Simon Hamlyn: Hounding the hunts is a waste of police resources

This is a site that I’d come across previously and is a well-presented fox hunting and beagling discussion forum. The first blog was called “come on then, own up, when are everyone’s opening meets then?”

So good question! And yes here we are again, getting ready for the season’s very first opening meets – a time when everyone in the hunting community is geared up and primed for another season of hunting.

There will be anticipation, trepidation, excitement and a thousand other emotions bubbling away with all the members, supporters and most importantly staff of the 330 hunts and over 70 clubs across the country.

I had attended an excellent inaugural hunt lunch of the Blencathra Foxhounds in Cumbria on the eve of writing this article and where Kate Hoey, the Labour MP and former Sports Minister, was the speaker.

The lunch was sold out quicker than a Stone Roses reunion concert and I was reliably informed that the hunt website had enjoyed over eight million hits in the past few years, with visitors from as far away as Columbia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan – on the eve of the opening meets hunting is still popular and very well supported.

At the start of this new foxhunting season there are a set of brand new statistics which have been released by the Countryside Alliance that demonstrate how police forces up and down the country are having their time wasted by the unworkable and misdirected Hunting Act.

While the minority of opponents of hunting continue to claim the Hunting Act has been a roaring success, the facts are that in reality the number of individuals associated with hunts registered with the Council of Hunting Associations – the body representing more than 330 hunts and over 70 clubs – who have been cautioned, proceeded against in court, fined and convicted under the Hunting Act has been consistently low since the Act came into force in 2005.

Last year was no exception. The Countryside Alliance has reviewed the statistics for 2010 and it is clear that 97 per cent of convictions, since the Hunting Act came into force, relate to poaching or other casual hunting activities, including at least seven individuals who have been convicted of hunting rats.

If we delve further into the statistics we note that in 2010, six police forces cautioned 11 individuals under the Hunting Act – not one was for an individual associated with a registered hunt. A total 16 police forces also proceeded against 49 individuals under the Hunting Act in 2010. Yet only four were individuals associated with a registered hunt.

We can go on – 33 individuals have been fined under the Hunting Act by the local courts, but only one was for an individual associated with a registered hunt.

Some 36 individuals were convicted under the Hunting Act in 2010 but again only one of these convictions was for an individual associated with a registered hunt.

Since 2005, the year in which the Hunting Act came into force, it is important to note that 12 police forces covering hunt areas, including Devon and Cornwall, Warwickshire, Bedfordshire, Staffordshire, Dorset and South Wales, have not issued a single caution, have not proceeded against, fined or convicted any individual associated with a registered hunt.

What concerns me and my colleagues at the Countryside Alliance, and what should concern the taxpaying public, is the disproportionate amount of police time that has been expended pursuing law-abiding, registered hunts.

These statistics are a damning indictment of an astronomically expensive and failed Hunting Act, which as a piece of legislation, is condemned widely – including by those who created it.

Having said all that, law-abiding registered hunts and in particular hunt staff are still forced to go about their daily lives and jobs under the threat of persecution, harassment and intimidation from saboteurs who then waste huge amounts of police time pursuing cases that never see the light of day.

It is very important to know that the Countryside Alliance works with the CHA to further the combined interests of all those who hunt with dogs within the law. The full members of the CHA represent the governing bodies of each of the legal methods of hunting with dogs. It requires that the practices of all of its members are conducted to the highest possible standards.

And a final word on the subject from my colleague at the Countryside Alliance, Philip Davies, who is a former Chief Inspector.

He has said: “The Hunting Act is a police officer’s nightmare. It is hugely time-consuming, a massive distraction and produces very poor results. There are already an abundance of laws that combat poaching, but the Hunting Act compels police forces to investigate law-abiding hunts with little or no success.

“The strain on resources is totally out of proportion to the results achieved.”

• Simon Hamlyn is the regional director of the Countryside Alliance.