I AM very happy the SNP supported the campaign to keep the hunting ban intact. It’s only recently that it’s become acceptable for a Prime Minister to start talking about denying certain MPs privileges which the other MPs enjoy.
It smacks of gerrymandering. To me it’s beneath the dignity of a ruling party to try to do this to try and secure a majority. Because that’s what this was all about.
I would like to see a Britain – which for the moment is still united — behave like one nation, as David Cameron promised just after the election. It was clearly a very empty promise if you start disabling MPs from voting on certain issues.
All these laws need re-examining from the bottom up.
The way Holyrood’s Protection of Wild Mammals (Scotland) Act 2002 is drafted is different from the way the 2004 Hunting Act in Westminster was drafted.
And there are many differences, some of them quite big. You can be imprisoned for six months in Scotland, whereas in England there’s no prison term, just a fine.
In Scotland there is specific reference to having to minimise the suffering of the fox which doesn’t exist in England and Wales.
There are too many exceptions in the English Act already. This proposed amendment would have widened those. It would have become impossible for anyone to be prosecuted. The effect of this amendment would have seen the Act smashed.
One of the arguments we used to have with pro-hunt people was that animals don’t have any feelings. Science tells us different.
We should start from the assumption that all animals deserve respect and all animals feel pain and all animals want to bring up their family. Every animal has a right to live in peace.
That’s a very different starting point from these things are vermin and we have to control them.
The very use of the word vermin implies a misunderstanding of our place in the universe.
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