Hywel Williams
Main Page: Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru - Arfon)Department Debates - View all Hywel Williams's debates with the Attorney General
(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Hywel Williams (in the Chair)
Order. There are 10 right hon. and hon. Members seeking to catch my eye. I intend to start the winding-up speeches at 10.40 am, so I appeal to right hon. and hon. Members to keep their speeches brief, at about four minutes please—but it is, of course, up to their own discretion—and for interventions to be short and to the point.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
Bore da. Mae’n bleser gwasanethu o dan eich cadeiryddiaeth am y tro cyntaf, Mr Williams. It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I shall be uncharacteristically brief because a number of others want to speak.
The hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) said that he was not going to use the H-word this morning, but he did not say what it meant. May I suggest that it possibly means hypocrisy? We are asked to believe that the apostles of cruelty, who for many years have campaigned in the House to keep gratuitous killing as part of hunting, now want to be compassionate to animals, and to ensure that the animal societies have enough money to prosecute cases. That is not convincing.
I am delighted, however, to see that the hon. Gentleman has broken cover. During his election campaign, he described himself as a chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, but he did not go into the details of his involvement in campaigning in this House on one subject alone that the Countryside Alliance took up: halting the great reform in animal welfare that is the stopping the killing of animals for fun and amusement.
I speak from a constituency that had an MP, Peter Freeman, who introduced a Bill in 1935 to ban hunting with dogs. It took a long time for Parliament to agree that the practice was unacceptable, along with bear-baiting and other barbarous activities that use animals as objects for sport and entertainment, but we have got that far, and those who lost that debate are coming back now and trying to refight the battle by attacking the splendid work of the RSPCA. It was absolutely right to prosecute—the law had been broken.
If the hon. Gentleman wants to save the charity money so that it can concentrate on its other work, he should persuade his friends to stop breaking the law. As the Hunting Bill went through the House, he and others sought to introduce amendments, which Members generously accepted, saying that perhaps they were genuine or there were special conditions here. All kinds of loophole were put into the law, which hunters have since used every possible means to exploit. We need another Bill. We need to define what the will of the population of this country is, and it is to take the gratuitous cruelty out of hunting. There is no objection to people dressing up and charging around the countryside following a trail, if they want to.
Hywel Williams (in the Chair)
Order. Will the hon. Gentleman address the subject of the debate, which is the role of the RSPCA in prosecutions?
Paul Flynn
The RSPCA is a charity with a splendid record of investigating cruelty against animals. We have come to a situation—I will conclude on this point—where a case has drawn attention because of a particular prosecution involving high-profile people, including the Prime Minister of the land, who is a member of the hunt, and all we have today is the malice and spite of the pro-hunting lobby fighting again. Let them have a debate in this House to restore hunting as it was in the past. They cannot do that because they know they lack a majority, as people of good will and sense in their own party also want to see hunting continue to be banned. That ban must be strengthened and reinforced.
Simon Hart
I emphasise that nowhere in any of my comments have I ever suggested that the RSPCA should not be allowed to prosecute. The hon. Lady is misleading the House by suggesting that that is what I am recommending. I am recommending that the process needs to be reviewed, not the policy.
Hywel Williams (in the Chair)
Order. I think I heard the hon. Gentleman say that the hon. Lady was misleading the House. She certainly was not, or I would have told her so.
Simon Hart
If I did, I did so in error. I know that the hon. Lady will take my comments in the spirit in which they were intended.
Caroline Lucas
The hon. Lady is right: the RSPCA began that review before the Charity Commission mentioned anything.
I welcome the opportunity both to put on the record my understanding of how the Heythrop hunt prosecution and other prosecutions demonstrably further the pursuit of the RSPCA’s charitable objectives, and to represent the large number of constituents who have written to me, as to many hon. Members, about the importance of protecting the RSPCA’s important legal work.
Hywel Williams (in the Chair)
We need to start the winding-up speeches at 10.40 am. I call Cheryl Gillan—briefly.