Times comment: "Hunting foxes is better than snaring or poisoning them"

On Saturday 16th August 2014 The Times published a comment piece by Ross Clark entitled: "Hunting foxes is better than snaring or poisoning them." Mr Clark opened with: "Cameron is looking weak. He has promised a free vote before" and then detailed measures he felt Cameron had got right for the "landed interest", including Single Farm Payment and the Marine and Coastal Access Act. He wrote "As you may have gathered from the above I am not a huge fan of the landed interest......But the issue of hunting is different. There never has been convincing evidence that foxes suffer abnormally from being hunted, at least no more than do the animals they themselves hunt. The ban did nothing to alleviate the real forms of cruelty towards foxes: the snaring, the poisoning and the trapping. What it did do is show up its own absurdity: does it really make the slightest difference to a fox whether he is pursued by two dogs or three?" Mr Clark ended by observing that a free vote on the Hunting Act woudl be a "piece of red meat that, if I were prime minister, I would think it well worth throwing to a once-loyal band of supporters." Read in full here (subscription).