Banned wagon
A weekly survey of the things our rulers want to prohibit
A PECULIAR phenomenon of our times is the selective libertarian: he who screams blue murder at any attempt to outlaw his own favoured activities and products, yet is only too happy to join the crusade against somebody else's. Into this category must be placed Timothy Yeo, the Conservatives' spokesman on agriculture. Having made a name for himself in opposing the government's ban on beef on the bone, Mr Yeo has since distinguished himself by calling for instant bans on GM crops, French beef, and all foreign foodstuffs not grown strictly in accordance with the regulations that govern British farmers.
Even more worryingly, Mr Yeo's apparently libertarian stance on foxhunting has been undermined by his publication of a draft for a Protection of Animals Bill. Under its provisions, 15-year-olds would be forbidden to buy a pet hamster, circuses would be banned from importing animals, and pharmaceutical companies would be prevented from testing on animals any product deemed to be a cosmetic.
Worst of all, the Bill would appear to introduce a new principle into English law: that the police be free to prosecute anyone they feel 'likely' to cause an offence. You would not actually have to cause suffering to an animal to be marched off to the nearest cell: just be guilty of an offence 'likely to cause unnecessary suffering to an animal'. On the same principle, perhaps, we can now look forward to people being prosecuted for driving a car likely to break the speed limit and supping a drink likely to make you drunk and disorderly.
Presumably, Mr Yeo's Bill is intended to buy back a few of the votes that the Tory party fears it may have lost by standing up against the hunting ban. But reading through the Bill merely makes one wonder why Mr Yeo isn't against hunting himself.
Ross Clark
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