Labour MP and angling spokesman, Martin Salter, has fallen foul of his own promises over the Government’s Hunting Bill. At the end of last year Mr Salter said the Bill set unfortunate precedents for angling and that “in my judgements those tests (utility and cruelty) could easily be used against lots of other sports”. He vowed to delete that section of the Bill but last week welcomed news that Labour backbenchers had “tightened up” the tests, potentially increasing the threat to fishing.
Charles Jardine, Director of the Countryside Alliance Campaign for Angling said: “Martin Salter has claimed ‘the utility test can only be applied to forms of pest control’ which is completely misleading. The concerns about this Bill, as he himself has highlighted, are that it would set a precedent that could be very dangerous for angling. The amendments have just made the situation worse.
“We all know that groups like Pisces and PETA are determined to see angling banned and RSPCA Director General, Jackie Ballard, has recently made her dislike of coarse fishing clear. Animal rights campaigners will seek to have the same tests applied to fishing that are proposed for hunting, which would see most of our sport banned. Only angling that could show ‘it is pest control’ would pass the tests. It won’t happen tomorrow but these people will never stop. This is about securing angling for our children and our children’s children”.
Notes:
Section 8 of the Hunting Bill as amended:
8 – Tests for registration: utility and least suffering(1)The test for registration in respect of proposed hunting of wild mammals is that it is pest control.
(1A) For the purposes of subsection (1) hunting is pest control if and only if it is likely to make a significant contribution to the prevention or reduction of serious damage which the wild mammals to be hunted would otherwise cause to:
- livestock
- game birds or wild birds (within the meaning of section 27 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 (c. 69)
- food for livestock
- crops (including vegetables and fruit)
- growing timber
- fisheries
- other property, or
- the biological diversity of an area (within the meaning of the United Nations Environmental Programme Convention on Biological Diversity of 1992).
The second test for registration in respect of proposed hunting of wild mammals is that it is likely to cause significantly less pain, suffering or distress to the wild mammals to be hunted than would be likely to be caused by any other reasonably available method of achieving the contribution mentioned in subsection (1).
