Animal Welfare Bill

I have not had the privilege of participating in this Bill before, and I hope your Lordships will forgive a minor intervention. I feel concerned not only about the amendment, but about the Bill as a whole. There seems to be a general desire nowadays in everything, particularly with the European Community and with the Government, to—what might be described as—interfere with everyone. I have not found any particular reason to think that it is necessary to put controls on people who rear pheasants. I have lived in the country all my life, and I have been a shooter, although I do not do it any more. One enjoys the countryside, but one is conscious of the fact that more and more legislators—both the Government and the European Union—are putting clamps on people and telling them what to do. They must do this or that. Even my noble friend Lord Peel says that there must be more research. That is the sort of shorthand that we use when we want to put something on the backburner. I wonder whether we are overdoing all this. What is the advantage of putting all these restrictions and controls on people? Merely that those involved will have to look more and more to what the statute says about what they are allowed to do and what they are not allowed to do. Nowadays, if you kill pheasants you have to abide by certain regulations on what you do and do not do. Now it occurs, particularly in the amendment, that if you are going to rear birds they must be in a certain area and they must be subject to certain restrictions. I fear that this is a ghastly intrusion into people’s lives for no benefit at all. I hope that we will resist that temptation.