Hunt supporters protest at Downing Street
Crowds of pro-hunting protesters gathered outside Downing Street today to urge Government ministers arriving for a Cabinet meeting to stop using hunting as a "political football" and not to ban it.
Around 1,500 protesters, mainly from Oxfordshire and a 150-mile radius outside London, joined the picket line in Whitehall which is to be the final protest before Parliament resolves the hunting issue.
Among those attending were around 100 ex-servicemen and women and their families whose presence was especially poignant as it is also Remembrance Day.
The picket was suspended for an hour this morning to enable supporters to pay their respects at the Remembrance Day Ceremony at the Cenotaph.
During the roadside protest, supporters were blowing hunting horns and waving banners declaring "Fight Prejudice. Fight The Ban", "Hunting - No Surrender" and "Stop Playing Politics With Something You Don't Understand".
MPs voted overwhelmingly to criminalise hunting with hounds because they claim it is cruel and unnecessary.
But the House of Lords overturned this decision and voted instead for regulated hunting.
Peers hope MPs will accept their argument and allow hunting to continue.
Darren Hughes, spokesman for the Countryside Alliance, who was overseeing today's picket, said the issue of hunting has become a political football for backbenchers and that there are insufficient grounds to ban it.
He added that ministers should instead focus on other issues in the countryside.
He said: "People in the countryside are very concerned, not just those whose jobs and livelihoods depend on it, but those who feel they are being used as a political football.
"What we have seen since Labour came to power is the two Government inquiries into hunting which both pointed strongly towards hunting being regulated rather than banned and both showed hunting as good from an animal welfare point of view as any method of control and they also confirmed banning hunting would not save the life of any fox as people would start using other methods of control."
