HUNT supporters in North Yorkshire have pledged to fight to the bitter end as foxhunting looked sure to be banned today.

The House of Commons Speaker, Michael Martin, was expected to invoke the Parliament Act, forcing through the ban supported by the majority of MPs.

The ban looks likely to come into effect in February, after peers also dismissed a Government bid to delay it for 18 months.

The Government had hoped to put it off until after the General Election - expected in May. But the ban now appears to be just three months away.

The House of Lords last night voted by more than two to one against an outright ban on hunting with dogs in England and Wales.

Livery yard manager, Meg Abu Hamdan, a follower of North Yorkshire's Middleton Hunt, has vowed to disobey the hunt ban at the first available opportunity.

"It is important that laws are fair laws and are made in a fair way. Unfair laws made in an unfair way will never be respected," she said.

"In the face of an illogical and prejudiced attack on my civil rights, this is my way of safeguarding the integrity of the law and marks the next stage of the campaign to ensure the eventual restoration of our liberties."

Stephen Rawlings, secretary of the Saltersgate Farmers' Hunt, said members were prepared to fight the legality of evoking the Parliament Act, and would take the battle to the law lords and the European Court Of Human Rights.

Secretary of the Sinnington Hunt, Bridget Till, who had a successful hunt meet in Ryedale yesterday, said hunts would ignore a ban and continue hunting.

"It's just prejudice. It's nothing to do with the welfare of foxes, because they will be shot if they're not hunted," she said.

Charles Gundry, master of the Middleton Hunt, had hoped that MPs would have supported licensing hunting of foxes, stags and hares, rather than an outright ban.

He said hunting supporters' next move depended on the exact details of the legislation. Mr Gundry said that when hunts took place across a farmer's land the benefits were two-fold - hunts remove fallen stock and keep down the fox population. "We are doing farmers a favour by hunting foxes. The Department for the Environ-ment, Food and Rural Affairs is asking hunts to continue to provide this service, but we have explained we won't have the resources. But, we have been told we shall have a legal obligation." According to George Atkinson, master of the Farndale Hunt, if supporters defy the ban they may run into difficulties because they may be denied permission to hunt on land owned by the Forestry Commission.

Updated: 10:04 Thursday, November 18, 2004