Labour backbenchers are planning to revolt against parts of the Government’s Hunting Bill because they believe it sets a legal precedent that could lead to the abolition of angling, horseracing or dog racing.
Under pressure from Britain’s three million anglers, MPs are backing amendments scrapping the tests of “utility” and “least suffering” against which the Bill says any form of hunting should be judged.
Led by the Government’s spokesman on shooting and fishing, Martin Salter, backbenchers have rejected the repeated assurances of Alun Michael, Rural Affairs Minister, that the Bill sets no legal precedents that could be used by animal welfare groups to abolish or impose regulations on other sports.
The MPs, who are all anti-hunting, are to propose amendments removing the tests of utility and cruelty in the now likely event that the Bill is amended in the Commons to bring about a total ban on hunting in all forms.
But in doing so, they are being accused of hypocrisy and bigotry by pro-hunting activists for seeking to abolish hunting – without reflecting any of the evidence or principles established by Lord Burns’s hunting inquiry and set out in the Bill – while preserving traditional, working-class sports such as coarse fishing, which some animal welfare activists regard as equally cruel.
Mr Salter, Labour MP for Reading West and the Government’s appointed spokesman for shooting and fishing, said the Bill set unfortunate precedents for angling.
Mr Salter said: “You cannot make a utility case for coarse angling, for horseracing, for keeping pets or for greyhound racing.
“I know that my colleagues will be proposing amendments to delete the utility tests from the Bill because, in the light of a total hunt ban, they are irrelevant.
“I am not in the business of being anything less than honest and straightforward with anglers. In my judgment, those tests could easily be used against lots of other sports. What is the utility of the Grand National or greyhound racing?
“At the moment you can argue the case for coarse fishing on the grounds that cold-blooded creatures don’t feel pain. But who is to say that in 20 years’ time science might have changed the current scientific position?”
Mr Salter said he was expecting the necessary amendments to remove the threat to angling and other sports to be devised by the RSPCA’s legal team and made available to backbench Labour MPs.
Bob Clark, of the National Federation of Anglers, said: “Coarse fishing has a problem with these tests which must be taken out.
“We are concerned on behalf of our 230,000 members that the desire by some MPs to get a ban on hunting with dogs doesn’t affect other sports in the future, which this Bill clearly does.
“If MPs want to get hunting banned for class-based reasons, they will do it. However in their desire to ban hunting with dogs, they need to be careful they don’t bring angling into the argument.”
He said there was no middle way, or regulatory route, possible when it came to fishing. “The middle way is for Government to clear off and leave people alone to get on with their pleasures.”
The Government had collaborated with the federation in promoting angling in inner-city Sheffield, where it had been shown to deflect young people from crime.
Coarse fishermen are sensitive about precedents in parts of Germany controlled by the Greens. British troops brushed with the law for taking part in angling matches where the fish were caught and returned to the water. Anglers were told they would have to kill everything they caught as only fishing for the pot was morally justified.
Simon Hart, director of the Countryside Alliance’s campaign for hunting, said: “Martin Salter’s comments are the first official recognition by Labour backbenchers that this Bill poses a serious threat to fishing and shooting. More sinister though is Mr Salter’s blatant discrimination.
“It simply isn’t possible or justifiable to apply welfare principles to some activities and not to others or to pick and choose the people they affect, according to prejudice and bigotry.
“The only solution to this debate which will work is one based on evidence and principle. Neither seem to feature in Mr Salter’s thinking.”
