House of Lords set to vote on UK anti-hunting bill

The row over the future of fox hunting in Britain is re-surfacing in the House of Lords as peers are being given a chance to vote on the controversial issue for the first time.

MPs have already overwhelmingly voted for a ban - one of the three options in the Government's Hunting Bill - but peers are expected to clash with the Commons.

At the committee stage peers are expected to back the option dubbed the Middle Way, allowing hunting to continue under licence.

Another option allows hunting to carry on with self-regulation.

If a General Election is called for early May, the Bill will be killed.

But animal welfare campaigners hope a Labour victory will mean Tony Blair will stick to his pledge to outlaw the sport and re-introduce a Bill in the next Parliament.

However, the issue, which has been at the top of the political agenda since Labour swept to power in 1997, has sparked renewed anger in the countryside among communities struggling to cope with the foot-and-mouth outbreak.

The pro-hunting Countryside Alliance has been forced to postpone its Liberties and Livelihoods march through London, which was originally scheduled to take place last Sunday March 18, because of the disease.

Hundreds of thousands of farmers and rural dwellers had intended to march through the streets of the capital in defence of what they see as their rightful civil liberties.

The House of Lords now has only a handful of landowning pro-hunting hereditary peers, after the Government ejected more than 600 of them in November 1999.

But their exit does not mean the Hunting Bill is guaranteed a smooth passage.

Some of the most vociferous opponents of a hunting ban during the Second Reading debate in the Lords earlier this month were Labour peers Baroness Mallalieu, who is president of the Countryside Alliance, and broadcaster Lord Bragg, who lives in Cumbria.