The fox hunting ban is being flouted and the law must be strengthened, an animal welfare campaigner from Kent has urged.
John Bryant, who volunteers as a hunt monitor around the county, is a member of the campaign group Protect Our Wild Animals (POWA).
“It is a completely anarchic situation,” he said. “They are sticking two fingers up at the nation, the law and the wild life population.”
POWA has been running a campaign, Build on the Ban - Strengthen the Act, which gained momentum after the Labour MP John McDonnell’s early day motion calling for a ‘reckless behaviour’ clause to be added to the Hunting Act 2004.
Mr Bryant said hunters were exploiting exemptions in the act, which were meant for other countryside users such as pest controllers, animal rescuers and the shooting lobby.
“They were not the target of the legislation - it was hunting wild animals with dogs. But they have seized on the other exemptions in the act,” he said.
“People are determined to disobey it.”
Villagers flocked to the Boxing Day hunts which rode from Penshurst in west Kent and Elham in the east of the county, according the pro-hunting Countryside Alliance
The act, which came into force in 2005, bans the hunting with dogs of all wild mammals and all hare coursing, although there are some exemptions.
Hunting meets continue using scent trails that are laid for the hounds to chase rather than foxes.
POWA said that 65 MPs had already signed Mr McDonnell’s early day motion to strengthen the act and were confident that more would join them when Parliament returns after the Christmas break on January 12.
Penny Little, a spokeswoman for the campaign group, said: “The practices of ‘trail’ hunting as described by the hunters themselves are so utterly reckless that they are virtually certain to result in ‘accidents’, and lots of them.
“It is time for MPs to revisit the Hunting Act, and make that small adjustment that would make the law fit for its purpose, because at present the proscribed quarry species continue to be hunted exactly as before the ban.”
The law is difficult to enforce because it relies on hunt monitors, who Mr Bryant said were mainly older people.
He said: “POWAs monitors are all pensioners following hunts to get evidence who have been beaten up, threatened and followed home by hunt supporters.
“There is a general air that they do not want people to see what they are doing but why would they object to people with cameras if were not breaking the law.”
Ann Widdecombe, the Conservative MP for Maidstone and Weald, who is has been a long-term supporter of banning fox hunting, believes, along with POWA, that hunting monitors should be licensed by the Government so that it is an offence to obstruct them.
Miss Widdecombe is retiring at the next general election and David Cameron has said that he will give MPs a free vote on the hunting ban if the Tories win.
Pro-hunt supporters believe the act will be repealed.
POSTED: 30/12/2008 12:15:00
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