Straw to bring forward hunting-with-dogs Bill
Straw to bring forward hunting-with-dogs Bill
By FWreporters
HOME Secretary, Jack Straw, has decided to bring forward a bill on hunting with dogs in England and Wales.
Insisting that the government remained open-minded on the issue, Mr Straw told the House of Commons this week that MPs would be given a free vote on a number of options ranging from preserving the status quo to an outright ban. He expected the vote to take place early in the next parliamentary session this autumn.
Mr Straws announcement coincided with the release of the long-awaited report on the hunting inquiry carried out by Lord Burns. The report warned that up to 8000 rural jobs could be lost if fox hunting was banned and concluded that farmers would lose a recreation.
But the report said that hunting with hounds "seriously compromises the welfare" of foxes and other species. It added that shooting foxes was a better option for control than using hounds.
Mr Straw angered pro hunting groups when he suggested that the rural economy could absorb the 8000 job losses. As he spoke, pro-hunt protesters from the Union of Sports Workers staged a noisy protest outside parliament, bringing traffic to a standstill. They handed in a 400,000-signature petition to parliament calling for hunting with dogs to be allowed to continue.
The country sports lobby group the Countryside Alliance stressed that any future moves to end hunting would be met both with a "rapidly escalating, energetic and sustained protest campaign and a determined legal challenge under the European Convention on Human Rights". But a spokesman for the alliance welcomed the Burns report calling it "a major step forward in rescuing the hunting debate from deep-seated prejudice, a vindication of the civil right of people to be free to hunt if they choose, and a doorway to establishing greater public confidence in how hunting is conducted".
A spokesman for the League Against Cruel Sports said he too was pleased with the Burns Inquiry report: "It states that hunting seriously compromises animal welfare. It also shows post mortem data that suggest hunted animals die of massive injuries to the chest and vital organs and not a single nip on the back of the neck." *
Hunt enthusiasts voice their anger in Parliament Square.