Trail hunting a ‘smokescreen' for illegal fox hunts, MP says in jail terms plea
Trail hunting is being used as a 'smokescreen' for illegal fox hunting, a Labour MP has warned as he called for jail terms if organisers flout the rules.
Perran Moon called for a ban on the practice, when hunt organisers lay a trail using animal urine or a carcass for hounds and their followers to track.
Environment minister Daniel Zeichner said the Government would launch a consultation on banning trail hunting later this year, in line with Labour's 2024 manifesto.
'I strongly believe it is time for us to come together and close this loophole once and for all,' Mr Moon told the Commons.
He said: 'Banning trail hunting would be a positive step in safeguarding the UK's wildlife and habitats.
'We need to strengthen the Hunting Act 2004 to make sure it delivers the protection animals need, that means banning trail hunting, removing exemptions that enable illegal hunting, and introducing custodial sentences for those who break the law.'
The MP for Camborne and Redruth later added: 'We must extend the time available for charge in illegal hunting cases, reverse the burden of proof of compliance with exemptions, and make hunting a notifiable offence (counted in crime statistics)'.
He said these measures would 'make it easier to enforce the law and ensure that those who break it face the consequences', in response to Labour MP for Poole Neil Duncan- Jordan, who warned that 'effective reform must go beyond symbolic bans and address the entire framework enabling illegal hunting to carry on'.
Mr Duncan-Jordan said: 'Whilst a pledge to ban trail hunting is welcome, I fear it could be insufficient.
'If legislation focuses solely on this term alone, hunts may adopt new euphemisms to exploit existing loopholes to continue their activities.'
Earlier in the debate, Mr Moon said 'trail hunting has been used as a defence' when hunts and their organisers land in the criminal justice system, accused of hunting a wild mammal with a dog, as he described a 'disturbing reality – trail hunting is providing a smokescreen for illegal fox hunting'.
Sir Julian Lewis, the Conservative MP for New Forest East, intervened in Mr Moon's speech and asked: 'Would it not then be possible for drag hunting to be used in some way as a cover once again for illegal fox hunting?'
Mr Moon replied that he has 'no issue with drag hunting', when hunt organisers lay trails using artificial scents.
He said 'the likelihood that there will be wild animals included in drag hunting is much, much smaller', because it does not use real animal urine or carcasses.
Mr Zeichner told MPs that a consultation is due later this year, but he could not say when a ban would come into effect.
'I want to assure members that we are working to move this forward, and we will deliver a thorough consultation later this year to ensure that legislation brought forward is effective in practice and we understand its impact,' he said at the despatch box.
The minister quoted figures from the League Against Cruel Sports, who found from November 2023 to March 2024, there were 526 reports of incidents of suspected illegal hunting, and 870 incidents of 'hunt havoc'.
He added: 'We have heard that there are people in this house who will not welcome a change in the law, and I want to reassure members here today the Government recognises the contribution made to the rural economy by supporting professions such as farriers, vets and feed merchants, we will of course look closely at the impact any changes may make.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Telegraph
36 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Immigration is the biggest burden on NHS, say Labour voters
Labour voters now believe immigration is the biggest burden on the NHS. Britons who backed Sir Keir Starmer's party at the general election last year think high levels of immigration are having more of an effect on the health service than the ageing population. A poll of 2,000 Labour supporters by Merlin Strategy also found that one in five Labour voters would now consider casting their ballots for Reform UK. It comes as Nigel Farage's party continues to enjoy a comfortable opinion poll lead after promising to effectively freeze non-essential migration and put an end to illegal Channel crossings. Research carried out on May 24 asked people who voted Labour in 2024 which of five factors they believed was 'the biggest burden' on the NHS. Some 24 per cent said high levels of immigration, with 22 per cent saying the mental health crisis. Thirteen per cent said a lack of social care provisions, while 12 per cent blamed junk food and obesity. A further 10 per cent said the biggest burden was people vaping. The remaining 19 per cent did not pick an option or said they did not know. Sir Keir said in a major speech last month that record levels of net migration to Britain in recent years had placed a heavy strain on the country's public services. Maxwell Marlow, the director of public affairs at the Adam Smith Institute, which commissioned the poll, said: 'It is clear that the British people have felt the impact of mass immigration on healthcare. 'Unless the government moves quickly, urging immigrants to purchase private health care as a requirement for any visa other than tourism, then they will continue to hold the Government accountable for the very rapid deterioration in their access to healthcare.' Sir Keir has been criticised for a lack of vision during his first year in office, with only 51 per cent of Labour voters saying the Government was prioritising issues that mattered to them. More than one in four (28 per cent) now regretted voting Labour and more than one in five (22 per cent) were now considering whether to vote for Reform at the next election. Two in five respondents (40 per cent) said they approved of Mr Farage, while 41 per cent disapproved. Scarlett Maguire, the director of Merlin Strategy, said: 'Labour voters are clear that they want to see action on cost of living, healthcare, and immigration. 'The Government needs to show that it is in tune with these priorities and that it understands what matters to their core voters.' Merlin Strategy also conducted a focus group in Runcorn and Helsby, one of the safest Labour seats at the 2024 election, before the party lost the seat to Reform by six votes at last month's by-election. Respondents said Sir Keir's Government was 'afraid of upsetting people', while another member of the group said: 'I don't think they give a toss about us.' The group were also unconvinced by the timing of Sir Keir's plans to clamp down on tobacco and vapes, which have banned disposable vapes and will raise the smoking age by one year, every year. 'How is that really relatable to the working person?' one member asked, adding that it was 'just something shiny to put in the media'.
Telegraph
36 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Reform on course to win next election
Reform UK is now on course to win an outright majority at the next general election, a new poll suggests, with more than a third of voters saying they intend to back Nigel Farage's party. The Ipsos opinion poll puts Reform on 34 per cent, nine points ahead of Labour on 25 per cent, with the Conservatives a distant third on 15 per cent. It is the highest level of support for Reform shown by any poll to date, and would almost certainly be sufficient to give Mr Farage a comfortable overall majority in Parliament. Mr Farage told The Telegraph: 'This poll shows Reform can and will win the next general election.' Analysis by The Telegraph suggests that if the poll result was reproduced in the 2029 election, Reform could win in excess of 400 seats, giving the party a majority of almost 200 and making Mr Farage prime minister. The Tories could be reduced to fewer than 10 seats with Labour on around 140, losing some 270 of the seats they currently hold. However, national opinion polls are notoriously difficult to translate into seat numbers because voting percentages in individual constituencies can vary hugely from the overall average. The poll contains further evidence of the collapse in support for Labour, which is now at levels not seen since October 2019, when Boris Johnson was at the height of his popularity. Sir Keir Starmer is shown to be the least popular prime minister at this stage of his term in office since Ipsos began compiling such records almost half a century ago. Just 19 per cent of respondents said they were satisfied with the job he is doing, with 73 per cent dissatisfied. Only Gordon Brown (22 per cent satisfied) has come close to such levels of unpopularity after 11 months in office. For comparison, 68 per cent of people were satisfied with Sir Tony Blair at the same stage, while Sir John Major satisfied 54 per cent of people and Baroness Thatcher 43 per cent. The news is no better for the Tories, whose support, at 15 per cent, is the lowest since Ipsos's records began in 1976. Just 29 per cent of 2024 voters are satisfied with the job Tory leader Kemi Badenoch is doing, a figure which drops to 11 per cent when all voters are taken into account. The Ipsos survey of 1,180 people reflected the growing likelihood that Reform will be helped by a splintering of the vote among other parties, with the LibDems taking 11 per cent of the votes and the Greens 9 per cent, suggesting that other parties will struggle to win many seats. A Reform UK source said: 'This is big Reform majority territory.' Both the Conservatives and Labour have lost the support of half of those who voted for them in 2024, with the Tories losing 48 per cent of their voters and Labour 54 per cent. Most of the Tory defectors (37 per cent of the 2024 total) have switched to Reform, while Labour has lost 12 per cent of its 2024 vote to Reform and another 13 per cent split between the LibDems and Greens. In contrast, Reform has retained the backing of 95 per cent of those who voted for the party last year. Gideon Skinner, senior director of UK politics at Ipsos, said: 'The last year has indeed been a long time in politics, with our first voting intention poll since the election showing just how much the political landscape has transformed since then. 'Reform UK has continued to build on its success, helped by high levels of enthusiasm among its own support and among working class voters in particular, and taking votes from both Labour and especially the Conservatives, who show little sign of recovery.' He added: 'The disappointment with Labour is clear, even among those who voted for the party in 2024. 'We know from Ipsos research how difficult it has been to shift entrenched public pessimism over the cost of living, immigration, and the state of public services, and so far, Britons do not think Labour is delivering the tangible change they were hoping for in 2024. 'This is reflected in satisfaction ratings for the Government and Prime Minister that are well below the average we usually see coming up to a one-year anniversary. Indeed, they look remarkably similar to the poor ratings received by Gordon Brown in 2008 after the financial crash.' Surveys were carried out between May 29 and June 4, before Zia Yusuf resigned as Reform's chairman and subsequently returned to the party, and before Rachel Reeves announced her controversial spending review. The poll marks the relaunch of Ipsos's Political Monitor survey, which uses an online panel of voters selected using random probability sampling. Letters are sent to randomly selected addresses inviting the recipients to join an online panel, and the results from those who agree to take part are adjusted to take account of the adult population profile on age, gender, ethnicity, employment and other factors. The poll also gathered information on who Reform's supporters are. Six in ten are aged under 50; more than half (53 per cent) are in the lower social classes known as C2, D and E and 42 per cent are non-graduates. More than a quarter of people who did not bother to vote in 2024 now say they would turn out and vote for Reform.
Metro
41 minutes ago
- Metro
Inventor of the 'Tesla' of suicide pods 'vows to bring device to UK'
Philip Nitschke enters a 'suicide pod' known as 'Sarco' in Rotterdam, The Netherlands (Picture: AP) The inventor of the controversial 'Sarco' suicide pod has vowed to bring it to Britain, after the bill to legalise assisted dying passed its final vote. History was made yesterday in the Commons as a total of 314 MPs voted in favour of the proposal – a narrow victory that would allow adults who are terminally ill, subject to safeguards, to be assisted to end their own life. The legislation will go to the next stage of scrutiny in the House of Lords but the bill is expected to become law. Euthanasia activist Philip Nitschke said he hoped to use his Sarco suicide capsule – dubbed the 'Tesla of assisted dying' – in the UK following the vote. He received the nickname 'Dr Death' for facilitating the world's first legal assisted suicides in the 1990s. Sign up for all of the latest stories Start your day informed with Metro's News Updates newsletter or get Breaking News alerts the moment it happens. Nitschke told The Times: 'As soon as we know that the final legislation is in place we'll start enthusiastically pursuing the option of using the device in the UK. 'We will be looking to find UK-registered doctors to assist and of course someone who wants to use it and satisfies all of the requirements under the law. 'The doctors involved would know that this would attract attention and possible close scrutiny, which by and large most doctors are not enthusiastic about, so we'd have to find someone who's a little crusading.' To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Up Next Previous Page Next Page Polls have shown the UK public is broadly in favour of legalising assisted dying. Findings published by YouGov on the eve of the vote revealed almost three-quarters (73%) of people support the measures, with 16% opposed. Nitschke is behind several inventions linked to euthanasia, which remain greatly controversial despite the changing attitudes across the world. In 1995, when assisted dying was briefly legalised in Australia's Northern, he created a suicide machine named 'Deliverance' by linking up his laptop to a syringe of deadly chemicals. Nitschke's prototype 'Sarco' euthanasia pod in Venice The doctor then followed with 'the Coma machine', 'the Exit bag' and then 'Sarco', an at-home pod. The machine allows users to assist their own suicide rather than rely on an operator. The person inside pushed a button that injects nitrogen gas into the sealed chamber, causing death by suffocation. Last September, a 64-year-old American woman became the first person to take her own life inside a 'Sarco' capsule at a remote woodland retreat in Switzerland. But the use of the suicide pod was suspended shortly after as the woman was found inside with strangulation marks on her neck, and Swiss police opened an investigation into the case. What are the main measures in the assisted dying bill? Kim Leadbeater has said she deliberately named her proposal the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill to ensure it only ever applies to people who can no longer be treated. It would apply to people in England and Wales aged over 18 who: have an untreatable, inevitably progressive illness or disease and are expected to live no longer than six months have the mental capacity to make a decision, and a clear, settled and informed wish to end their own life have not been coerced or pressured by any other person into making that decision have made two separate declarations, signed and unsigned, about their wish to die Two separate doctors would need to make assessments that the person is eligible, and applications would be reviewed by a panel including a senior legal figure, a psychiatrist and a social worker. 'Periods of reflection' – the first lasting seven days, the second lasting 14 – would be built into the process. If the person gets to the end of the process, they would then administer the fatal substance themselves. Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. Arrow MORE: MP leading push for assisted dying 'confident' historic vote will pass Arrow MORE: TV doctor Hilary Jones 'willing to help patients end life with assisted dying' Arrow MORE: Suicide pod activist Florian Willet takes his own life after arrest over woman's death
