Inner-city Labour MP to chair Countryside Alliance

Saturday, 23 July 2005 12:00 AM

Inner-city Labour MP Kate Hoey has been appointed as the new chairman of the pro-hunting Countryside Alliance.

The former sports minister and MP for Vauxhall since 1989 said she intended to use her appointment to campaign for a repeal of the ban on foxhunting and insisted the alliance had support in the inner-cities as well as in rural areas.

"The Countryside Alliance membership is growing substantially and it is important to show that people who live in the inner city support its aims," said Ms Hoey, whose appointment was announced as she toured a game fair at Belvoir Castle with Rural Affairs Minister, Jim Knight on Friday.

Ms Hoey, a leading member of the Middle Way group of MPs who fought for hunting to be allowed under licence, said she had "thought very carefully about" about accepting the appointment and had yet to officially inform the Labour party of her decision, The Telegraph reports.

The 58-year-old MP, who grew up on a farm in Northern Ireland, said she also intended to make overturning a ban on sporting handguns one of the alliance's "major campaigns".

"All we have done is to criminalise law-abiding shooting and made it difficult for young people to become Olympic shooters while you can get a handgun on the streets as easily as getting a parking space," Ms Hoey is reported as saying in The Telegraph.

Commentators say that Ms Hoey's appointment as head of the pro-hunting rural affairs organisation could cause discomfort amongst Labour backbench MPs, the majority of whom voted for a ban on fox hunting.

"The Labour party is a broad movement but on this she is utterly out of step," Lord Tony Banks told The Mirror.

The former Labour MP, who helped bring about the hunting ban added: "What the MP for Vauxhall is doing representing the countryside, I have no idea."

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