AFTER the recent revelations of Marlborough College boys involved in twice-a-week beagling, clearly it is time to close the loopholes in the Hunting Bill and put it forward as a total ban on live animal hunting.
James Gray MP, prominent in the pro-hunting lobby on the Hunting Bill Committee, has failed ignominiously in his attempts to reduce the minimum age for obtaining hunting licences to 16, which implies that schoolboys invited to join in beagling at Marlborough College are below the age at which they can be considered responsible or mature for such purposes.
No conscientious parent would want children involved in the sort of unpleasant incident that occurred in Cheshire on March 1, when the Royal Rack beagles chased a rabbit into a garden, overran it and left it, only to be forced to jump dangerously through a barbed wire fence.
Or would they want them to develop the kind of attitude encountered by League Against Cruel Sports at a foxhounds hunt recently?
Although no foxes were found or killed, two supporters related joyfully how the previous day they closely watched a hunt dig out a fox and the terriers emerging "dripping with blood''.
MPs should vote unconditionally for total abolition.
KATHERINE WATSON
Rushton Drive
Bramhall
Cheshire
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