Tim Bonner: Was Westminster hunting debate 'worth the wait'?

On Monday the House of Commons Petitions Committee held a debate in Westminster Hall on two petitions on 'licensing trail hunting on Forestry England land' and 'protecting the public and animals from hunting activities'. Both were based on extremely dubious claims and had been promoted heavily by anti-hunting organisations for many months to gather the 100,000 'signatures' required to force a debate. All that effort seemed particularly pointless when barely any MPs turned up. Even the Labour MP from the Petitions Committee who was supposed to be opening the debate was absent and the baton was rapidly passed to her Labour colleague Rachael Maskell who promotes the anti-hunting agenda from her inner-city constituency. Only one other Labour MP, Ruth Jones, spoke and as the shadow Defra Minister she was obliged to attend. Two rural MPs, Sir Bill Wiggin and Sir Robert Goodwill, who had been briefed by the Countryside Alliance, rebutted the worst of the nonsense put forward by the anti-hunting side and Defra Minister Rebecca Pow rounded up the debate by simply stating that trail hunting "is a legal recreational activity, and it must be carried out in the right way. The data that we have received suggests that it is being carried out in the right way".

Subsequently even the anti-hunting group that promoted the debate asked the question "Was it worth the wait?" to which the answer is obviously a resounding 'no'. There is no issue on earth that has used up more parliamentary time for less purpose than hunting. Since 1947, MPs have been debating the merits or otherwise of an activity carried out by a small part of the rural minority. Even after the 700 hours of parliamentary time wasted on the utterly pointless Hunting Act, which has not saved the life or improved the welfare of a single fox, there are some, especially in the Labour party, who still want further legislation on hunting.

The political obsession with hunting is doing no one any good, least of all the Labour party which went into the last election with a commitment to legislate on hunting (again) and came out of it having been ejected from rural seats from Cockermouth to Sedgefield, and many places in between. Labour's continuing obsession with hunting is completely out of sync with the priorities of most rural voters, and it signals a hostility to the countryside that blocks out anything positive they might otherwise have to say.

For the benefit of our politics and our countryside, the time has come to remove hunting from the political agenda. Far too much time has been wasted on an issue which should be a political irrelevance. Of course, hunts must operate to a high standard and be seen as legitimate, but then politicians should, in turn, accept that trail hunting is a valid rural pastime and that eliminating hunts through animus is not a proper political aim. Politicians should be especially wary of crude advice from urban-based pressure groups which claim that continuing to pursue hunting will confer an electoral advantage when all it actually does is alienate voters in the countryside.

As Monday's debate showed, very few MPs really want this divisive debate to continue. It is time for politicians to get their rural priorities right and focus on issues that actually matter.