THE head of the Government’s independent inquiry into hunting attacked the prospect of using the Parliament Acts to force through a ban yesterday and urged an eleventh hour compromise.

Lord Burns, formerly the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, said such a move would be “inconsistent with the procedure” because there was insufficient evidence to endorse a ban. His intervention came during the second reading of the Hunting Bill when peers signalled their readiness to amend the legislation to permit licenced hunting as the Government initially proposed.

He said: “Although I fully understand the frustration of those in favour of a ban who feel the issue has been debated long enough, and my own involvement now seems an age ago, I do find it very difficult to accept the use of the Parliament Act in circumstances where there is no clear scientific support for the animal welfare implications of a ban.

“It can only be divisive in the country at large as well as being inconsistent with the use of that procedure.”

Lord Burns, who chaired an inquiry into the future of hunting with dogs in 2000, added: “It would be an enormously disappointing end for the attempt to find some common ground on this issue.”

The debate opened with a warning to peers from Lord Whitty, the Minister for Food and Farming, not to try to change the thrust of the Bill after MPs voted for a total ban. Lord Whitty said: “The ball is in the court, in this House, of those who have supported hunting in its present form to offer a way forward or alternatively to accept the Bill as it now stands if we are not to provoke the use of the Parliament Act.”

If there were a deadlock between the Lords and Commons, Lord Whitty argued, that would be exactly the sort of situation for which the Parliament Acts were written. He told peers that the 18-month delay, under which the ban would not take effect until July 2006, would also be at risk.

But Baroness Byford, for the Conservatives, argued that the use of the Parliament Acts to enable the Commons to overrule the Lords should be confined to national emergencies.

As expected, peers indicated during the debate that they will try to overturn the ban and send back to the Commons an amended Bill that would allow some fox-hunting to continue under licence.

Lord Mancroft, a member of the Countryside Alliance board, claimed that hunt supporters were an oppressed minority like Jews in Nazi Germany and accused the Government of behaving like a “fascist dictatorship”. “What we have to do is find a form of middle way to resolve this very difficult issue and not, as is currently happening, allow the extremes to take over.”

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