Debate contribution: Hunting with Dogs Bill: Second Stage

Debate contribution by Mr Jonathan Buckley on 26 May 2026.

MLA

Mr Jonathan Buckley

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

26 May 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Hunting with Dogs Bill: Second Stage

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5583291

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Yes, we all should read the Bill very carefully and understand its implications. If anyone has ever seen the impact that a fox can have in a controlled environment, they will know that it is a scene of utter devastation. I have seen chicken farmers who have had their birds ravaged by a fox. The Bill would outlaw other mammals from being hunted with dogs. I point to the weasel family, including minks and stoats. I do not often talk about it in the House, but I am engaged with the pigeon fraternity. I have been a pigeon racer all my life, as were my father and grandfather. It has been something of a family tradition. I have seen, as, perhaps, have Members from an urban environment — they can correct me if I am wrong — how a stoat can enter an enclosure through the smallest of spaces and rip birds apart. Do you know what they do? They start with the head, and take the head off the shoulders. They do not kill it to eat it; they kill it for fun. Once they have killed that one, they go to the next one, and the next one, and the next one.

Under this legislation, using a simple terrier — a household terrier — to remove that predator would be deemed an illegal activity. I will give way.

The Member is fundamentally wrong. I will not go over the broad definitions in the Bill again for fear of repeating myself, but clause 2 would insert article 23B in the 1985 Order, which states:

"In this Part 'hunting a wild mammal' includes searching for and pursuing".

Understanding how even those of the shooting fraternity operate, where two or more are gathered with two or more dogs, they are liable for prosecution under the Bill. The issue of strict liability comes into play, and we have all in the past dealt with vexatious attempts to criminalise neighbours. The Bill runs the risk of setting one rural dweller against the another, and one urban resident against a rural dweller. It is simply not fit for purpose. The example that I gave about the stoat and the weasel population is becoming more live and recurring. It is not something that I witnessed in my first 20-odd years of life, but it has become a much more regular occurrence. It has been reported to me repeatedly, by those who engage in pigeon racing or who keep hens or ducks, that other predator populations are not being controlled effectively. The Bill would put the scud on further controlling those populations. Another unintended consequence of the Bill that we do not talk about often enough is that people will move underground, as it were, to more sinister and illegal aspects of hunting. That is not something that I want to see. I want to see something that meets animal welfare expectations but is grounded in common sense and reality and recognises that we cannot remove ourselves from ensuring that such populations are controlled. We could do that through the Welfare of Animals Act (Northern Ireland) 1972. We could introduce a code of practice with an aspect relating to "undue suffering". That would recognise the need to control predator populations in the rural environment and ensure that anybody who engages in unlawful, unnecessary, cruel and evil exploits towards animals is efficiently dealt with before the law. I mentioned the protection of ground-nesting birds and the safeguarding of livestock. Again, I know many farmers who use the expertise of the hunting fraternity to manage such livestock safeguarding. I take the points that Members raised about some hunts going over farmers' ground where they are not welcome and, in turn, in a minority of cases, causing distress to animals and to the land on which they have trespassed. We could have inserted in the 1972 Act stronger restraints on trespassing on land where a hunt is not welcome. However, some in the House try to present such cases as being in the majority; they are not. In the same way, the majority of those who partake in legal, defined hunting are not people on horseback with hounds but people from a multiplicity of professions. That needs to be taken into account. In opening the debate, Mr Blair talked about preventing the spread of disease and, from some bizarre planet, tried to suggest that it is the dog that, by engaging in legitimate, legal activity, risks the spread of disease. That is so bizarre and so far removed from the realities of countryside life and rural management. The truth of the matter is that it is the predator populations that hunting tries to ensure are regulated and well managed; if they are not regulated, those quarry populations cause and spread animal disease. It is a different debate, but think of TB, for example: that is a wildlife problem. The same thing happens with other mammal species. I have had the unfortunate experience of encountering a fox that was so riddled with mange and other diseases that it was unable to feed its young. That is cruelty in every sense of the word, and it exists in nature. As I said earlier, however, it is for man or woman not to turn a blind eye but to exercise effective wildlife management and pest control and, indeed, management of the countryside to ensure that we have a healthy balance in nature. Whatever the quarry population, whether fox, rabbit, mink or stoat, if it is not managed, it causes devastation. We have talked about the management of wildlife populations. The Bill would replace community-based conservation with a vacuum that will inevitably be filled with less humane, less targeted and less effective means of control. That is not progress; that is not welfare; and that is not conservation. The Bill is driven by activism, not evidence. We must be honest about the motivation behind the Bill. The Bill has not been shaped by farmers, vets, ecologists or rural communities. It has been shaped by a particular activist group whose long-term agenda is not limited to hunting with dogs. I note with interest Sinn Féin's position. In her contribution, Ms Murphy outlined how the Bill falls well short of what Sinn Féin expects any future legislation on hunting to pertain to. I agreed with many of the points that she raised in her contribution, but I find it staggering that anybody could back the Bill, particularly when it is so flawed. Take even the heading. I have not quite got my head around Sinn Féin's position on that yet, especially after looking at previous positions that have been held by the party, including by some in the Dáil. Matt Carthy TD has been on record as saying:

"Rural communities should not be demonised for practices that are part of their heritage. We need evidence-based policy, not legislation driven by perception".

Claire Kerrane TD said:

"We cannot support a ban that ignores the role that these activities play in rural areas. Legislation must be balanced and must respect rural communities".

Brian Stanley TD said:

"There is a danger in criminalising ordinary rural people for activities that have been regulated for years".

When I listened to Ms Murphy's points, I sensed that she agreed with every one of those statements. My contention is that the Bill is not amendable. I say that with regret. I would much rather have seen an amendment brought forward by the Minister and his Department — an office that Mr Blair's party occupies — to ensure that we had appropriate legislation that ensured respect for rural communities and made sure that their contribution was valued and their activity in rural life appreciated. Today's debate is about hunting with dogs. When those against hunting with dogs get their way today, tomorrow it will be shooting. There are Members sighing, but those are the inevitable consequences of the legislation that they are trying to push on the House. After that comes angling —

— then any form of countryside management that does not fit their ideological world view.

Thank you, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. Those were the exact comments that I made in 2021. Those remarks were not challenged by the Chair and they were received with the same sneering contempt from the Alliance Party, but they are factual. There is an attack on the rural way of life by the Alliance Party and by activists associated with it. I do not include in that description everybody who absolutely values animal welfare; I am saying that the Bill will have devastating consequences for how rural populations go about their business, how we manage wildlife and how we ensure that the countryside has the protection that it deserves. The Assembly should not be a vehicle for the Alliance Party's ideological agenda. Would any sensible person who was genuine in their aim to improve animal welfare not look to other parts of the UK that have already banned hunting with dogs in order to assess the effects? Would that not be a reasonable first step? I have a question for the Bill sponsor, although, to be fair to him, he has left the Chamber for a glass of water or a comfort break.

I know for a fact that he has been given a copy of Charlie Pye-Smith's book, 'Rural Wrongs: Hunting and the Unintended Consequences of Bad Law'. I recommend that all Members read that book, because it is the only study of the welfare effects of the Hunting Act 2004 and its equivalent in Scotland. I was pleased to be invited to the launch of the book at Westminster. I will give way to any Member from the Alliance Party, including the Minister, who has read that book.

Thank you, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. In any debate, a Member is entitled to refer to any evidence, peer-reviewed or scientific, that supports the principles of an intended Bill or otherwise. That is exactly what I am doing.

I am merely outlining why I have referred to the book.

OK. The book demonstrated the impact of the legislation on the rural way of life, and it showed the life of a fox, a brown hare and a red deer on Exmoor. I commented on the book when the Bill was discussed in 2021. Nobody took issue with it then; in fact, I expected the Members who advocated animal welfare to have read the book. That Bill did not meet the objectives. The book that I referenced pointed to the impact on quarry populations of the removal of legitimate hunting. To my knowledge, no Member has read that book. It stated that conditions for the quarry populations, for which I have the utmost respect, had been made considerably worse in a variety of ways and for a number of reasons. Briefly, the status of those animals has been changed by the hunting bans in England and Scotland, and a community-based conservation process was replaced by either pest control or commercial gain. Much has been said about those who partake in shooting practices. Following the hunting ban, it became apparent in Exmoor that the quarry populations that the legislation sought to protect faced some devastating impacts. When amateur marksmen shot those animals, they ran for days with wounds. That is the consequence of bad law. That is the consequence of elected members following populist belief over scientific evidence. That is the consequence of abstaining from appropriate wildlife management. It is important to put that on the record today, because it is the only research on the post-hunting ban period, and no one can claim that a ban on hunting with dogs is categorically good for animal welfare. The Burns inquiry in England and Wales and Lord Bonomy's review in Scotland gathered scientific evidence from across the board to assess the impact of the Acts, and they could point to no way in which animal welfare had been protected. The findings will be disputed by anti-hunt groups, but it brings me to another question: why has the Alliance Party or the lobby that it represents today not spent a single pound to demonstrate the positive animal welfare impacts of a ban on hunting with dogs? The ban has been there since 2004. Surely, it would be easy to pull together scientific evidence of the legitimate protection of the populations that it seeks to protect. Members, it does not exist. There has never been any evidence to substantiate the intent behind an outright ban on hunting with dogs. We are here to legislate not on the basis of emotion, perception or online claims but on the basis of evidence, principle and real-world consequences of decisions that we make collectively as a body. The Bill does not improve animal welfare; it does not reflect rural realities; it does not provide legal certainty; it does not respect the rights of responsible dog owners; and it does not command the confidence of those who manage the countryside. It is bad law. It has been presented today that, on the basis of the consultation, we are to expect that this is a foregone conclusion for everybody. The consultation was responded to by 0·25%, not even a percentage point, of the Northern Ireland population. That is not a basis on which anyone can claim they speak for the entirety of a Northern Ireland community, just as I would acknowledge that I do not speak for the entirety of the rural community.

I will, in a moment. Mr Blair spoke in his opening remarks about the cruel practice of hunting groups towards their hounds and dogs. Mr Blair, if you have evidence of that happening in Northern Ireland — evidence of actions that are illegal and prosecutable before the law — I suggest that, instead of smearing those with a genuine love for dogs, you bring that information to the police and have those people prosecuted. I will be with you every bit of the way, ensuring their prosecution. The facts remain: anybody who has dogs for hunting purposes, be they cocker spaniels, springer spaniels, Labradors, beagles or any other type of hound, love their animals. They love their dogs. Their dogs are treated with the utmost care and attention. I have had a hound since I was no height. They were treated with love, care and affection. They have been an integral part of my family home. If I knew anybody who would dare bring harm to them, I would have them before the court of law. The suggestion made by some today that such practice is widespread is nothing short of ridiculous. In drawing my remarks to a close, I thank everybody who has contributed to the debate, regardless of whether I agreed with them. It is fair to say that, if the Bill is to meet the tests that were outlined by the Sinn Féin Member Ms Murphy, significant amendment will be required. I will vote against the Bill, because I do not agree with its intent, its broad legal definitions or the consequences that it would impose on our rural way of life. For those reasons, I will vote against it.

2,540 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Uncertain: close call

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 15:41 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

Disagree with this assessment?

Classifications can be challenged. A person reads every challenge, and any change is recorded publicly above with its reason.

Challenge this classification