ON the eve of the vote in the Commons on the government's hunting bill comes a revolting tactic by the master of East Lancashire's only foxhunt, manifestly designed to put pressure on MPs intending to opt for an outright ban.

For, says Holcombe Harriers' Arnold Greenhalgh, if hunting is outlawed, all his hunt's hounds will be shot.

The specious explanation for this is that the dogs, bred purely for hunting foxes, cannot be retrained and so would have to be killed as they would no longer be of any use.

If nothing else, this attitude speaks eloquently of the pitiless regard that members of Holcombe Harriers have for their hounds, if, once they can no longer be exploited for their hunting abilities, they can so summarily discard them. In any case, it contradicts the RSPCA's view that foxhounds can indeed be retrained and become pets.

But does not that posture amount also to an emotive device to coerce our legislators by warning them that they will be surrogate killers of innocent foxhounds if they ban the bloodsport altogether?

It is a ploy that stinks.

For, whatever Mr Greenhalgh may threaten and even if it is the case that foxhounds cannot become pets, there is no necessity for them to be put down if hunting with dogs is outlawed. He and his fellow Harriers and hunt enthusiasts all over the country can still go haring off on their horses after the hounds -- in the bloodless and uncruel pastime of drag-hunting.

All that would need to be exterminated is their own warped lust for hounding a living creature to death.

And when all the shabby distractions, such as the threatened slaughter of hounds, are set aside is not that the essence of the option that MPs have of an outright ban -- to eradicate from a civilised 21st-century society the sick and cruel business of people killing animals, pests though they may be, for pleasure?

This newspaper is pleased that four of our region's MPs are not swayed from that view.