Law report: Regina (Countryside Alliance and Others) v Attorney-General and Another Regina (Derwin and Others) v Same

The latest challenge to the ban on hunting with dogs, was dismissed by the law lords yesterday when they ruled that the Hunting Act does not contravene human rights.

The highest court in the land rejected an appeal in which the pro-hunt lobby claimed that the Parliament Act, used to force through the Hunting Act, was unconstitutional.

Lord Bingham of Cornhill and four other law lords dismissed a second challenge by the Countryside Alliance and other campaigners against the Hunting Act.

The same panel also dismissed an appeal from the Scottish courts by Brian Friend and Jeremy Whaley, both members of the Union of Country Sports Workers.

They claimed that the ban, introduced in Scotland under the Protection of Wild Mammals Act, is an infringement of their human rights.

Lord Bingham, senior law lord and a former Lord Chief Justice, said in his ruling: “Fox hunting in this country is an emotive and divisive subject. For some it is an activity deeply embedded in the tradition, life and culture of the countryside, richly portrayed in art and literature, a highly cherished, skilful, healthy and useful form of communal outdoor exercise.

“Others find the pursuit of a small animal across the countryside until it is caught and destroyed by hounds, to be abhorrent.”

He said that the House of Lords had never given its consent to the Hunting Act but that the law lords were a judicial committee who had to give their views without reference to their personal sympathies.

The Countryside Alliance, along with various individuals, claimed at a hearing last month that the Act – which prohibits foxhunting, deer hunting and hare coursing with dogs in England and Wales – violates the fundamental human rights of thousands of people whose livelihood and way of life revolve around the meet and the chase.

Between 6,000 and 8,000 were expected eventually to lose their jobs, and many would also lose the homes that went with the jobs, the law lords were told. Others would lose businesses and the commercial “good-will” attached to them.

The Hunting Act 2004 must “be taken to reflect the conscience of a majority of the nation”, Lord Bingham said.

He added: “The democratic process is liable to be subverted if, on a question of moral and political judgment, opponents of the Act achieve through the courts what they could not achieve in Parliament.”

In the Scottish case, Lord Hope, giving the leading ruling, said that there was “adequate factual information to entitle the Scottish Parliament to conclude that foxhunting inflicted pain on the fox and that there was an adequate and proper basis on which it could make the judgment that the infliction of such pain in such circumstances constituted cruelty”.

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