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Hounds Descend on Westminster as Countryside Rejects Labour's Hunting Ban

On the eve of the consultation deadline, campaigners and their hounds brought the fight to DEFRA's doorstep, and a Labour peer led the charge against her own government.

24 hours before the government's consultation on trail hunting closes for good, the countryside brought its answer to Westminster. Hounds and campaigners gathered on Marsham Street, outside the offices of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), for a demonstration organised by the Countryside Alliance. Banners read "hands off the countryside" and "fight the ban, save our countryside."

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Credit: The Countryside Alliance

Leading the opposition was Labour peer Baroness Mallalieu, President of the Countryside Alliance, who turned on her own party's government for losing touch with rural Britain. When a government's own benches are standing outside its departments in protest, the political weather has well and truly turned.

By the time the hounds reached Westminster, more than 75,000 people had already responded in opposition. The Countryside Alliance's director of hunting, Polly Portwin, says she is confident the response ranks among the largest DEFRA has ever received. This is the sound of the countryside telling Labour, in its tens of thousands, that this is a fight nobody asked for.

For those gathered on Marsham Street, the trail hunting ban is only the latest front. It sits alongside the Family Farm Tax, rising business rates, and proposals targeting game shooting and shotgun ownership. This is a pattern rural communities have come to read as a sustained assault on their way of life. With farmers already squeezed and rural economies fragile, the question hanging over DEFRA's offices was a simple one: of all the things a government might prioritise, why this?

The consultation closes tonight, but the campaign does not end with it. As the banners came down and the hounds were led home, the message left behind on Marsham Street was unmistakable. The countryside has spoken, and it has done so to its own government's face.

The countryside has had its say, now it's on the government to listen.

You have until 23:59 tonight to make your voice heard: https://www.countryside-alliance.org/trail-hunting-consultation-2026

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