PEOPLE who hunt foxes should have the same basic human rights as “ethnic groups” such as Gypsies to practice their traditions and uphold their way of life, a court was told yesterday.

Brian Friend, 62, a retired Royal Navy pilot from Membury, Devon, told an appeal court in Edinburgh that the ban on foxhunting introduced in Scotland two years ago was “a malicious and unlawful restriction on a group of people to which Labour MSPs have taken an unwarranted dislike”. He said that the law was incompatible with Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which ensures respect for private and family life, and Article 10, which ensures freedom of expression.

Mr Friend, who has a house in Kelso in the Scottish Borders, is appealing against a ruling by Lord Brodie in June 2003 rejecting Mr Friend’s claim that the ban breached his human rights. Yesterday Mr Friend, beginning a three-day appeal in which he is representing himself, claimed that the ban was tantamount to discrimination against a minority group that had a “national cultural tradition dating back to the Iron Age”.

He said that people who hunt deserved to be protected by the Race Relations Act.

Lord Brodie’s judgment had been wrong on “all points of law”. He told the hearing: “I submit that the activity of hunting is part of my private life and my family life. It is a cultural lifestyle. My lifestyle has just the same value as a Gypsy’s.” Mr Friend said the contention that such rights applied only to ethnic groups “just has to be untenable”.

The hearing continues.

• Alun Michael, the Rural Affairs Minister, is to confront hunt protesters tomorrow during a visit to Exeter. He is to speak to the annual conference of the Association of National Park Authorities. A crowd of at least 500 will be out in force to heckle him over his plan to force through a hunting ban.

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