General Election - We still need you

The Countryside Alliance has an active membership, ready to engage at any moment.

This Parliament is so important for rural issues. There will be many pieces of new legislation introduced to get Britain ready for Brexit, as well as on many other issues impacting the countryside. As such, it is vital we remind MPs what matters to you, the electorate.

In the first instance we will be asking the hunts to contact their MPs, inviting them to a local Boxing Day meet and to ensure that their MPs are invited to hunt events throughout the year. Boxing Day is a wonderful opportunity to showcase hunting and how important it is to, and loved by, local communities.

We will also be asking members to contact MPs to support our right to hunt, shoot and fish without harassment or intimidation. The Conservative Manifesto says it will allocate more resources to tackle rural crime and includes a commitment to make intentional trespass a criminal offence. This will make it harder for saboteurs to intimidate and threaten hunts and other lawful activities. We would like to see this commitment honoured at the earliest opportunity – and we will need your help making this happen.

There will be many other issues that are likely to require your engagement with parliamentarians, local councillors and the Government throughout this Parliament. New legislation risks overlooking the needs of rural communities and putting livelihoods at risk.

This Government, and these MPs, will not be immune to the pressure that will be brought to bear by the animal rights lobby. This is equally true of the devolved administrations and local authorities. We will need all politicians to remember that rural Britain matters.

The lobby of candidates throughout the election campaign shows what we can achieve with your help. Thank you to everyone who has already taken action on this and on previous campaigns. Please keep up that engagement so that we have that all important grassroots voice in as many constituencies as possible, focusing MP's minds on rural issues.