HOPES of a late compromise over foxhunting appeared finally to have been snuffed out yesterday as a minister told peers not to try to protect the pursuit with a revived registration scheme.

Lord Whitty, the Rural Affairs Minister, told them that the Lords would be exceeding its powers as a revising chamber if it substituted a Bill banning hunting with one allowing hunting under licence.

Peers ignored his warning and, as expected, voted by 322 to 72 to overturn the ban sought by MPs and replace it with a system of registered hunts authorised by tribunals similar to that first proposed in the Government’s Bill.

Lord Whitty, a former union official, told peers that it was foolish to negotiate on a position already rejected by the other side and accused pro-hunting peers of going beyond the original legislation with amendments to allow stag hunting to survive.

His remarks dismayed hunting supporters, who had taken heart from earlier Downing Street comments suggesting that the Prime Minister remained wedded to his wish for a compromise. Tony Blair’s official spokesman said before the vote: “Let us wait and see what the House of Lords does, but the Prime Minister has not changed his view at any point that it would be better if a compromise is agreed.”

Sources close to Mr Blair indicated, however, that he did not harbour any realistic hope that a compromise would survive when Labour MPs vote on the Bill again on its return to the Commons.

Mr Blair is understood to be deeply unhappy at the prospect of introducing an outright ban. He regards that as contrary to his new Labour ethos of governing for the whole country and not acting out of spite towards any group of voters. He also accepts, however, that he missed the opportunity of introducing a “third way deal” in the last Parliament. Since then he has given pledges on a hunting ban to MPs in return for their support over bitterly contested votes for the Iraq war and top-up tuition fees.

A senior aide told The Times: “The Prime Minister knows he should have closed this issue down years ago. The hunting lobby have played it very badly by challenging the authority of the Commons and attacking us. We are now just going to have to do it, but he hates all this polarisation.”

Hunting supporters in the Lords are expected to open a second front in their battle with the Commons by tabling an amendment that would extend the proposed 18-month delay in enacting any ban to July 2007, a total of two and a half years. It will be put to a vote today or tomorrow. Such a timescale would allow hunting to continue for at least another two seasons.

If peers support this, instead of the Government’s timetable of July 2006, any compromise over the timing of a ban would be at risk of being lost. Its introduction would then revert, as written into the Bill, to three months after Royal Assent, probably meaning February next year, weeks before the expected general election. A Lords source told The Times: “There is a feeling that, if the Bill is going to kill hunting anyway, why help Blair over a general election problem?”

The amendments to restore registered hunting were moved by Lord Donoughue, the Labour peer and former junior agriculture minister, who said that he did so in a spirit of compromise and appealed to supporters of a ban to follow suit. “If the Government does not accept this rational compromise and also uses the draconian Parliament Act against its original proposals, then my Government, of which I am normally a most loyal supporter, will in my view be shamed and humiliated by its actions, ” Lord Donoughue said.

Lord Whitty said that the group of amendments would alter fundamentally the structure of the Bill and would mean peers sent back to the Commons an entirely different measure rather than one revised on points of detail. “It is not usually a good move to send back to your negotiating partners a proposal which has already been overwhelmingly rejected, not unless you wish to precipitate a complete breakdown of relations between the two sides. I put that as a warning,” Lord Whitty said.

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