WHEN Rural Affairs Minister Alun Michael announced six months of consultation on the issue of hunting with hounds the Countryside Alliance went out of its way to persuade the rural community to give him the benefit of the doubt and time to prove his commitment to a fair solution.

His stated intention to find an honourable and fair solution appears to have been surrendered to party political expediency.

The Minister has chosen to ban deer hunting and competitive coursing out of hand, without giving the opportunity to make their case to the regulator, citing 'incontrovertible evidence,' which he has never produced. Other forms of hunting are little better off and face a virtual back-door ban.

They are to be tested against a distorted definition of 'utility,' which ignores hunting's social, economic and environmental benefits.

He is even proposing to give taxpayers' money to 'animal welfare' groups to contest hunts' licence applications while hunts themselves would, of course, have to foot the whole bill for the process.

His Bill is exposed not as a fair 'middle way,' but a sly and cynical attempt to halt most hunting under a cloak of political moderation.

The hunting community made clear that it would accept fair regulation. Instead, the minister has produced a divisive, confrontational Bill which will be resisted ever more resolutely by right-minded rural people. If made law, it would never have the support of the ordinary communities who would be the only people affected and would, therefore, be effectively unenforceable.

TOM FELL, Countryside Alliance Regional Director for the North West (Cumbria, Lancs and Cheshire), Allithwaite, Grange-over-Sands.