Fox hunting vote 'killed off' by new generation of young urban Tory women opposed to bloodsports



Caroline Dinenage says foxhunting can't be justified

David Cameron’s pledge to hold a free vote on restoring fox-hunting was last night declared ‘dead and buried’ by a new breed of modernising Tory MPs.

The so-called Blue Fox group of ambitious young urban Tories boasted that they had finally killed off any prospect of a Commons vote on reviving bloodsports before the next Election.

They claimed that because of their public opposition to a return to hunting, the Prime Minister would now drop any attempt to stage a vote in this Parliament.

And to the anger of party traditionalists, one of the new group – all elected to the Commons last year – even compared foxhunting to the barbaric medieval sport of bear-baiting.

Caroline Dinenage, 39, MP for Gosport in Hampshire, told The Mail on Sunday: ‘I don’t hold with the idea that just because it’s traditional we have to continue to do it. If that was the case, we’d still have bear-baiting and be sending small children up chimneys.’

But last night, pro-hunting MPs were furious with the Blue Foxes’ claims and called on Mr Cameron to honour his pledge to hold the ballot.

In a surprise addition to the Coalition agreement last summer, the Government promised to stage a vote on whether to repeal the ban on hunting with dogs introduced by Labour in 2004.

The move came after Mr Cameron, a self-confessed ‘country boy’ who grew up fishing and shooting rabbits, said the ban was a ‘mistake’ and needed to be reversed.

Since then, No 10 has indicated that the free vote – whereby MPs vote according to their conscience rather than according to an official line set by their party – would be put off until next year at the earliest.

But last week, anti-hunting MPs insisted the idea of the Commons revisiting the hunt ban was doomed because, with 20 Tories openly opposed to it, the Prime Minister would never win the vote against overwhelming opposition from his Lib Dem Coalition partners and Labour MPs.

The Blue Fox group, many of whom are in Parliament merely due to Mr Cameron’s determination to give his party a modern face, insisted the Tories should no longer be identified with the ‘hunting, shooting and fishing’ fraternity.

Mother-of-two Ms Dinenage, daughter of television presenter Fred Dinenage, said: ‘I was brought up in the Hampshire countryside but I just cannot justify hunting animals to their death.’

Conservative MP for Hove Mike Weatherley, a former music-industry executive, said: ‘A lot of the new Tory intake at the Commons are Right-wing on economics and liberal on social issues.



Blue Foxes: New intake Tory MPs, from left, Tracey Crouch, Esther McVey and Laura Sandys



I believe in free markets but I also believe in animal welfare and the most vulnerable in our society. I don’t think the party wants to open up the foxhunting debate given that a lot of the 2010 intake of Tory MPs have strong feelings against it.’

Mr Weatherley, who has appeared alongside rock star Brian May at an anti-hunting event, dismissed the bloodsport as ‘cruel and inhumane’.

Fellow Tory MP Tracey Crouch, 36, who won her Chatham and Aylesford seat from Labour at the last Election, said the anti-hunting views of colleagues was ‘a direct consequence of the success of the Tory Party, in that we now represent more urban areas and not just the rural countryside’.

Miss Crouch added: ‘The new generation of Tory MPs reflects the views of the vast majority of the public who do not want to see foxhunting reintroduced.’

Her views were echoed by former television presenter Esther McVey, 43, MP for Wirral West, who said: ‘I come from the great northern city of Liverpool and, given the way I have been brought up, I am not in favour of foxhunting. It’s the voice of inner-city conservatism.’

And Laura Sandys, another Tory who entered the Commons only last year as MP for South Thanet in Kent, said: ‘I am not part of any formal group against foxhunting but I do not think we should be spending parliamentary time on this issue.’

No way back: 20 Tories have openly opposed the idea of the Commons revisiting the hunting ban introduced by Labour in 2004

Last night, however, pro-hunting Tories denied this was a ‘country versus town’ debate.

Carmarthen MP Simon Hart, former chief executive of the pro-hunting Countryside Alliance, said: ‘If this was about country squires versus townies you wouldn’t have inner-city Labour MP Kate Hoey chairing the Countryside Alliance.’

Mr Hart angrily rebuked Ms Dinenage for comparing hunting to bear-baiting. He said: ‘That sort of remark is straight out of the animal-rights textbook. It is puerile and unbecoming of an MP to say that.’

He also made clear he expected the Prime Minister to honour the pledge for a free vote.

Mr Hart, who denied anti-hunt predictions that most MPs opposed repealing the hunt ban, also said countryside-sports supporters were encouraged by Tony Blair’s admission in his biography that he had been wrong to introduce the ban.

The ex-Prime Minister wrote of how he ‘started to realise this wasn’t a small clique of weirdo inbreds delighting in cruelty but a tradition, embedded by history . . . that was integral to a way of life’.

Privately, though, some MPs sympathetic to hunting are keen to avoid any vote stirring up the issue on the basis that the ban laws introduced under Labour are so ‘shambolic’ and full of holes that people are still able to hunt with hounds without much interference from the police.

Last night, a No 10 refused to give a firm timetable for the proposed Commons ballot on hunting.

A source said: ‘There will be a free vote at some stage, but there are other more urgent priorities for us to deal with.’



