Animal welfare campaigners from national charity the League Against Cruel Sports were outside the Labour Party conference today calling on the government to strengthen fox hunting laws.
The good-natured protest saw the League ‘fox’ and campaigners urge Labour Party MPs, delegates and trade unionists to pledge their support for the government banning so-called trail hunting and introducing a series of measures that would end hunting with dogs for good.
The campaigners called on the government to ‘finish the job’ after its consultation to ban trail hunting earlier this year and introduce legislation in the next parliamentary session that will strengthen the Hunting Act.
Ruth Jones, MP for Newport West and Islwyn, joined the campaigners. She said:
At the last election, Labour MPs stood on a clear manifesto commitment to close the loopholes in the Hunting Act by banning trail hunting. Colleagues are impatient to make this change happen – we just need the Government to act now.
Emma Slawinski, chief executive at the League Against Cruel Sports, said:
We were here to remind the government that we are waiting for them to introduce the legislation needed to finally end fox hunting, which is still going on despite the ban.
We need a ban on so-called trail hunting, which is simply a smokescreen to hide the chasing and killing of foxes, and we need the government to finish the job after its consultation to ban it earlier this year.
The Hunting Act needs to be strengthened with the exemptions that hunts exploit to target foxes and deer being removed; the law needs to be changed to prevent hunts from claiming their kills are ‘accidental’; and an effective deterrent in the form of prison sentences is needed for those that break the law.
We are calling on the government to make an announcement this autumn on new legislation at the latest in the next parliamentary session that will consign fox hunting and hunting with dogs to the history books.
We need to make it easier for the police and courts to tackle the scourge of fox hunting, something that would be popular with the public in both urban areas and the countryside.
The public remains against fox hunting
Polling commissioned by the League Against Cruel Sports and carried out independently by FindOutNow with further analysis by Electoral Calculus in March / April 2024 found that 76% of the public supported stronger fox hunting laws, with only 7% disagreeing.
A clear majority of voters in rural as well as urban areas across the country backed new laws to stop hunts chasing and killing foxes with hounds. 70% of people in the countryside support the proposal.
The League’s end of season figures show the scale of fox hunting still taking place. 488 foxes were seen being chased during the most recent cub hunting and fox hunting seasons in England and Wales which finished at the end of March.
The figures also showed a pattern of anti-social behaviour by hunts, with 1,220 incidents in which they wreaked havoc on rural communities. The ‘hunt havoc’ included reports of trespass; livestock worrying; and hounds running amok on railway lines and busy roads. All these activities are inconsistent with the idea of following a trail, which is what hunts claim to be doing.
Just 23 or 3.7% of the 624 hunt meets in the reports across England and Wales showed evidence of laying a trail. And within those 23 reports there was still evidence of 22 foxes that hunts had chased.
Featured image via the League Against Cruel Sports
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