LABOUR MPs will deliver a final blow to the supporters of foxhunting today by cutting the time that they will be allowed to adjust before their activities are outlawed.
Despite the mass protest expected in London today, Tony Blair bowed to the wishes of many of his MPs and ministers by agreeing to shorten the two-year period that he granted only last week for the ban to be implemented.
Facing the growing threat of a new rebellion, he decided to bring forward the day when hunting is finally banned from November 2006 to July 2006 so that it is implemented before a new hunting season begins.
That means that the season that begins in the autumn of next year will be the last, although in practice it is expected that the hunts will gradually be run down. The news will infuriate up to 10,000 hunt supporters who are planning to gather in Parliament Square, in spite of last-minute attempt last night by Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, to stop the rally. All hunting in Britain has been called off today so that as many hunt members and followers as possible can come to the capital.
The Prime Minister moved after Hilary Armstrong, the chief whip, and Peter Hain, the Commons leader, warned him that he could not be certain of victory over the period for implementing the ban. There was a danger that an amendment tabled by the backbencher Sir Gerald Kaufman to cut the period from two years to one might be passed.
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After frantic consultations yesterday it was decided that provided the ban was enacted after the last possible date for the general election — July 2006 — it could be cut.
Ministers are saying that the election can then be seen as the final verdict on hunting. But they also hope to avoid during the election campaign the protests and acts of civil disobedience that the more enthusiastic hunting groups have promised.
The Bill to ban foxhunting will be pushed through all its parliamentary stages in just over eight hours of what is expected to be angry debate in the Commons today. It will then go to the Lords tomorrow. Ministers have set aside several days for debate there but if peers block or try to delay the Bill it will be forced through. After it has been in the Lords for 30 days it can be pushed into law under the terms of the Parliament Acts.
But when the Bill is declared law that may not be the end of the matter. Some senior peers are threatening a High Court challenge over the validity of the Parliament Act procedure. Others are talking of a challenge in Europe on the grounds that the ban is an infringement of human rights.
The Greater London Authority wrote to the Countryside Alliance saying that no permission had been given for a protest in Parliament Square.
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But the Metropolitan Police has made clear to the Countryside Alliance that it will not seek to prevent people from protesting outside the Palace of Westminster during the hunting debate.
Hunt supporters have been ordered to keep their dogs and horses at home but to bring their klaxons, whistles and hunting horns, and wear red and green.