While Makerfield Decides, Labour MPs Chase Foxes
On 18 June, voters in Makerfield will go to the polls in a by-election that could return Andy Burnham to Parliament and trigger a Labour leadership contest. The same day, the Defra consultation on banning trail hunting closes. It is worth asking why twelve MPs have spent the run-up to polling day lending their names to a trail hunting Bill rather than the fight that could decide the future of this Government.
Not a single respondent in a recent ORB poll of over 2,000 voters named a trail hunting ban among the issues the Government should prioritise. Asked what mattered most, the public listed the economy, immigration, and health and social care. The same poll, commissioned by the Countryside Alliance, found that 65% believe Labour unfairly neglects the countryside.
This is the context in which 11 Labour MPs and one Green MP have lined up behind the Hunting Act 2004 (Amendment) Bill, a Private Member’s Bill that, by the admission of the lobby group driving it, is not intended to become law directly. It exists to apply pressure. The MPs lining up behind it are not legislating; they are performing.
Chairing the effort is Neil Duncan-Jordan, the Labour MP for Poole, who, within a year of his election in July 2024, had the whip removed for organising rebellions against the Government on winter fuel payments and welfare reform. One Labour Party source told The Times the suspension was for "persistent knobheadery", amid suspicions Duncan-Jordan and three others were considering joining a new party led by Jeremy Corbyn. The whip was restored in November.
If the bill itself appears largely symbolic, the organisation driving it raises even more questions. In June 2025, the New Hunting Ban convened what it called its ‘Parliamentary Committee’ inside the Commons, naming five Labour MPs to it, Duncan-Jordan as chair, alongside Rachael Maskell, Perran Moon, Will Stone and Sean Woodcock. A genuine cross-party body registers as an All-Party Parliamentary Group, reports its funding and keeps minutes; an unregistered group is not permitted to use the word ‘parliamentary’ in its name at all. The group's listed Great Portland Street headquarters is a virtual office rented by the hour, its published contact number is reportedly the personal mobile of North London Hunt Sabs leader Rhys Giles, and its ‘legal counsel’, Rebecca Reddington, appears on neither the Solicitors Regulation Authority nor the Bar registers. It files nothing at Companies House, the Charity Commission or the UK Lobbying Register, and discloses no donors.
The company is no better than the structure. Duncan-Jordan has met members of the North London Hunt Saboteurs inside the Commons, photographed alongside Giles and fellow sab Philip Walters. According to BTM's reporting, Walters received a 15-month drink-driving ban in 2003, a community rehabilitation order in 2004 for further uninsured driving, and was charged in 2008 with criminal damage over £5,000 alongside assault and battery. Giles, for his part, was filmed standing in a field playing recorded hounds in cry through a speaker, a tactic that draws hounds off a trail and towards roads. These are the people helping to draft criminal law about the welfare of hounds.
This is the cause to which Labour MPs are lending their names while their party fights for survival in Greater Manchester. Makerfield is not a safe seat being defended at leisure; it is a contest Reform could win, in the week the Government can least afford a loss. Every hour spent fronting an unworkable bill drafted alongside people who carry reported criminal records is an hour not spent on the economy, immigration or health and social care, the things voters actually named.
On 18 June, the country will learn whether Labour has held Makerfield. By midnight, the Defra consultation will also have closed: the consultation twelve MPs decided to lobby with a Bill that will never become law. One of those was worth the political capital. The MPs who chose the other will have to explain why.
