In a quite astonishing post on the Twitter website, the Countryside Alliance's press officer appears to admit that two-thirds of hunts are breaking the law.
In response to the publication this morning of the League's Hunting Report, Tim Bonner tweeted
"LACS: "Almost two-thirds of hunts in England and Wales are continuing to hunt foxes". Hunting Act has been a success then...".
The League has always maintained that a significant number of huntspeople would refuse to obey the law and they would need to be dealt with in the courts. Indeed, many thousands of them signed an online declaration that they would ignore the law. This doesn't mean the law doesn't work, in the same way that the many thousands of burglaries each year don't indicate that the Theft Act doesn't work.
But the key point here is that the Countryside Alliance usually maintain that the hunts
are abiding by the law and
are not hunting illegally. Mr Bonner's tweet this morning appears to us to be an admission that they are, indeed, breaking the law. This makes a mockery of their own argument that hunting should be reintroduced and governed by some regulatory body. After all, if the bloodlusters can't abide by the law, why would they abide by some flimsy internal rule book?