Report of Committee of Inquiry Into Hunting with Dogs in England &Wales
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Report of Committee of Inquiry into Hunting with Dogs in England &Wales 9th June 2000 Printed in the UK by The Stationery Office Limited On behalf of the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office Dd 5067685 6/00 521462 19585 published by The Stationery Office Report of Committee of Inquiry into Hunting with Dogs in England &Wales CONTENTS Letter from The Rt. Hon Jack Straw MP ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 1.INTRODUCTION 2.HUNTING 3.HUNTING AND THE RURAL ECONOMY 4.SOCIAL AND CULTURAL ASPECTS 5.POPULATION MANAGEMENT AND CONTROL 6.ANIMAL WELFARE 7.MANAGEMENT AND CONSERVATION OF HABITAT AND OTHER WILDLIFE 8.DRAG AND BLOODHOUND HUNTING 9.PRACTICAL ASPECTS OF HUNTING: THE CONCERNS 10.IMPLEMENTING A BAN APPENDICES 1.Organisations which submitted written evidence, first round 2. Organisations which submitted written evidence, second round 3. Analysis of written evidence submitted by individuals 4.Details of commissioned research 5.Visits undertaken by the Committee 6.Role, rules and recommendations of the Masters' Associations and other organisations 7.A statistical account of hunting in England and Wales 8.Legal provisions relevant to the scope of the Inquiry 9.The international perspective 10.List of abbreviations Report of Committee of Inquiry into Hunting with Dogs in England &Wales The Rt. Hon Jack Straw MP Secretary of State for the Home Department 50 Queen Anne's Gate London SW1A 0AA 9 June 2000 You appointed us in December 1999 to carry out an inquiry into hunting with dogs, with the following terms of reference: "To inquire into: the practical aspects of different types of hunting with dogs and its impact on the rural economy, agriculture and pest control, the social and cultural life of the countryside, the management and conservation of wildlife, and animal welfare in particular areas of England and Wales; the consequences for these issues of any ban on hunting with dogs; and how any ban might be implemented. To report the findings to the Secretary of State for the Home Department." We now have pleasure in enclosing our report. Without doubt, conducting the inquiry has been a challenging experience. This is a complex issue that is full of paradoxes. We were helped by the terms of reference, which asked us to concentrate on the factual and analytical background to hunting. We have addressed those issues and we have not attempted to answer the question of whether or not hunting should be banned. In particular, we have not sought to find a compromise solution, which we regarded as outside our terms of reference. The result is a report that might appear long on analysis and short on solutions. But we believe that it will help to inform the debate that will follow the publication of our report. We have travelled widely throughout England and Wales and listened to many people. We were left in no doubt about the sensitivity of the issue or the passion that it arouses. We have sought to conduct the inquiry in a very open manner. We have made as much as possible of our evidence available on the inquiry website. Our oral evidence sessions have been in public and transcripts have also been posted on the website as quickly as possible. We commissioned research papers, which were made available in draft and discussed at seminars, also open to the public. In the process we believe that we have gone some way to reach a wider agreement about the analysis of the issues, although some important differences remain. Some of these differences could be narrowed further with more research conducted over a longer time period. Others are likely to remain because they are not capable of being resolved in this way. We would like to record our thanks to the staff of the Committee. They have worked tirelessly against very tight deadlines to cope with the huge amount of material we received, to prepare it for publication on the website and to organise a complex series of visits, oral evidence and seminars. In particular, we would like to recognise the important role of Brian Caffarey, the Secretary to the Committee. We have only been able to complete our task within the tight timetable given to us because of Brian's planning and organisational strengths, his ability to communicate quickly and sensitively with people on all sides of this debate and because of his drafting skills. LORD BURNS (Chairman) DR. VICTORIA EDWARDS PROFESSOR SIR JOHN MARSH LORD SOULSBY OF SWAFFHAM PRIOR PROFESSOR MICHAEL WINTER Report of Committee of Inquiry into Hunting with Dogs in England &Wales Acknowledgements We would like to thank all those who helped us in our inquiry, including all the organisations and individuals who submitted evidence to us. We are particularly grateful to representatives of the Countryside Alliance and Deadline 2000, the hunts and other groups whom we visited, the research teams, participants at our seminars, the Home Office, Professor David Macdonald and Mr Michael Fordham, who assisted us, respectively, on scientific and legal matters and our stenographer, Cheryl Slater. Footnotes References such as "MDHA 1" refer to ‘first round’ evidence. References such as "IFAW 2" refer to ‘second round’ evidence. Other details refer to the paragraph numbers in the evidence unless otherwise stated. CD Rom The CD Rom in the back cover of this Report contains the following material: terms of reference; letter of 19 January 2000 inviting ‘first round’ evidence; evidence submitted by the main organisations and a number of individuals; details of visits made by the Committee; details of the research commissioned by the Inquiry; draft research reports; transcripts of the seminars held to discuss the draft research reports; final research reports; transcript of a seminar on the legal aspects of implementing a ban, plus supporting papers; notes of 'by invitation' meetings held with supporters of the Countryside Alliance and Deadline 2000; letter of 17 April 2000 inviting ‘second round’ evidence; all the responses received to that invitation; and the Committee’s report. Report of Committee of Inquiry into Hunting with Dogs in England &Wales SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION 1 The Committee was asked to inquire into the practical aspects of different types of hunting with dogs and its impact on the rural economy, agriculture and pest control, the social and cultural life of the countryside, the management and conservation of wildlife, and animal welfare in particular areas of England and Wales; the consequences for these issues of any ban on hunting with dogs; and how any ban might be implemented. 2 We were asked to focus on the hunting with dogs of foxes, deer, hares and mink. The use of dogs solely to locate or retrieve quarry was excluded from our terms of reference. We were not asked to recommend whether hunting should be banned. Nor were we asked to consider moral or ethical issues. 3 The Committee gathered information through an open process of written and oral evidence, research reports, seminars, meetings and visits. Chapter 2 HUNTING 4 Hunting with dogs is a diverse activity. 5 There are about 200 registered packs of hounds (mainly foxhounds but also some harriers) in England and Wales which hunt foxes, plus a number of unregistered packs in Wales. Most packs have mounted followers but a number, including the Fell packs in Cumbria and the footpacks in Wales, are followed on foot only. The Welsh gunpacks use dogs to flush foxes to waiting guns. 6 The registered packs are estimated to kill some 21,000-25,000 foxes a year. About 40% of the foxes killed by the registered packs are killed in the autumn/cub hunting season. In Wales and other upland areas, a high proportion of foxes are dug out, using terriers, and shot. Outside the registered packs, many more foxes are dug out and shot or are killed by people using lurchers or other "long dogs". Some of these activities are carried out by farmers, landowners and gamekeepers. Others involve trespass. 7 There are three registered staghound packs in the Devon and Somerset area. They kill about 160 red deer a year in total, excluding injured deer which they dispatch. This probably represents about 15% of the numbers which need to be culled in the area to maintain a stable population. 8 There are about a hundred registered packs of hounds (beagles, bassets and harriers) which hunt hares. They kill about 1,650 hares a season, a very small percentage of the number killed by shooting. 9 There are some 24 registered hare coursing clubs, which kill about 250 hares a year in total, and a small number of other unregistered clubs. But there is a good deal of illegal hunting/coursing in some areas. 10 The 20 minkhound packs kill somewhere between 400 - 1,400 mink a season. The number is thought to be considerably smaller than that killed by trapping and shooting. Chapter 3 HUNTING AND THE RURAL ECONOMY 11 Hunting, especially in its organised form, needs to be seen in a wider economic and social context. The population of rural areas is increasing and new service industries have been established. But agriculture has been in serious decline, and the new jobs tend to be in less remote areas. 12 There is a complex set of relationships between hunting and a diverse range of other economic activities, mostly in rural areas, and largely horse-related, that either directly serve hunting or are in some way dependent on it. 13 There have been widely varying estimates given in recent years for the loss of jobs which would result from a ban on hunting. 14 The research which we commissioned attempted to estimate the jobs (full-time equivalents, FTEs) which currently depend on hunting, either directly or indirectly.