Comment by Liam Thom

There is no mention of hunting with hounds in the Queen's Speech. That doesn't mean that legislation can not be introduced but it does illustrate a lack of priority. The Queen announced thirty separate pieces of legislation for the next session and the last thing the government is going to want is the Lords being clogged up discussing how to dispatch an agricultural pest in a manner least upsetting to people who live in cellophane sealed suburbia.

The government could re-introduce its own anti hunting bill or a bill could take the form of a Private Members Bill. A Private Members Bill has never been forced through Parliament with the Parliament Act (which puts the will of the Commons above that of the Lords), but that doesn't mean it can't be done.

The Parliamentary joint committee on human rights has warned ministers that a bill to ban hunting with hounds would almost certainly face a challenge in the courts for infringing human rights.

“Our questions are to do with infringement of private property and the implications of the scale of the ban for people.

“Members want to know whether it is justifiable to restrict what people do on private property in the public interest. It is a question of proportionality.

“Similarly, it is about whether the deprivation (of livelihoods) falls within the European Convention on Human Rights . . . this has come up in relation to nationalisation issues in the past.”

722 Exmoor landowners accounting for 90% of the hunted area of the D&S Staghounds signed the following declaration: "The existence of a strong and healthy herd of Red Deer in this region depends on the continuation of the hunt. Because of deer hunting, the farmers preserve and protect the herd despite suffering both damage and economic loss. No other management system could possibly achieve this universal co-operation. We therefore warn the government that their proposed ban on deer hunting would be damaging to the rural communities and disastrous for the deer."

Alastair McWhirter, the chief constable of Suffolk and the rural policing spokesman for the ACPO has written an excellent article for the Times newspaper stating what we all knew all along - that it would be impossible to police a mounted hunt. Not only is it not feasible to arrest the numbers involved in a hunt as well as the horses and hounds, he is also concerned that hunt saboteurs would concentrate on shoots with all the dangerous possibilities there.

"To be effective, legislation needs to be enforceable: enforcing the Act will be difficult. It is impractical to stop and arrest huntspeople on horseback and seize the hounds and horses they use to commit the offence. No police force has the resources to do this; nor would they be able to accommodate horses or a pack of hounds, to the required welfare standards, until the case came to trial. The alternative is to report offenders for summons, as we would for a motoring offence, but the work required to summons a 30 or 40-strong hunt on horseback makes this almost impossible."

Hunting and shooting is good for conservation (yes you knew that anyway but what the heck). The University of Kent has published a report in Nature magazine that states that landowners involved in hunting and shooting maintain 7.2% of their land as woodland compared to 0.6% of land owned by people who are not involved in either sport. The report also claimed that all hunting and shooting landowners in the study planted new woodland as opposed to 37.5% of landowners that did not hunt or shoot.

Despite the League Against Cruel Sports advertising the Isle of Wight Foxhounds' meet as one to target they only managed to gather 15 protesters to Carisbrooke Castle. At the same time there were 50 mounted followers and between 500 and 1000 people on foot to see off the hounds. This pattern appeared to be reflected around the country and the Times reported that the League "privately admitted that members had become weary with recent efforts to keep pressure on the Government."

Meanwhile there are reports that backbenchers are trying to get the utility and cruelty tests on hunting removed from the Hunting Bill because they would clearly set a precedent leading to the abolition of National Hunt racing, shooting and fishing. Michael Foster is also reported as trying to get three amendments to the Bill passed so that hare hunting, Autumn foxhunting and all hunting in lowland areas would be banned. You would have thought he would have learnt the first time.

On Boxing Day the press was full of hunting stories including news of two polls on support for hunting. A Countryside Alliance commissioned poll showed 18 per cent favoured the status quo, 41 per cent want a compromise on hunting and 36 per cent want the sport banned. Meanwhile 80 per cent of respondents to a MORI opinion poll thought hunting cruel with 61 per cent immoral. For some reason the amount of support for a ban in the MORI survey is not published by any newspaper. Perhaps the findings don't support its backers prejudices or am I being too cynical?

The DEFRA minister Alun Michael has announced, as widely forecast in the media, that there is to be a bill before parliament that would outlaw hare coursing and deer hunting (though not necessarily hare hunting with beagles and harriers) and limit the amount of foxhunting in England and Wales. The proposal is that foxhunting would only continue if it could prove to a national hunting tribunal that it was necessary in that area on grounds of utility and cruelty - i.e. that it was necessary to protect livestock, crops, biodiversity or game birds and that other methods of controlling foxes were not viable. Apparently, however, Mr Michael is keen not to make martyrs out of hunting people. Well perhaps he had go back and have another go then. I'm damned if I'm stopping hunting because he thinks it might by beastly to the foxes.

If the legislation goes ahead then staghunting is going to be criminalised. This is an excellent opportunity for the people of Exmoor to show the government how hard it is to stop 200 riders doing what they want in the middle of the moor.

You can download the Bill if you want to read what is not going to be passed. You will need Acrobat Reader.

One of the most often heard mantras from the so called liberal press and anti hunting MPs is that hunting with hounds is not important - it doesn't matter and that rural housing, post offices and schools are what people in the countryside care about. From that we can then go ahead and ban hunting without upsetting people. Football doesn't matter to me. Rural education doesn't matter to me. Hunting with hounds does. The point is that hunting matters to those who take part in it and are effected by it. The rest of the population should just ignore it and get on with their lives.

The most surprising thing about Professor Stephen Harris' study into fox population, that appeared to show that hunting does not effect fox populations significantly, is that the press has published the findings as if they are by a respected neutral source. This could not be further from the truth. Besides the study being sponsored by the RSPCA and IFAW it was carried out by an academic who regularly speaks up for the anti-hunting cause and is as biased as I am. If the anti-hunting campaign expect anybody to take note of their findings they should commission a body that is neutral on hunting, not one with form as long as Harris'.