Schedule 3 - Hunting with Dogs: Prohibition
Hunting Bill
5:00 pm
Mrs Llin Golding (Newcastle-under-Lyme, Labour)
I am sure that if we looked at the many hundreds of people who follow foxhunting, not all of them will be on horseback, riding across the countryside. Many are viewers and do not chase the fox. I know that people do not go to chase mink. Mink tend to be in or near water and the hunt often follows them into the stream and upstream. There are, occasionally, problems with river banks, but one would also have problems with traps. Somebody has to go to a hidden and secluded part of the river bank to place the trap. He or she then has to bait the trap and examine it every day. The river bank would be disturbed not only on the day of the hunt, but every day if there were traps all the way up the river. To suggest that that would be better than one or two sweeps of a river bank by a hunt is absolute nonsense.