February 18th marks five years since The Hunting Act 2004 came into force in England and Wales. In those five years, there have been five hunt related convictions resulting from three separate prosecutions against hunts. So, just 5.7% of Hunting Act convictions up to 2008 involve hunts. The last person to do with a hunt to be prosecuted was in January 2008 and there was not a single successful prosecution involving a hunt in 2009. Independent polls* released by the Countryside Alliance in December 2009 found that 57% of people think the Hunting Act isn’t working and it’s time to put it out of its misery. A majority of the population (50%) also believes that a new Government should give Parliament a chance to repeal the ban.

Countryside Alliance Chief Executive Simon Hart commented: “This fifth anniversary marks five years of failure; the Hunting Act has failed at every level. It does not matter if you are the huntsman facing endless spurious allegations from animal rights activists, the policeman who wastes hours having to investigate them, the taxpayer desperate for the police to be able to concentrate on real crime or even the animal rights activist so desperate to see the end of hunting. There can be no excuse for keeping a law which wastes thousands of hours of police time and millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money. Our police and courts should be able to focus on real crime and real criminals, rather than wrestling with an unworkable hunting law. This should be the Hunting Act’s last birthday: whoever is in Government after the election must give Parliament the opportunity to repeal it.

The report was produced by some of Whitehall's most senior figures, including the former Cabinet secretary Lord Butler and Sir John Chilcott who is chairing the Iraq war inquiry. The report states that: “The media’s increasing appetite for policy initiatives has been a prime source of the high volume of often ill-thought out legislation….. A consequence has been that a higher proportion of Bills now enter Parliament incomplete, poorly explained, and requiring substantial amendment. That situation not only wastes scarce parliamentary time but also increases the likelihood that the resulting statute will need amending because it has proved unsatisfactory, or in some instances unworkable.”

Tim Bonner, Head of Media at the Countryside Alliance, said: “This report gives powerful independent backing to the case for repeal of the Hunting Act. It is a bad law passed for bad reasons so it is no surprise that it has failed so spectacularly. The endless warnings from inside and outside the Government that a refusal to legislate on the basis evidence and principle would lead to chaos were ignored. We now live with the consequence: an unworkable piece of legislation that has wasted thousands of hours of police time and millions of pounds of taxpayers money. The other examples of bad Government listed in the report have all been reversed. The Poll Tax was scrapped, the Child Support Agency replaced and the Millennium Dome sold off. Whoever is in Government after the election must also address the Hunting Act and give Parliament an opportunity to reverse it as well”.