Pro-foxhunting group says UK hunters should be protected ethnic minority

Chair of Hunting Kind says he has built legal case to obtain same protection as Roma and LGBTQ+ people

Photo: Members of a Boxing Day hunt. The group said it would try to mount legal challenges to prove that those who support hunting have suffered discrimination or been abused on social media. Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA

A pro-foxhunting group says it has prepared a legal case to try to prove that hunters are an ethnic minority whose hunts should be protected under equality laws.

Ed Swales, the chair of Hunting Kind, claims he has been advised by a leading human rights lawyer that hunters unequivocally qualify for legal protection under the UK Equality Act 2010.

Speaking to the FieldsportsChannel podcast, Swales said: “The qualifications of an ethnic group, there are five of them, and we hit everyone straight in the bullseye.”

He said he had spent three years preparing a legal challenge that had now been reviewed by a human rights KC “who sits on the council of the European court of human rights”.

Swales said: “The outcome of that from the human rights silk is that as a protected minority group under the Equality Act, we qualify, undoubtedly 10 out of 10.”

He said the group would try to mount legal challenges to prove that those who support hunting have suffered discrimination such as losing work or contracts, or been abused on social media. If successful, such action would give hunters the same protection as minority groups such as the Roma community or LGBTQ+ groups.

Swales accused “the animal rights extremist movement” of launching “a person-on-person conflict” against hunters under “the excuse of animal welfare”.