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Hunting ban: The battle goes on
THE Countryside Alliance has lost a legal challenge to overturn the hunting ban, but a Borough campaigner has vowed to fight on.
The House of Lords ruled last week that a ban on hunting with dogs is legal, dismissing claims that it contravenes human rights and has put up to 8,000 jobs at risk.
The unanimous ruling by five Law Lords follows similar decisions in both the High Court and Court of Appeal, but Castle Morpeth councillor Richard Dodd, who serves as Regional Director of the Countryside Alliance, says the battle is not over and the group will now look to Europe.
"If you have a look at what the Law Lords have said they have been encouraging to us, but we always knew this was going to fall through their hands and move onto the European Parliament and be decided there," he said.
"It will be sorted out at some point. This is just part of the process. The next stage is Europe, it is just horses for courses.
"If we had won this case I would have thought there really was a Santa."
The RSPCA was granted permission to intervene in the proceedings and present written submissions to the court in support of the 2004 Hunting Act.
RSPCA Director of Animal Welfare Promotion John Rolls said: "It is time for people who have spent millions of pounds challenging this law to accept it and move on.
"Cruelty-free hunting, which does not involve chasing a wild animal and where the pageantry, social recreation, jobs, horses and hounds can be retained, is the obvious way forward and something the RSPCA has always suggested."
Heading the Law Lords Panel, Lord Bingham accepted that fox hunting was important to country life and traditions, but he said the democratic process should not be overruled.
"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," he said.
The Countryside Alliance is now preparing to take its case to the European Court of Human Rights.
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Weather for Morpeth
Wednesday 30 May 2012
Today
Light showers
Temperature: 10 C to 16 C
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