UK: The speaker of the UK House of Commons, Mr Michael Martin, last night invoked the Parliament Act, overriding the opposition of the House of Lords and bringing to an end almost 700 years of fox-hunting in England and Wales.
The Hunting Bill received Royal Assent from the Queen last night and is now law. The total ban on foxhunts will be enforced from February 18th next year. The Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair conceded that, bar a last-minute challenge in the courts, his efforts to delay the act until after the general election had failed.
There are 318 registered hound packs in England and Wales, including 184 foxhound packs and 20 harrier packs. Around 8,000 jobs depend on hunting, while 15,000 to 16,000 people, such as hoteliers, could also be affected by the ban.
The government and police forces around the country must now brace themselves for the possibility of unrest over the next three months. Hunt supporters have vowed to launch the most expansive campaign of civil disobedience ever seen over a parliamentary prohibition.
Yesterday in parliament was marked by political manoeuvring by both pro- and anti-hunters as they sought to cast their opponents as the true enemies of compromise and reason.
The government made a final attempt yesterday morning to reach a compromise, tabling a delay until July 2006 or 2007 that it said would give hunts time to adjust to their closure. But the move sparked suspicion on Labour backbenches that the government was trying to scupper the ban. The Speaker was bombarded by questions from confused MPs and at one point suspended the sitting for 40 minutes. But Alun Michael, the rural affairs minister, and the whips gradually persuaded backbench MPs to vote to offer the compromise to peers one more time.
By a majority of 151, the MPs agreed to delay the implementation for the bill to July 2006, but rejected the government's preferred option of 2007. Within hours, the Lords, albeit by the surprisingly narrow margin of 153 to 114, voted to reject the 18-month delay, leaving the Speaker with no alternative but to invoke the Parliament Act to override the peers' objections.
Mr Blair, facing hunt protests at a dinner with the Queen and the French president, Jacques Chirac, said the issue would now go to the courts. He claimed yesterday that "probably, despite the very passionate views on either side of this debate, the majority of people would have preferred to have seen a compromise accepted".
In increasingly bitter Commons exchanges, foreshadowing a wider battle in the fields and the courts, Mr Michael accused the anti-hunt peers and the Countryside Alliance protesters of behaving "like turkeys voting for Christmas".
With the threat of running battles between police, hunters and landowners ahead of the election, he urged the countryside to accept the will of parliament. "The hunting community say they are law-abiding people, so we expect those involved in hunting to cease their activity when they are required by law to do so," he said.
The Tory rural affairs spokesman, Mr James Gray, called for mass legal disobedience. Quoting Shakespeare, he said passing a ban with no delay sent a message to the countryside which read: "'Cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war'." Mr Simon Hart, chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, was furious to see his seven-year battle fail. "The chaos and deceit that has surrounded today's events is a fitting finale to what has been one of the most ridiculous, dishonest and time-consuming episodes in parliamentary history," he said.
The alliance has already written to the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, saying it will challenge the legality of the 1949 Parliament Act in the high court.