Metro Mayor for the West of England Dan Norris joined campaigners from the League Against Cruel Sports at Dyrham Park to call on the National Trust to stop licensing ‘trail’ hunting on its land.

Volunteers and staff from the leading national animal welfare charity and Dan spoke to the public visiting the 17th century house and garden near Bath and Bristol, and urged them to take action and sign up to its National Trust campaign.

Dan Norris said: "The way we treat animals is a measure of how civilised a society we are, and there is no place in our society for so-called ‘trail hunting’ – on land owned by the National Trust or anyone else.

"Getting the fox hunting ban through Parliament remains one of the best things I helped achieve as a Labour MP. It was tough and I personally experienced violent opposition from pro-hunt thugs.

"The law is being undermined by those who continue to hunt, and a vote by National Trust members to stop licensing hunting on National Trust land will be a big step forward in abolishing this cruel and inhumane practice."

Nick Weston, head of campaigns at the League Against Cruel Sports said: “We spoke to a lot of people from around Bath and Bristol today, including National Trust members, and we got a really good welcome.

“Many people enthusiastically signed up to our campaign calling on the National Trust to stop fox hunting on its land for good.”

The day of action at Dryham Park is one of a series of League actions taking place across the country this summer ahead of the National Trust’s AGM in October, when there will be a vote in which members will get the chance to call for a permanent ban on the licensing of trail hunting.

Nick added: “It is evident that tragically fox hunting is still taking place across England and Wales despite the ban, so we are calling on the National Trust to stop licensing ‘trail’ hunts on its land once and for all.”

Fox hunts have come under the spotlight recently after senior figures within the hunting lobby were caught seeming to admit that ‘trail’ hunting, one of the excuses they use, is a ‘smokescreen’ for the chasing and killing of animals.

The National Trust, to its credit, paused the licensing of trail hunting after this, but it is now time to have the ban made permanent.

A fox hunting ban outlawed fox hunting in England and Wales in 2005 but in the 2019/20 season, the League Against Cruel Sports compiled figures revealing 485 separate eye-witness accounts of suspected illegal hunting.

Through much of 2020, hunting activities were disrupted by Covid-19 lockdown restrictions. However the League still gathered figures showing 300 suspected cases of suspected illegal hunting during the cub hunting season in the autumn, although this is not something that is licensed by the National Trust.

Nick Weston added: “The overwhelming majority of the public oppose fox hunting and it’s time to consign this barbaric activity to the history books for good.”A spokesman for the Countryside Alliance said: “ The League Against Cruel Sports has spent the last 16 years making ridiculous claims about trail hunting, yet nearly every time it makes allegations to the police or a court they are found to be false. There have been hundreds of thousands of days legal trail hunting carried out by hunts since the Hunting Act came into force and only a handful of convictions relating to registered hunts."We have received incredibly positive feedback from National Trust members living in Somerset who are voting against the motion to end trail hunting on National Trust land. Like them, we hope this divisive motion is defeated so that the National Trust can get on with doing its real job.”