Fox Hunting - Is it A Priority?

Written by Vincent Cable MP and published in Online Exclusive on Fri 19th Nov 2004

It didn't help the reputation of parliament that, in the middle of a war and with pressing worries over pensions, the environment and crime, the main concern of the Commons and the Lords has been the legality of fox hunting.

As it happens there was a major battle, too, between the government on one hand and opposition MPs and Lords over the campaign, which I strongly support, to scrap compulsory annuities. But this was overshadowed by the future of the fox.

Although it is not one of my priorities, and there are worse cases of animal cruelty, I have always voted against hunting. If local teenagers were to amuse themselves by training dogs to tear apart squirrels or rabbits, or even our local foxes, they would find themselves in court with an Anti Social Behaviour Order, or worse. Rightly so. It has never been clear to me why this dubious "freedom" should be uniquely extended to the hunt.

It is a gross parody to portray this issue as one of town versus country. My wife Rachel, like many farmers, has a hard headed, unsentimental view of foxes but bars hunts from her land since they cause considerably more nuisance and damage than the foxes. An occasional, wayward, free range chicken gets eaten but sensible farmers lock up their vulnerable stock at night.

I share her love of the British countryside but I don't buy the self-justifying 'liberty or livelihood' rural rhetoric. The government subsidises rural post offices in Hampshire but not urban post offices in Hampton; farmers get substantial subsidies either to produce or to keep their land unused.

A sensible compromise would have been a delay to let hunts adjust gradually but the Lords rejected that idea. So we had head for an unnecessary legal confirmation.