known in this House, that whatever may have taken place in Standing Committee can have no effect upon proceedings in this Chamber.

It is not in our gift to filibuster. We were told that the debate would proceed until four o'clock and that the Government intended that the rule should be suspended. This was announced several days ago.

My hon. Friend will also note that it is quite apparent that we now have a guillotine.

Can I remind—

Order. I do not know whether I heard the hon. Member for Yarmouth (Mr. Fell) aright when he referred to a guillotine motion. I hope that there was no suggestion of a criticism of Mr. Speaker or the Chair.

I do not see how there could be a criticism of Mr. Speaker. I am reminding my hon. Friend, because he has a lot to say and wants to say it as briefly as he can, in spite of the points of order raised by Labour members, that it looks now as though we are working to a timetable. If I should have used the word "timetable", I apologise and substitute that word.

This part of the debate is of an important technical nature. In Committee the hon. Lady said this about these words:

"In the light of the precedent of the 1911 Act it is difficult to believe that the inclusion of 'or assists at' in the Bill would create any difficulties of interpretation for the courts, but the amendment brings out the fact that the inclusion of 'or assists at' adds nothing to the substance of the Bill. The principal offence is adequately covered.

Procuring someone else to undertake the coursing of hares by dogs or to assist in it is covered by the provisions of Section 35 of the Magistrates Courts Act 1952 which provides that a person who aids, abets, counsels or procures the commission by another of a summary offence shall be guilty of the like offence.

"'Assists at' has the same source as 'procures', but it cannot be construed as synonymous with the principal offence. It only relates to the part played by people present in an ancillary capacity, such as stewards or attendants.

The 1952 Act will clearly apply to any person aiding or abetting a principal offence and, to this extent, the inclusion of 'assists at' can be said to be superfluous. There is authority for the proposition that people whose presence is found to be an encouragement to an offence are guilty of aiding and abetting. This description is readily applied to some spectators, although it is not our intention to catch innocent passersby, but the inclusion of 'or assists at' will make it easier successfully to prosecute some spectators. The Bill will only apply to people who have knowingly taken part or offered encouragement.

It seems unnecessary to strengthen the provisions of the 1952 Act and once the 1911 precedent for 'causes, procures or assists at' has been altered by the omission of 'procures' as the Committee has already agreed, there seems to be no good reason to retain 'assists at'. There are still ample powers to proceed against any person with real complicity in an offence."—[Official Report, Standing Commtitee B, 8th July 1975; c. 170–171.]

That was the hon. Lady's opinion, which had been arrived at after consultation with her advisers and officials. We are now owed an explanation of what happened and what the hon. Lady's intentions are. If she opposes the amendment we would like to know why she changed her mind.

Many hon. Members of the Opposition are unhappy about the situation, and I hope that the hon. Lady will answer our points at a later stage.