The shameful legacy of Tony Blair’s Hunting Act

This article by Kate Hoey, former Alliance Chairman, was originally published in The Spectator.

Most laws enacted nearly 20 years ago become uncontroversial with the passage of time. The Hunting Act, though, is not one of them. As hunts gather today for their traditional Boxing Day meet, the latest chapter in this ongoing story involves fresh claims about Labour and past ‘cash for commitments’. Central to these is the allegation that the pledge to ban hunting with hounds in the 1997 party manifesto was effectively purchased by a £1 million donation.

Shortly before the election, the Labour party received that figure from Political Animal Lobby, now known as Animal Survival International. It has always been a fair assumption that such a large sum had a significant impact on Labour policy, particularly on hunting. But until recently we could not say that definitively. Now, however, we can. First, Peter Mandelson admitted earlier this month on a Times podcast that the donation was ‘pretty transactional’ and put the party under ‘some sort of pressure’ over the manifesto. Then Brian Basham, the man who physically collected the cheque for the Labour party, wrote a letter to the Guardian declaring that he resigned immediately afterwards because of his concerns that such large donations were ‘deeply corrupting’.

Such a murky story ought not to merely be a matter of titillation to historians and political obsessives. Having spent 30 years in the House of Commons, I know just how reluctant politicians are to reflect on the impact of our law-making. We close the book on one debate and open the next, probably hoping, subconsciously, that if things do not go as planned, we will have moved on before the results become obvious and questions are asked. Yet even so, the complete failure to investigate the consequences of the Hunting Act has been astonishing. 

None of the animal rights groups that gave huge donations, spent millions more on campaigning and made endless grandiose claims have spent a penny considering the actual impact of the legislation they desired. None of the MPs who put hunting at the top of the political agenda for almost a decade are now willing to discuss what their obsession has achieved, let alone dwell on the myriad of important issues that we could have studied during the 700 hours of parliamentary debate.

For the damage inflicted by the Hunting Act continues to be felt to this day. In a new book – Rural Wrongs – the journalist Charlie Pye-Smith forensically details the impact of the law on the countryside and especially the species it was intended to protect. In the uplands of England and Wales, where the use of hounds is often the only practical method of control, fox numbers have increased. As a result, the numbers of threatened ground nesting birds like the curlew are now hurtling towards extinction. In the lowlands, where the use of rifles aided by modern technology is extremely effective, foxes themselves have become an endangered species as they are treated as vermin because they no longer retain their protected status as a quarry species. 

In those areas where the much-misunderstood practice of hare coursing traditionally took place, the brown hare once abounded; now their numbers have dwindled. In some places they are even actively discouraged, as hares attract undesirable bands of poachers who continue to run their dogs with impunity. In the West Country, staghound packs continue to control the population of red deer herds as best they can, within the restrictions imposed by the law. But their use has been seriously hampered, such as in cases where they would have traditionally been used to end the suffering of the increasingly high number of deer injured in road traffic accidents.

Given all this, you might have hoped that Keir Starmer – the man who now leads my former party – would be ready to at least review the impacts of the ban, given his willingness to embrace an admirably fresh approach on many rural issues. Yet sadly, Labour’s mutually destructive relationship with hunting seems set to continue. I had hoped that a future Labour government would not repeat the mistakes of the past in allowing class prejudice and pressure from animal rights groups to dictate the direction the party takes. But the policy adopted by the most Labour conference for the next manifesto aims to strengthen the Hunting Act, rather than replace it.

Apart from all the damage to wildlife and rural communities, this is simply bad politics. Labour needs rural seats to win a majority and needs to persuade rural voters that it has moved on from the divisive politics that saw it beaten so soundly in 2019. A war on the countryside, as past experience has shown, contributes to electoral defeat, not victory.