Countryside Alliance - love the countryside

Simon Hart comments on victory in the High Court: Many of you will be aware of all or part of the story of Tony Wright, the first huntsman to be prosecuted under the Hunting Act, but after his victory in the High Court it is worth repeating. Tony's story is very much the story of the demise of the Act.

A few weeks after the Hunting Act came into force in February 2005 Tony, huntsman of the Exmoor Foxhounds, took two hounds from the kennels near the village of Simonsbath to a meet at Prayway Head. He was setting in train a chain of events that would lead, four years later, to the High Court and the judgment that has brought the repeal of that law significantly closer.

Six months later he was served with a summons to face a private prosecution by the League Against Cruel Sports. A Magistrates Court in Barnstaple found him guilty, despite the fact that he was very publicly using just two hounds to flush foxes to a gun as he thought the law allowed. He appealed, and in December 2007 the Crown Court in Exeter threw out his conviction finding that he had been hunting legally and observing that the Hunting Act "is far from simple to interpret or to apply".
 

That was not, however, the end of the case. Two other courts were due to hear cases, including one against the Devon and Somerset Staghounds who also became party to the judgment, and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) appealed to try and clarify some of the confusion. The appeal reached the High Court before Christmas where the CPS argued that it should be for people like Tony carrying out exempt hunting to prove that they were hunting legally and that the mere act of searching for a mammal should be included in the offence of 'hunting'.
 

Yesterday the High Court rejected that appeal and upheld the judgment that acquitted Tony Wright. In legal terms the judgment limits the definition of 'hunting' to the pursuit of a mammal with dogs; it upholds the presumption of innocence for people involved in legal hunting by putting the burden of proof on the prosecution to prove that any hunting is illegal; and it confirms that 'hunting' can only be intentional - you cannot hunt by accident.
 

In practical terms the ruling will make the prosecution of those involved in exempt hunting much more difficult. The CPS argued in court that if it lost this appeal "prosecutions under the 2004 Act would rarely be viable". Only three hunts have been successfully prosecuted since the Act came into force in 2005, and 5 people connected to them have been convicted. If prosecutors do not regard the Act as viable then there may now be even fewer cases. The police, meanwhile, will be left wondering how to enforce the unenforceable.
 

In political terms the judgment brought a barrage of comment on the failure of the Hunting Act and the need for repeal headed by powerful editorials in the Times and the Telegraph.
 

Four years of confusion have led politicians of all parties to realise that, whatever their views on hunting, the Hunting Act has failed. Repeal of the Act has moved from a possibility to a probability and it is now incumbent on all of us to follow Tony's lead and do our part in the final push towards repeal. There is a maximum of 483 days to the next election and in that time no-one must be left in any doubt of our commitment, or of the unarguable case for repeal.
 

The Act must be repealed so that when Tony Wright takes the Exmoor hounds to Prayway Head in two years time he does not have to worry about whether his hunting is legal, whether there is an animal rights activist covertly filming him, or whether he will face another vindictive prosecution.