There’s been an angry mood at the annual gathering of the Police Federation on the Dorset coast this week. Visiting politicians, anxious to curry favour with the rank and file, have faced tough questions from the floor about cutbacks in officer numbers and honouring the three-year pay deal.

One policeman asked the Home Secretary why his own dry-cleaning and other allowances were being cut while MPs were claiming expenses that would be “jaw-dropping in a third-world dictatorship let alone in the land of hope and glory”. A recession poses police forces with a two-pronged problem. They face a squeeze on resources at the same time that crime is expected to rise.

In such a climate chief constables have to juggle priorities. Scotland Yard is pondering whether it would be a good use of resources to start investigating MPs’ expense claims. Around the country, chiefs have decided that trying to enforce the clumsy hunting law would be a waste of public money.

The new police guidance makes clear that the Hunting Act 2004 is the law of the land that all forces have a duty to enforce. Then come the caveats. “The general duty to enforce the law,” says the document, “is of course subject to the normal discretion of chief constables who are required to balance resources and priorities.”

If that wasn’t clear enough, the paper adds that gathering evidence of offences against the Act “has proved a difficult task for the police, and with available resources it is likely to remain so”.

It is crystal clear that if there are to be any more prosecutions under the Hunting Act, members of the public will have to present overwhelming evidence of criminality before the police are prepared to take action.

Times Recommends

• The bright side of this winter rain
• Story behind the picture: Snow Leopard, 2008
• Times Charity Appeal: The Place2Be