The Coalition Government is to hold a free vote on overturning the ban on fox hunting introduced by Labour in 2004. Conservative backbenchers have been eager to lift the ban, which had been a pet hate of rural tories for the decade it has been in force. Last week, the Liberal Democrats vetoed a proposed amendment to the Hunting Act that would have permitted farmers to use more than two dogs at a time to “flush” prey out of the undergrowth to aid efficient shooting.
However, there is hope for proponents of animal rights: David Cameron has indicated that the free vote (it is likely that Labour MPs will also be free to vote as they like on the issue) will be held “when parliamentary time allows”. This means that it isn’t a priority, likely to drop off the timetable as the Coalition rushes through as much of its remaining programme as it can, just in case Labour wins next year. The other hope lies in the numbers in Parliament. Very few Labour MPs, largely representing urban or working class constituencies, will have any interest in allowing the rural aristocracy to slaughter animals for entertainment. The Liberal Democrats, for all their flaws, have a decent record in defending animal rights. Add to that the nationalists, the Greens and some of the progressive wing of the Conservative Party, and there is a clear majority against the Hunting Act amendment in the House of Commons. Of course, if the Conservatives were to win a respectable majority in next year’s election (mercifully unlikely), no fox in England would be safe.
In the modern world, there is very little justification for hunting. For the overwhelming majority of people, who live in societies supported by agriculture, there is no need to hunt for food. However much ethical grounds there might be in choosing to hunt for food, there is no merit in hunting as it is practiced in the UK. That generally consists of murdering a few wild animals merely for the sake of killing them. It is the height of selfishness to extinguish a life, including an animals’, just to gain some violence-based transient pleasure. I wonder if anybody can hunt for sport without having a major emotional issue such that they don’t care about other living things enough.
I don’t care what supposed cultural heritage English hunters claim: we have another streak in our culture, one we term “fair play”. It means we don’t use violence against the weak. Though England and Britain as a whole has often failed to live up to this, particularly in our dealings with other countries, Britain has a proud, albeit patchy, tradition of caring for domestic and wild animals. To live up to that, we should be extending the Hunting Act, not retracting it.
The Political Idealist 
What I find the hardest to accept about supporters of hunting is how they attempt to justify it. Most often you hear “foxes are vermin” alongside “I would rather be killed like they used to than shot and bleed to death” and “it’s good for sport,” when in all honesty it’s just the sport & some sort of ‘fun’ that people seek. Foxes might be verminous to farmers, but exactly how many farmers do you see dressing up in full hunting outfit and riding out with a pack of staved beagles? Few, because farmers do what they need to do (use good prevention of vermin in the first place, and quickly dispatch it if it does get in) and don’t turn it into some sort of sport. Nobody can justifiably claim that spending hours hunting one fox with a pack of horses and dogs is even close to an efficient way to deal with foxes.
That’s very true: it’s hard to use the justification of necessity of the means of choice is hugely inefficient.
I had an interesting time around Parliament on Wednesday. First of all saw several vans with anti-hunting messaging themes and then took my tour group into St. Stephens tavern opposite Big Ben to avoid the masses of the Education marches that were pushing us in the wrong direction only inevitably to end up with MPs doing similarly.
Perhaps the entire highlight was running up through a thoroughly sodden Trafalgar Square in rain and hail to see Boris being interviewed. Its safe to say he looked less dignified standing still in the rain than we did running through it!
I agree, hunting with hounds isn’t time or resources efficient. I’m against all hunting but am not against the re-introduction of natural predatory species such as wolves which as I understand it would both control deer numbers and stop them from stripping the mountains bear of vegetation.
I certainly agree: reintroduction of natural predators amounts to repairing the damage to the ecosystem wreaked by previous generations- it’s exactly what we should be doing.