THE hunting debate has a nastier niff about it than a master of hounds' wellies. It is the sickly stench of hypocrisy. Rural affairs minister Alun Michael opened Monday's Commons hunting debate by saying "there is no right time to try to resolve the issue". That got us off to a suitably duplicitous start.

Of course there is a right time: every time the Government is in trouble. As soon as the media pack starts advancing on him, Tony Blair blasts his horn, shouts "tally ho!" and off we go chasing our tails again.

Remember July 1999? Ministers were feeling the heat from the passports fiasco which left hundreds of Britons without a holiday. So Tony pops up unplanned on TV's Question Time to say of fox-hunting: "It will be banned - as soon as we possibly can." (Another pledge broken).

And this week's vote was announced to divert attention from the shambles surrounding Transport Secretary Stephen Byers.

We have endured umpteen debates on hunting since New Labour came to power, yet the Government still complains about the lack of Parliamentary time to put through its (stifles a chortle) "radical agenda".

King hypocrite is, naturally, the Prime Minister himself.

He actually voted to ban hunting at the end of Monday's debate. This astonished the chamber, as Mr Blair only deigns to vote in three per cent of all Commons divisions, an abysmal record which is about ten times worse than his PM predecessors.

Yet, while Mr Blair was voting against hunting, Downing Street was signalling that he was actually in favour of a compromise. A typically feeble fudge, devoid of all principle.

The Lords have now backed the "middle way". What does this mean? When the hounds reach the fox, will they just rough it up a bit? Or is the idea to make hunting the world's first non-contact blood sport?

Many of the MPs who backed a ban on hunting with hounds were also guilty of double standards. Many will have eaten food produced by factory farming methods. How can they take pleasure from this form of animal cruelty and yet condemn the fox hunting brigade for taking pleasure from another?

Battery hens produce most of the eggs we eat. They are crammed together with four other birds in cages with a floorspace measuring less than an A4 sheet of paper. These are piled up in windowless sheds containing maybe 50,000 birds.

This is a pretty barbaric way to treat animals when you think about it. Which I rarely do: I am as guilty as the next consumer of buying and eating food produced by factory farming while deliberately ignoring how it is produced.

Compared to battery hens, foxes enjoy the good life, roaming free. Yet there are no protracted Commons debates calling for the immediate abolition of man's cruelty to chickens.

Why? Because we want cheap eggs and meat; because the fox is inedible, and better looking than a hen; and because fox-hunting is a hugely public form of cruelty, not one hidden behind barn doors.

A fox that is successfully hunted by hounds undoubtedly suffers a miserable, drawn-out death.

Who knows what bizarre thrill the huntsmen and women gain from it. In an ideal world, we would have got rid of this anachronistic spectacle years ago.

But we must get our priorities right. There are far more pressing human needs for our legislators to deal with: poverty, child abuse, a failing health service. After that MPs should consider tackling the industrialised animal cruelty of modern farming.

When that's all sorted, let's ban hunting.

Updated: 10:45 Wednesday, March 20, 2002