RECORD numbers of hunters and hunt followers are expected at Boxing Day meets today as police chiefs demand new powers to help forces to crack down on illegal hunting with dogs.

Ten months after the ban on the sport Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, is being urged to give officers a right of access on private land to check hunting activity and to make arrests, The Times has learnt.

Police also want hunting crimes to be “recordable” offences, leaving those caught with a criminal record, thus allowing forces to keep track of persistent offenders.

Far from consigning hunting to the history books the ban has given the 1,000-year-old sport a renaissance, with thousands more in the saddle or on foot in pursuit of a fox scent and sometimes accidentally hunting real foxes.

The hunting correspondent for Country Life describes the change as “a triumph” for the sport and believes that it has marshalled wider public opinion against government meddling in countryside ways. Senior hunting figures believe that there could be a Boxing Day record today — one of the most important dates in the hunting calender — as the ban has spurred a boom in the legal forms of the sport. These range from trail hunting to hound exercise clubs and hunting with a bird of prey.

The call for more controls is revealed in The Times in an interview with Nigel Yeo, Assistant Chief Constable of Sussex and the public order spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), who advises forces on how to police the hunting ban.

Mr Yeo has already been asked by the Home Office for his early comments on the new Hunting Act and its enforcement. This follows concerns from the League Against Cruel Sports that police are taking a “soft approach” to upholding the Act even though it believes there is widespread flouting of the ban.

“The league would argue there is more activity of hunting on private land and not in the public view. I think that is right,” Mr Yeo said.

“There is no power of entry for police in the Act though there is a power of entry to seize items connected with hunting. There is not a power of entry to see what is going on or even to effect an arrest. Unless we have permission from the landowner we can’t go on private land as of right to effect an arrest. We (ACPO) have made the observation to Government that that right is not there and it could be an impediment on occasions.”

He added: “I don’t know if this was an oversight or if a view was taken in Government that they did not wish to give us an unfettered right of access. It is a serious step and this country takes privacy very seriously.”

He believes, however, that hunting offences should be made “recordable” and therefore automatically logged on the police national computer. “If someone committed an offence in Oxfordshire one month and was then arrested in Cornwall, for example, police and the courts would know,” he said.

New offences proposed in the Animal Welfare Bill covering cruelty would be recordable and police believe that there should not be this discrimination for hunting law.

Even though the Home Office has asked police chiefs for their views about the law it is uncertain whether Tony Blair will wish to reopen such a controversial debate in Parliament. A change in the law would require approval of both MPs and peers, and ministers still feel bruised by the battle to get the existing hunting ban.

Mr Yeo admits that the animosity between the sides in the debate is “as bad as ever.”

He accepted that there had been reports of alleged illegal hunting but said in most cases the evidence given did not pass the test to secure a prosecution.

However, Mr Yeo acknowledged that there had been so many concerns raised about the use of a bird of prey in hunting that he had been forced to seek legal advice on the issue.

“My legal advice is that as soon as a hunt is no longer flushing out of the wood the exemption does not cover them. The animal must be shot or the bird released to attack it. If there is a chase out of the wood by the hounds the chase is illegal,” Mr Yeo said.

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