Hunt Supporters Launch Legal Challenge
The Countryside Alliance has launched a legal challenge to the ban on fox-hunting after it was forced into legislation despite the opposition of peers. Campaigners are questioning the legitimacy of the Parliament Act, which was used tom push through the law.A judicial review was launched today at the High Court on behalf of three applicants to try to overturn the ban.
They claim the Parliament Act passed in 1949, which replaced a previous Parliament Act of 1911, is illegitimate.
They are also expected to try to test loopholes in the hunt ban when it comes into force in February while others have pledged to disobey it.
A spokesman for the Countryside Alliance said the first hearing in the High Court was expected to be held in the new year and would centre on how the 1949 law was enacted.
The current version of the Parliament Act allows MPs to force through legislation against the will of the Lords if it has been rejected by peers over two sessions.
It replaced the original 1911 Act, which said laws could be forced through following three sessions of Parliament, the spokesman explained.
He said the Alliance would be arguing that the latter Act was illegitimate because it was forced through against Lords opposition using the previous one.
John Jackson, chairman of the Countryside Alliance, Mair Hughes, a farrier's wife from the Rhondda, and Patrick Martin, a member of the Bicester hunt, are expected to lodge the application.
The CA spokesman also said that the new Hunting Act did not comply with a number of aspects of the Human Rights Act as it did not compensate people who had entered into contracts who would lose out as a result of the ban.
He said 50,000 people were prepared to break this law as a matter of civil disobedience "in the full knowledge that they will be arrested, charged, and taken through the system".
"They are determined to do that to show the resolution of the rural community and to show how ridiculous this legislation is," he said.
"Many thousands of people will be going out and ringing the police station and saying 'come on, arrest me'."
He claimed there were many areas such as Exmoor, Dartmoor, parts of upland Wales, and Cumbria, where the ban would be "completely unenforceable".
"We won't encourage anyone to do it but we will understand why they have done it and we will support them after they have," he added.
It is the "in joke" of the moment. It will move onto something else at some point. Either way it is a giggle unless someone takes it seriously. 
