Change is no longer a choice

Two decades after the Hunting Act came into force, and with trail hunting now in the firing line, we must learn from history or be doomed to repeat it, says Nick Herbert

- Nick Herbert

IT WASN'T until the later years of the last Labour government that the Hunting Act finally passed. In the end nothing could stand in the way of hundreds of Labour MPs who had scented blood and were set on a ban. Not the independent Burns Inquiry. Not the huge demonstrations in London. Not the House of Lords, overruled in a disgraceful exercise of the Parliament Act. Not even the Prime Minister, whose government had supported a middle way of licensing hunts, only for it to be voted down by his own MPs. In his memoir, Tony Blair said that the hunting ban was 'one of the domestic legislative measures I most regret'.

The passing of this execrable legislation was indeed the triumph of raw prejudice over reason and a reminder of the power of a determined majority in the Commons to get its way. But it was also the result of changing public attitudes and the failure of hunting to respond to growing concerns.

The real story of the Hunting Act does not begin with the Labour election victory in 1997. Its origins can be traced to before the Second World War, when the first serious attempts to introduce a ban were made. The British Field Sports Society was formed in 1930 to counter the threat. Two decades later, the Scott Henderson Inquiry found that there was no case for legislation, and the threat seemed to have been averted.