A HUNTING Bill has been left out of the Queen’s Speech while the Prime Minister tries to find a way to thwart the “scorched earth” policy being threatened by doomed hereditary peers.

Some 32 Bills have been shortlisted for the next session, the final list to be decided by the Cabinet in the next three weeks. The widely expected resurrection of a hunting Bill remains in doubt. The Bill will be kept off the list unless ministers can find a way to avoid a showdown with the Lords which could plunge all the other Bills into crisis.

Government business managers have told Mr Blair that if legislation to ban hunting is included in the Queen’s Speech on November 26, peers will insist on debating it until they have put in jeopardy almost everything else in the Prime Minister’s legislative programme. Important measures on pensions, university top-up fees, baby bonds, child protection and mental health could all fall by the wayside. Business managers point out that the 92 hereditary peers, whose seats are to be abolished under the Lords Reform Bill, also in the Queen’s Speech, will have nothing to lose by debating a further attempt to ban hunting until other Bills run out of time.

The latest attempt to get a hunting ban on the statute book collapsed last week when it ran out of time in the Upper House. The Government had been expected to include a new Bill in the Queen’s Speech. It could force it through using the Parliament Act if peers continued to object. However, the risk posed to Tony Blair’s programme by the hereditary peers and pro-hunting Labour peers, is so serious that a senior minister has raised the prospect of “anarchy in the Lords”.

One option is a little known and, until now, unused parliamentary method to get a hunting Bill through. Ministers are considering enlisting the help of a backbench anti-hunting Labour MP, such as Tony Banks, to invoke the Parliament Act, rather than leaving it to the Government. If the Lords objected, they would be explicitly opposing the will of MPs rather than of ministers, which would be constitutionally indefensible and would rob the Lords of the excuse that they are debating the Bill at length in order to hold the Government to account.

Business managers are also considering a Private Member’s Bill on hunting, which would not be debated in government time, and leaving hunting out of the Queen’s Speech. The former has been tried beforewhile the latter would anger Labour MPs so badly that it could aggravate the expected Commons showdown over measures such as tuition fees.

Whichever way Mr Blair turns, he is facing a major problem next session. ““There is now a chance that hunting might not be in the Queen's Speech,” an insider said.

Mr Blair faces a further tactical problem, over identity cards. Their introduction is to be included in the Speech in the form of a draft Bill; this means it will not be debated until shortly before the next election. Ministers believe this will mean there is less opposition to it among MPs, as it has wide support among voters.

The main themes of the speech will be equality, security, and modernisation. Peter Hain, the Leader of the House of Commons, yesterday indicated that he was determined to push through anti-hunting legislation in the next session.

In an interview with Sky News’s Sunday with Adam Boulton programme he made clear that the Government was determined to act. “We have seen the most flagrant abuse of the House of Lords’ power to destroy a Bill, massively voted for in the House of Commons and successively endorsed in our general election manifestos,” he said.

Mr Hain did not say whether any new legislation would involve a total ban on hunting with hounds. The latest Bill, as originally drafted, would have allowed regulated and licensed foxhunting to continue while outlawing stag-hunting and hare-coursing. However, in June, Labour backbenchers pushed through a series of amendments in the Commons which would have imposed a total ban.

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