COUNTRYSIDE: The phoney war continues
Sometimes the good guys don’t lose
It will be an awful shock to the Queen when one day she is handed her annual oration from the government and finds that hunting is not mentioned. The hunting issue now has so many layers and so much baggage that students of the great debate make candidate selection junkies, like my dear friend ‘the snake’, look like normal functioning members of society. The pace of change is not exactly rapid as can be seen from Her Majesty’s last three offerings:
Queen’s Speech 2000 -2001; ‘A Bill will be introduced to enable a free vote to take place on the future of hunting with dogs’.Queen’s Speech 2001 -2002; ‘We will enable a free vote on the future of hunting with dogs’.
Queen’s Speech 2002 - 2003; ‘A Bill will be introduced to enable Parliament to reach a conclusion on hunting with dogs’.
So there we have it — after five and a half years of Labour government we have the word conclusion. The clever money, however, is on continued stalemate and I would like to bet that Mr. Blair will face the electorate in 2005/6 with as little progress on hunting legislation as there will be on Euro entry. Both issues require hard decisions to be taken, one way or the other, so new Labour will continue to leave them well out in the long grass. Strangely hunting’s deliverance will almost certainly come from the couple of hundred rabidly prejudiced Labour backbenchers who see the banning of hunting as comparable with the abolition of hereditary peers in the House of Lords (something they have similarly still failed to achieve) in the socialist struggle. So ignorant are this rabble that they will almost certainly amend any ‘compromise’ proposals brought forward in Alun Michael’s long awaited draft legislation. Mr. Michael has become increasingly touchy, and his Press Office decreasingly vocal, in the last few weeks as he has struggled with the Gordian knot that has become his responsibility. Mr Michael must rank high amongst masochistic politicians. Coming back from a Celtic kicking in Cardiff his reward is the even less appealing job of solving the political nightmare of hunting. Surely Mr. Michael’s reward will come before he reaches heaven — if ever there was a Northern Ireland Secretary in training this is the man.
There has been much talk about the Parliament Act and the government’s commitment to use it. Indeed the anti-hunt movement claim that this commitment alongside the promise in the Queen’s Speech to ‘reach a conclusion’ on hunting with dogs means that the a government Bill heavily amended by the Commons to create a total ban on hunting will be forced through using the Parliament Act. The government has, however, already shown its verbal dexterity in this long campaign. It has, for instance, claimed to have fulfilled its 1997 manifesto commitment as there was a ‘free vote on hunting with dogs’ although it did not provide time for that vote to become law. For a total ban to become law the government would have to bring forward an amended Bill as its own at the beginning of the next Parliamentary session after the seemingly unavoidable deadlock between Commons and Lords in this one. A Bill thus amended to ban hunting could not meet the government’s own requirement that any legislation be based on ‘principle and evidence’ and it would thus have every justification for refusing to use the Parliament Act to turn an amended Bill into law.
There are many who consider that this scenario is hopelessly optimistic and that Labour will end up bowing to back bench pressure and pushing through a total ban despite all the prevarication and pretty words. But if they were intent on that course one has to ask why they have gone through so much complicated and time consuming fudging in the last 5 years when they could simply have used the Parliament Act to put the Foster Bill, or their own options Bill onto the statute book. The answer is the rural community is about the only serious opposition that New Labour face, and that includes the official one which merely alternates between collusion and constipation. Mr Blair knows that any cause which can bring over 400,000 to a demonstration will have a hard core of support willing and able to take their protest beyond peaceful demonstration into a classic campaign of civil disobedience.
The fuel protesters, despite being a disparate and disorganised bunch with no clearly defined aims and riven by ego-driven splits brought the country to a standstill. The hunting lobby has already shown the sort of brilliant organisational ability and political nous which the Prime Minister is rightly wary of confronting. The anti-hunting groups hold little political threat to Labour. The League Against Cruel Sports is suffering a membership crisis with less than 8,000 subscribers. The RSPCA has only 47,000 members and relies on charitable donations and legacies which may be less forthcoming if their laughable new Director General, the dreadful Jackie Ballard, tries to revenge her defeat at the hands of Somerset Staghunters at the 2001 election by concentrating the RSPCA’s efforts ever more wastefully on the anti-hunting campaign. Opinion polls — those guide dogs of New Labour policy — now show no majority amongst a weary public for a ban on hunting. The last NOP poll showed only 43% backing a complete ban when asked whether their preferred option was the status quo, regulated hunting or a ban. The only thing that the anti lobby has which the Labour party wants is cash. They famously coughed up £1 million before the 1997 election to buy a place in Labour’s manifesto, and the party’s finances are certainly in a fairly desperate state at present, but a cool million here or there to direct government policy is far more difficult since Ecclestone et al.
So the government will avoid the certain backlash which would result from a complete ban and produce a fudged Bill which looks, from some fairly obvious press briefing, as though it will be based around local tribunals. This idea is, of course, completely illogical — it doesn’t make a lot of difference to a fox whether he is in Leicestershire or Lancashire when the lead hound nails him — but it would allow the government to pass the buck. This solution seems sure to be unacceptable to the anti hunt lobby and the legislation is therefore likely to be so heavily amended by the Commons that the Lords will reject it and the government will refuse to adopt it and use the Parliament Act.
Thus ‘a Bill will be introduced’ and the ‘conclusion’ will be that a solution to the whole debate is not forthcoming. Hunting will continue, as will the Private Member’s Bills, but the government will be able to say, with justification, that it offered a solution which was rejected and will therefore not make time for a PMB to become law. Wishful thinking? Perhaps, but certainly not an inconceivable scenario.
Oscar, an ex-farmer, writes The Last Ditch ERO’s rural affairs column
The Last Ditch, November 21, 2002 11:57 PM