Camerons Plan To Relax Foxhunting Ban Set To Fail Following SNP Threat

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SNP forces Cameron to delay planned Commons vote on foxhunting

foxhunting

The plan to relax the foxhunting ban is likely to fail after the Scottish National Party (SNP) decided to take the step of voting against a change in the law that only relates to England and Wales.

Ministers have now shelved Wednesday’s vote on relaxing the hunting laws.

56 Scottish nationalist MPs said they would vote against the move and therefore inflict an embarrassing first defeat on the government.

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon told David Cameron he is “not master of all he surveys” after her party forced a delay in a planned fox-hunting vote.

Foxhunting
SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon

The Independent reports:

The decision by SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon to break with the party’s tradition of abstaining on votes in Westminster that do not affect Scotland prompted an angry reaction from the Prime Minister, who accused the Scottish nationalists of behaving in an “entirely opportunistic” manner.

MPs were due to be given a free vote on proposals to lift the limit of two hounds allowed on a hunt for pest control and research purposes on Wednesday but decided to postpone the move until the autumn as it became clear it would lose the vote.

The SNP made the decision to take part in the vote after Ms Sturgeon travelled down to Westminster last night to hold a two-hour meeting with her party’s 56 MPs.

The SNP said it made the decision to vote in the issue because of fears that changes to the fox hunting ban south of the border, such as allowing it for research purposes as well as pest control, would affect hunting in Scotland, where the current legislation is about to be reviewed.

Ms Sturgeon insisted it was a moral decision too, saying she and her colleagues had received as much correspondence over the issue as any other since the election.

But it was also a move to exact revenge on the Conservative government that is trying to push through English Votes for English Laws (Evel) that it believes will turn Scottish parliamentarians into “second-class citizens in Westminster”.

Speaking on the Today programme, Ms Sturgeon accused Mr Cameron of showing “very little respect to the mandate that Scottish MPs’ have,” citing the government’s attitude to changes to the Scotland Bill and the rhetoric around Evel.

The SNP’s decision meant the government was heading towards its first defeat of the new Parliament, with its slender majority of 12 set to be wiped out as up to 30 Tory MPs were expected to join the vast majority of Labour’s 232 MPs to defy the Prime Minister and vote against the relaxation of the ban.

The SNP forced the Prime Minister to act before facing the humiliation of defeat over the matter in the House of Commons tomorrow.

Mr Cameron is expected to return to the issue after it passes its plans for English Votes for English Laws, which would shut out Scottish MPs from voting at certain stages of legislation on laws that do not affect their Scottish constituents.

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