It’s a pointless waste of time for David Cameron to resurrect the hunting debate

Of all the election promises politicians make in the run-up to a general election the one most certain to remain unfulfilled is David Cameron’s pledge to try to repeal the foxhunting ban. He has said he will give MPs a free vote on the issue, but he promised something similar before the last election, only to be prevented from doing anything by his coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, who remain firmly opposed to hunting with hounds. So does the Labour party, and so does the public. A recent opinion poll found that 80 per cent of people in this country, in rural communities as much as in towns, want to keep the ban in force. So it’s only in the improbable circumstance of an absolute Tory majority after the election in May that a repeal is conceivable, and even then it is very unlikely. It would also be a pointless waste of time.

Ten years ago, with the support of Tony Blair that he subsequently regretted, the House of Commons had wasted 252 hours debating the issue before it finally passed the bill that made foxhunting illegal. The debate was conducted against a background of vigorous agitation by its rural opponents, organised by the Countryside Alliance. A demonstration in London by 400,000 people in September 2002 was thought to be the biggest show of discontent by country folk since the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. There was much sound and fury, but to no avail, for the bill became law all the same. But luckily for hunting people it was such a messy law that it was almost impossible to enforce.

I have never quite mastered the details of the bill, but I think it basically says that you can hunt a fox to a point where it can be shot, not mauled to death, provided you do it with only two hounds; though there is nothing to stop you exercising large packs of hounds provided you don’t allow them to kill foxes.