Hunting with hounds
I consider the hunting ban to be a low priority in the context of our disastrous financial and economic circumstances, but I realise this is an important issue for many people.
I am against cruelty to animals and I wish to see enacted a strong general prohibition to that effect. However, I am also against bad law and I do not accept that one animal hunting another is necessarily cruel, since animals hunting animals is a fact of nature.
In my judgement, the Hunting Act may actually be detrimental to animal welfare when other methods of control are deployed, a number of which can be indiscriminate. Furthermore, hunting safely with a rifle in Buckinghamshire terrain seems to me a particularly difficult task. Finding a clear shot with a safe background at just the moment when the animal is in view is likely to be extremely difficult and yet control of wild animals remains essential.
For these reasons, I would vote to repeal the hunting ban, though I hope to do so in the context of a new prohibition on cruelty to wild animals which can be tested in the courts.
