MINISTER Ben Bradshaw's unusual but welcome U-turn on 'Open General Licences' for shooting pigeons and crows obscures a more worrying approach by this government towards shooting.

In its 2001 manifesto, Labour promised that it had "no intention whatsoever of placing restrictions on the sports of angling and shooting."

And yet the truth is that indirectly but steadily shooting has been interfered with, and had it not been for the intervention of rural groups, the damage may have been even more substantial.

The draft Animal Welfare Bill contains a number of proposed and unnecessary measures that would impact heavily on the rearing of game and thus the viability of the majority of UK game shooting and associated industries.

The Home Office Firearms review hints at restrictions on the age young people can use weapons, and the number of guns an individual can own.

The Hunting Act, not DEFRA's finest piece of work, contains restrictions in the way that a gamekeeper can use a dog to control pests.

The government said it would allow hunting to continue under licence, but could not control its own party, the result being a ban of sorts.

We know that a significant number of backbenchers hate shooting just as much as hunting and for much the same reason -- the sight of a tweed coat provokes much the same old prejudices as the sight of a red one.

TOM FELL, Countryside Alliance Regional Director, Grange-over-Sands, Cumbria.