Lords bid to save hunting
The House of Lords will today begin debating the Hunting Bill, which seeks to end hunting with hounds in England and Wales.
Peers have rejected the Bill once, but this time are likely to try to amend it to reflect an earlier Government proposal to ban stag and hare hunting, but permit fox hunting on a license basis subject to cruelty and necessity tests.
This proposal, brought forward in 2002 by Rural Affairs Minister Alun Michael, was dropped after widespread opposition from anti-hunt MPs and they are unlikely to be swayed by any compromise.
The chief executive of the League Against Cruel Sports, Douglas Batchelor, said: “[The amendments are] a desperate attempt to retain their grotesque sport, pro-hunt peers are attempting to portray themselves as being politically reasonable.
“However, as these new amendments would extend the grounds for hunting beyond those which MPs have already rejected, this move is a pointless exercise.”
The Countryside Alliance is, however, determined to fight for the right to keep hunting. A spokesperson said: “The Government has a clear choice. It can honour its pledge to deal with this issue on the basis of ‘principle and evidence’ and support a resolution which has wide support both in Parliament and the country, or it can allow the prejudice of its backbenchers to prevail and enact a spiteful and deeply divisive law.”
They are stepping up their campaign, and today will be demonstrating in Birmingham outside the Environment Agency’s annual conference, where the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Margaret Beckett, will be speaking. The Alliance is urging the Government to back a license system if that is what the Lords return.
However, Lord Donoughue, a Labour peer who put forward the changes, said: “We stand a reasonable chance of getting this through because we had a majority of over 300 for the Middle Way option [licensed hunting] when that was voted on.”
The upper chamber will spend the next three days examining the wording of and amendments to the Bill, before either passing it or sending an amended Bill back to the House of Commons.
Since the Bill has already been passed twice by the Commons, the Government has the option of invoking the Parliament Act to overrule a second rejection of the new rules.
If the Bill is passed by the Lords it will be sent to the Queen for royal assent and then become law.
Both MPs and peers must agree on the text of a Bill before it becomes law – so any changes made by the Lords would then have to be passed back to the Commons, where they would be voted on.
The Government has also passed an amendment to the Bill that delays the start of a hunting ban until July 31st 2006 in order to give hunts time to adjust.
