Politics Home | Charity welcomes government consultation to properly ban hunting with hounds

The League is encouraging the public to take part in the hunting consultation and use it to back the government’s pledge to ban so-called trail hunting, but also to demand new measures to outlaw reckless and ‘accidental’ hunting, to remove loopholes in the existing Hunting Act 2004, and to introduce custodial sentences to act as a deterrent for lawbreaking.

New figures released by the League today to coincide with the consultation show suspected illegal fox hunting is rife. During the last fox and cub hunting seasons, from August 2025 to March 25 this year, the charity recorded 488 reports of foxes seen being pursued, along with 1,220 reports of anti-social behaviour and havoc inflicted on rural communities by fox hunts. Pre-laid trails were recorded being laid at only four per cent of hunt meets attended by monitors.

The consultation will be open for 12 weeks from today and invites respondents not only to give their opinions on trail, drag and clean boot hunting, but also “whether any other legislative changes are needed to ensure that a ban is effective”.

Emma Slawinski, chief executive of the League Against Cruel Sports, said: “This consultation is the very welcome start of a process which should lead to more effective legislation allowing the courts and police to tackle persistent and prolific illegal hunting, something the League has been lobbying many different governments for over many years.

“The time for change is now – 21 years after the original hunting ban came into force, we are now finally on the brink of consigning this old-fashioned blood sport to history

“So-called trail hunting must be banned, the exemptions in the Hunting Act removed, the end of so-called accidental hunting, and jail sentences introduced to act as a deterrent for those who would break new stronger fox hunting laws.”

The charity has public backing. In February 2025, on the twentieth anniversary of the Hunting Act coming into force, the League handed a 104,000-signature petition into Number 10 calling for stronger laws on hunting, followed this year by a 36,000-signature open letter to the government urging it to stand by its promises to do just that.

The League’s fox hunting data was collected from reports into the League’s Animal Crimewatch service, the League’s professional investigators, and other monitor and saboteur groups in the field.

The hunt havoc includes reports of trespass in people’s gardens, attacks on family pets, reports of other wildlife such as deer being chased, hounds running amok on busy roads and causing road traffic accidents or on a railway line – all activities inconsistent with the idea of following a trail, which is what hunts claim to be doing.

However, the League says the figures are just the tip of the iceberg, showing only those hunts being monitored, with hunt behaviour in many remote rural areas and incidents of animals being chased and torn apart going unreported.

Emma added: “For more than 20 years, hunts have carried on breaking the law and ignoring the ban on chasing and killing wild animals with dogs.

“This is a pivotal moment for animal welfare and, as well intentioned as the original ban was, this time around we need to get it right with stronger measures to stop the cruelty and killing.”

More about how to take part in the consultation, and how people can make their voice heard, is available here: https://www.league.org.uk/hunting_consultation