Members of the public may ask questions or make statements at this meeting if they have given notice and provided the text to Barry Khan, Assistant Chief Executive Legal and Democratic Services – email: barry.khan@northyorks.gov.uk or in writing to Barry Khan, Assistant Chief Executive Legal and Democratic Services, County Hall, Northallerton DL7 8AD by midday on Friday, 14 July 2023. Each speaker should limit themselves to 3 minutes on any item.
If you are exercising your right to speak at this meeting, but do not wish to be recorded, please inform the Chairman who will instruct anyone who may be taking a recording to cease while you speak.
Minutes:
There were five public questions, as follows:
The following public question was submitted by Dr Paul M Hildreth and read out at the meeting:
Councillor Dadd recently said that he wasn't aware of any formalised trail hunting taking place on North Yorkshire council owned land. There are 13 Hunts located across North Yorkshire. Does he therefore believe that these hunts avoid crossing roads, bridleways, disused railway lines?
The following public question was submitted by Hugh Meynell and read out at the meeting:
With the cubbing season less than a month away, organised rural crime gangs are poised ready to hunt and kill foxes with hounds… intentionally and illegally. Hunts across North Yorkshire routinely use the myth of ‘Trail Hunting’ as a smoke screen for these wildlife crimes.
Speaking from experience as an activist on the front line regularly witnessing illegal fox hunting and crimes against wildlife across North Yorkshire, I would ask you all to please consider the following observations and questions regarding the smoke screen that is trail hunting:
1) If legally trial hunting with hounds, following a pre laid scent trail, why are terrier men on quad bikes, equipped with spades and terriers present and active at every hunt meet throughout the season?
2) If legally trail hunting why are hounds regularly cast into thick, impenetrable coverts such as Miscanthus grass, black thorn or gorse, where it is impossible to lay a trail for hounds to follow.
3) If legally trail hunting why would supposedly well laid trails so often cross busy public highways, railway lines and/or private property and gardens putting the hounds, livestock, pets and the general public at risk of serious injury or worse.
4) Why do the hunts respective huntsmen actively encourage and ‘hunt on’ their hounds with horn and voice calls. Especially when clearly not following a scent trail, instead pursuing the line of a fox, hounds in full cry obviously and blatantly illegally hunting? Studies have shown the horror and distress that a fox suffers when accidentally or indeed purposely pursued by hounds.
5) Why, if following a perfectly legal, pre laid trail do Huntsmen, hunt staff, terrier men and hunt supporters act with such extreme animosity towards peaceful, non-violent monitors, saboteurs and indeed concerned members of the public. Why, if trail hunting within the law use horses as weapons, Illegally block roads with vehicles and/or horses. Why threaten, abuse and sadly more frequently do the hunts and their supporters resort to abuse and physical violence? If acting within the law what are they trying to hide?
Trail hunting with hounds is a scam, a smoke screen. Cover to continue to commit wildlife crimes and to intentionally and illegally hunt foxes contrary to Section 1 of the Hunting Act 2004.
Thank you
The following public question was read out by Richard Bedford of Unite the Union:
My name Richard Bedford, Regional Coordinating Officer Unite the Union I have responsibility for representing Unite members at Urbaser on the Selby waste management contract.
Our question is to the Council and is; Unite are asking, on behalf of its membership at Urbaser, who operate Selby Waste management contract, that the council take urgent steps to intervene and instruct Urbaser management to engage in positive discussions with Unite representatives to resolve the current dispute by way of enhancing the existing offer that has been rejected by the workforce by way of the agreed collective bargaining process?
Our request to the council is based upon the fact that our membership, and I stress that they do not want to strike, but have been left with no choice, because of the wages they are paid, which are some of lowest in the country. The disruption caused to the public is entirely the fault of Urbaser.
The dispute is a result of the workers rejecting a (percentage) pay offer who are on some of lowest rates in the country for their roles. Bin loaders and grounds workers are paid just £10.64 an hour and refuse lorry drivers, who require an HGV license, are paid just £12.51 an hour.
It is unacceptable that Urbaser thinks it can get away with paying its workers such astonishingly low wages.
North Yorkshire council should not be allowing such exploitative pay for work that is by its nature dirty, heavy and unpleasant. Unite is absolutely focused on defending and improving our members’ jobs, pay and conditions and Urbaser’s Selby workforce will receive the union’s unflinching support.
It should also be noted that Urbaser at the Welwyn Hatfield Council contract awarded a 13.5% increase in base pay with a commitment to set up a working party within two months to work together on introduction of sick pay for our members and an overtime premium.
The strikes are impacting bin collection, street cleaning and road sweeping services in Selby and will intensify if the dispute is not resolved.
Our members and families are faced with in work poverty and are having to make unacceptable life choices due to the already low rates and now being proposed to take a real terms pay cut moving forward with a below inflation increase.
Our members are all local council tax payers and the vested interest, commitment and dedication they show in terms of contract performance is second to none. They are proud of their local area and welcome being part of the New North Yorkshire Council.
Indeed the Government itself have recognised that rates of pay need to increase and have increased the Nationally Living Wage by 9.7% (now £10.42).
Our members claim is not fuelled by greed, but by the necessity to earn enough to buy the basics and looking at the rate of Inflation, which defied expectations by either not coming down as quickly as forecast or by not falling at all.
RPI is at 11.3% is down slightly but remains historically high. CPI remains at 8.7%. So-called ‘core’ inflation is rising at record levels. Interest rate rises are an aspect of this, affecting mortgage interest payments and flowing through to rents and prices for other services. Indeed, Inflation is higher for people on low incomes.
ONS analysis in 2014 showed how changing prices have different effects on the inflation rates faced by people on low and high incomes because of variations in the goods and services they buy.
This highlighted that people living in poverty spend a much higher proportion of their income on food, energy and housing. So the poorest fifth of the population experienced a higher rate of inflation than the rest of the country in much of the last 20 years.
We continue to request constructive dialogue with Urbaser but nothing is forthcoming as they continue to dig their heels in and covering striking workers by paying premium payments to employees working overtime and playing catch up.
One serious incident has already occurred on the picket line that resulted in a serious injury!
Again we request that you contact Urbaser to engage in constructive dialogue with us to resolve.
Councillor Greg White provided the following response:
I was sorry to hear about the incident to the individual and their serious injury, and I certainly wish them a speedy recovery. I have been advised the police conducted an investigation at the time and are not taking any further action.
The Council recognises and respects pay negotiations between Urbaser and its staff are a matter for Urbaser to progress and resolve. The Council encourages both parties to engage in positive discussion to the best interest of all stakeholders.
Looking further ahead, and with the decision to bring the contract back in-house from April 2024, the Council continues to work closely with Urbaser and, where appropriate, engage directly with the workforce. There are some differences in wages between Urbaser and what the Council currently pay, they aren’t huge but it gets complicated by the arrangements for overtime etc. I really don’t want to get involved in that discussion here today, but we urge them to sit down, talk about it and get it sorted thank you.
The following public question was submitted by Sue Hawthornthwaite and read out at the meeting:
If this proposal is passed, how do the hunts intend to ensure that their hounds - and terrier men - do not stray on to council land in pursuit of a fox - will they break the habit of a lifetime and call the hounds back, and who will enforce this, and how?
The following public statement was submitted by Rob Williams and read out at the meeting:
With the introduction of the hunting act that came into force in February of 2005,we saw hunts turn to a new form of hunting, this was re-branded as trail hunting. The idea of trail hunting was to replicate actual pre ban hunting as closely as possible, hoping that at some point a repeal would take place. This would then allow hunts to go back to Fox hunting as it was prior to the ban. Today Fox hunts continue to train hounds in exactly the same way they always have, even using Fox urine or an artificial equivalent as a scent marker when laying trails and even very unwisely laying these trails through areas where there is a high probability that a Fox will be. Hunts continue today to lay trails and send hounds through areas of scrub, gorse, crops, small spinneys, large areas of woodland and extremely thick briers all in my opinion very foolish and negligent, also you have to ask yourself with regards to large areas of briers and Brambles how is it physically possible to take a trail through such inhospitable dense foliage, sadly i believe this to be completely deliberate and has only one aim in mind, that being to flush a fox and then illegally hunt it.
At this point I'd like to draw your attention to the 573 successful prosecutions that have taken place between 2005 and 2021 and more after that with each passing season. These successful prosecutions clearly and legally in law show that hunts are using loopholes in the 2004 hunting act to circumnavigate and cynically break the law time and time again and this shows that trail hunting is nothing more than a smokescreen for the actual hunting of Foxes with hounds.
In August 2020 a series of training webinars which showed senior figures from the Master Of Fox Hounds Association, hunting’s governing body at the time and the Countryside Alliance were caught on camera, seeming to admit that trail hunting is a smokescreen for the chasing and killing of foxes. These two quotes are taken word for word from those webinars which can easily be found online, a senior figure from within the Master Of Fox Hounds Association said at the webinar "It's a lot easier to create a smokescreen if you've got more than one trail layer operating and that is what it's all about, trying to portray to the people watching that your going about your legitimate business". The second quote comes from the Countryside Alliance police liaison officer "Now you know more about hunting than the saboteurs and courts will know but what it will do is create the smokescreen or the element of doubt that we haven't deliberately hunted a fox, so if nothing else you need to record that and it will help us provide a defence to huntsmen" These webinars were leaked to the media, TV considered the webinars to be so significant than they aired a piece on national television and many national newspapers covered the topic discussed in the webinars, these leaked webinars must have clearly laid the seeds of doubt because in November the following year the National Trust made the voted decision to ban all trail hunting on its land, this was followed by suspensions from Forestry England, Lake District National Park and United Utilities who have all at this current time come to the conclusion that trail hunting is ambiguous at best and at worst blatantly illegal and deceitful, a definite shame on the modern society we live in.
Thank you for listening to my statement about why trail hunting should be banned on council land, it is a very brief and nowhere near as adept as I'd like, so much more could be said given the extremely serious nature of wildlife crime, I encourage all those who seek the truth about trail hunting to do some research, go online watch the webinars ,see the insurmountable evidence that shows hunts up and down this land are using trail hunting as a clear smokescreen to evade the law, once again the numerous prosecutions, video evidence and witness statements speak volumes about trail hunting and clearly show it is nothing more than a ruse, ploy and scheme intended to blatantly deceive the law of this land. Thank you for listening to my statement.
Councillor Gareth Dadd provided the following response:
I'm going to first of all deal with the first question that was submitted on behalf of Dr Hildreth. He suggested that, and that I'm summarizing very much now, that hunts use roads, bridle ways, disused railway lines and the likes. I'm sure I'm referenced back in the statement I made in response to Councillor Maw at the last full council meeting. I'm sure Dr Hildreth will be aware I was referring to property and green land, if you like, rather than common infrastructure which is open to all. Our roads and bridle ways are open to all and my personal view is that that should remain the case without prejudicing any debate that will come before this Chamber. I will lump if you like the three further questions together. I don't think there was any direct questions being posed, more a narrative and comment around the general issues. I'm not as I said a moment ago wishing to prejudice any debate that will come to this Chamber as I said other than I will say I do believe we need further advice on how, if the Chamber was minded to implement the ban, it could be enforced and the difficulties that that could pose.