Liberty & Livelihood

Hunting ban a pantomime - Yorkshire Post

Police have the right priority THE fiasco which the ban on hunting with dogs has turned into provides a fine example of a government getting itself into a hopeless mess, and deservedly so. The exercise of a little imagination and a little foresight was all that had been required in order for the Government to have avoided the divisive and increasingly ludicrous consequences of allowing Parliamentary time for such an ill-judged piece of legislation.
The lone fact that it was driven by idealists, who are notoriously blind to hard realities, sounded a warning bell that anyone with an ounce of good sense should have paid heed to while it was still far enough away to be harmlessly diverted.The absurdity of the situation which now presents itself is a direct result of common sense having been diverted instead.That situation sees the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) producing internal documents which suggest that those who flout the law, after it comes into effect on Friday, may escape arrest for the reasons that enforcing it has not been afforded a high priority and that the new law confers a power to arrest, not a duty - a nicety, incidentally, which those who framed it are unlikely to have introduced inadvertently. And far from reprimanding ACPO for making a serious misjudgment, the Home Secretary Charles Clarke has said police chiefs are right to give enforcing the ban a low priority.Such wisdom comes a little late in the day, but wisdom it is because a pragmatic Home Secretary will have discerned the immense problems which a high-profile enforcement of the law must inevitably cause.Not least of these would be its effect upon an otherwise law-abiding and responsible section of the rural community with whom it is far more sensible for the police to remain on good terms than to alienate. When serious rural crime is mounting, these folk are the natural allies of the police, and in areas where they are too thin on the ground to be more than a token and often ineffectual presence, the police need all the allies they can find.Mr Clarke hopes, rather piously perhaps, that the hunting fraternity will respect the law, even when it criminalises them for something they cannot possibly conceive to be criminal.Many hunts across Yorkshire have declared their intention to ride out with the hounds as usual on Saturday. Some packs will ostensibly be following dragged trails, but others have detected loopholes which they say will permit the dogs to chase a quarry, provided they do not dispatch it.Small wonder ACPO has downgraded policing of this fatuous law; the prospect of officers arguing in the middle of a muddy field with a Master of Hounds as to whether the dogs running around, barking madly, are in legal or illegal pursuit of a fast-disappearing fox cannot be especially welcome – especially when there is so much serious crime to keep them more than busy.