In an astounding revelation, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair claims to have deliberately sabotaged the Hunting Act of 2004 so that foxhunting would continue.
In his newly published memoir A Journey (Random House), Blair says that the hunting ban was “one of the domestic legislative measures I most regret.” He claims to have (1) engineered sufficient loopholes in the Act so that hunting could continue and (2) instructed his Home Office minister to steer the police away from enforcing the law.
Blair further claims that he was initially in favor of a ban because he didn’t properly understand the issues. Then, while on vacation in Italy, he met a Master of a hunt near Oxford who “calmly and persuasively” opened his eyes to the social contributions of hunting compared to the social consequences of a ban.
Some pro-hunting supporters are skeptical of Blair’s claim. They wonder why, if he was truly opposed to the Act, did he take the extraordinary step of employing the rarely-used Parliamentary Act to force the ban into law.
The current Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron has described the law as a “farce” and has promised a free vote in Parliament for a repeal. According to the pro-hunting Countryside Alliance, only three cases have been successfully prosecuted under the Act.
Read more in Robert Hutton’s Bloomberg article.
September 3, 2010