independent Cornish news and comment

Hunting in Cornwall Will Be Banned

Fox-hunting looks sure to be banned today, despite the House of Lords rejecting the move.

Commons Speaker Michael Martin is expected to invoke the Parliament Act, forcing through the ban supported by the majority of MPs.
The ban looks likely to come into effect in February after peers also dismissed a government bid to delay it for 18 months.
The Government had hoped to put it off until after the General Election - expected in May. But the ban now appears to be just three months away.
The House of Lords last night voted by more than two to one against an outright ban on hunting with dogs in England and Wales.
But the Parliament Act is now about to be used - for just the fourth time since 1949 - to force through the will of the Commons because the Lords has now blocked it for two parliamentary sessions in a row.
Peers voted to delay the ban by three years. But that would also be overturned by the Parliament Act.
Some hunt supporters prefer the "kamikaze" option of rejecting any delay at all so a ban would come into force next February, causing problems for the Government.
Ministers are desperate not to bring it in before the General Election. They say the delay is aimed at giving people whose livelihoods depend on hunting time to find new work.
But they will also be determined to avoid the threatened civil disobedience and pictures of hounds being put down during an election campaign.
Environment Minister Lord Whitty had appealed in vain before last night's vote for peers to back down and halt the row which has rumbled on at Westminster for the last seven years.
Hunt supporters are now promising to challenge a ban in the courts. The Countryside Alliance says it will challenge the legality of the 1949 Parliament Act if it is invoked.
There are also plans to take the issue to the European Court of Human Rights on the grounds that a ban would unfairly deny people trade.
Once a ban goes through, some pro-hunt campaigners say they intend to exploit any loopholes in the law and also openly flout the law.
The government would prefer a ban not be implemented until the summer of 2006, after the general election.
The Countryside Alliance promised that by the end of this week it will take its campaign into the courts and eventually thousands will defy the law by continuing to hunt.
It also promised practical support for most Tory candidates in the general election and take legal action against the parliamentary basis of the ban.
On Tuesday MPs rejected a last-ditch compromise on the issue, voting by 321 to 204 against a deal which would have allowed regulated hunting of foxes.
In the Lords last night, Lady Mallalieu, the Labour peer, urged peers to throw out the bill claiming it was the worst sort of gesture politics.
She said it would "cause serious damage to the fabric of the countryside and inestimable damage to the reputation of parliament".
"The bill is rank bad, based on prejudice without principle and divides communities and the nation," she said.
Lord Graham, another Labour peer, denounced the use of scurrilous language by the pro-hunt lobby and said: "MPs were being terribly maligned for having the courage of their
The government insists the ban should come into force in the summer of 2006, after the general election, but the alliance responded that if it cannot have the longer timescale, the government will have to accept the act coming into force in only three months, opening the prospect of battles between police and huntsmen in the run-up to the election.
Downing Street is looking at options on how to prevent such a public tussle between Labour MPs and the hunting wing of the countryside.
Pro-hunting peers insisted, for animal welfare reasons, that the hunts needed to continue until 2007 to give them a chance to wind down slowly, find alternative accommodation for dogs and jobs for the thousands involved in the sport professionally.
Alaun Michael, the rural affairs minister, again criticised peers' blocking tactics and said they "had been given another opportunity to respond to another common sense proposal the government has put forward, which is to delay a ban until July 2006".
Over the past six years, the hunting issue has taken 700 hours of debate in the Commons and Lords, producing 10 successive votes by MPs in favour of a ban. The alliance, once able to gather 100,000 on the streets in protests, now faces the biggest test of its resources - tactical, financial and moral. It knows some of their protesters will furl their banners and seep away, or it may not be able to hold back the militants, who could end up alienating much of the public.
The decision over whether hunts should take place in defiance of the law will be largely taken by the council of hunting associations.