Peers opt for hunting under license

Wednesday, 27 October 2004 12:00 AM

The House of Lords has opted to support an amendment allowing hunting with hounds under licence.

Peers voted by 322 to 72, a majority 250, for a continuation of hunting with hounds under strict licence.

The vote is an attempt to revive the so-called "middle way" option, which was initially proposed by Rural Affairs Minister Alun Michael in 2002. This would have banned hare and stag hunting outright, but allowed fox hunting to continue under licence if hunts satisfied utility and cruelty tests.

This route was abandoned after anti-hunting MPs voted to amend the Bill to ban hunting with hounds outright.

Tuesday's amendment from the Lords does not, however, explicitly ban all deer hunting.

Yesterday, Tony Blair's official spokesman said that the Prime Minister personally still backed the idea of a compromise position, but confirmed the Bill would be subject to a free vote in the House of Commons.

The Lords amendment was tabled by Labour peer Lord Donoughue, who said his "constructive compromise" would remove the "crude" ban put before the upper chamber.

There will now be three days of committee debate on the Bill in the Lords to thrash out details of the amendment. It will return to the Commons in mid November, where the decision on whether to accept the amendment, or use the Parliament Act to force through an outright ban will be taken.

Anti hunting groups insist that there can be "no compromise on cruelty" whilst the pro hunting Countryside Alliance says that it is willing to listen to "fair" laws.

Even if the Government decides to use the Parliament Act to force the ban through that is unlikely to be the end of the story, with pro hunt campaigners threatening to take their case to the courts under human rights legislation.

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