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Repeal of the Hunting Act Print E-mail
Thursday, 20 November 2008
Repeal is the only answer Countryside Alliance Chief Executive Simon Hart explains why repeal of the Hunting Act is the only option: You might have missed it but last week saw another significant landmark in the campaign for the repeal of the Hunting Act. Just as, shortly after the Act was passed, then Labour MP Peter Bradley’s statement that the Hunting Act was about “class war” was an admission of something that we had known for a very long time, another Labour MP has now confessed.
John McDonnell, MP for Hayes and Harlington and Chair of the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs, has owned up to the least surprising error of the decade. The Hunting Act, he says: “took a long time. There was a lot of discussion. We thought we got it right, but we clearly haven’t in this instance”.
 
So there we are. 700 hours of parliamentary time, a ‘totemic’ issue for the Labour party and the use of the Parliament Acts has got us, just three and a half years later, to a point where even the Act’s most vociferous supporters are admitting that it doesn’t work. ‘We told you so’, is not exactly original but what else is there to say?
 
Mr McDonnell’s interview on Radio 4’s Farming Today programme also highlighted a widening schism within the anti-hunting movement. The League Against Cruel Sports continues to argue that the Act is clear and enforceable, whilst Mr McDonnell and other organisations are now admitting that it is a bad law. They now want the Act amended, which in parliamentary terms is rather like the Pharaohs viewing the finished pyramids and deciding they would prefer them square.
 
“ It is in the interests of animal welfare, the economy, the police, field sportsmen of every kind, Parliament and the wider community to rectify the situation, sooner, not later”
In a strange way, in agreeing that the law is flawed, we are now closer to Mr McDonnell than he is to the League Against Cruel Sports. They, of course, wrote the legislation and campaigned for it for decades so will be the last to abandon ship. It will be interesting to see how long it takes before they too have to admit that the Hunting Act has failed.
 
At times like these it might seem unkind to remind everyone what the Acts proponents said during its passage through Parliament all those years ago. In the case of the ex-Minister Alun Michael, however, it is worth it:
 
“I have the responsibility of producing something that will be good law, stand the test of time, something that we won't have to come back in order to correct or amend in a few months' time. I believe I can do that.”
 
It would be only fair to Mr Michael and all the others who were involved in the ludicrous parliamentary campaign which produced this law to put it, and them, out of their misery. It is in the interests of animal welfare, the economy, the police, field sportsmen of every kind, Parliament and the wider community to rectify the situation, sooner, not later.
 
There is only one answer to the Hunting Act and that is repeal.

Download the Countryside Alliance's Case for Repeal document here. This document provides a concise, clear and simple explanation of why the Hunting Act has to go.

For readers with a Facebook account, please sign up to our “Repeal the Hunting Act” group, which gathered over 800 members in its first 24 hours alone. For those not on Facebook, we will be unveiling a Repeal Roll of Honour shortly.
 

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