Animal rights campaigners responded with fury yesterday after a Midland MP and peer accused them of squandering "a vast, wasted fortune" in the campaign against fox hunting.
 Charities have spent more than £30 million on a campaign which will fail to save the life of a single animal, according to Peter Luff (Con Mid Worcestershire) and Baroness Golding, former MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme. But they were accused of getting their facts wrong by the International Fund for Animal Welfare and RSPCA. The row blew up as the Government's Hunting Bill reached its Second Reading stage in the House of Lords last night. The Commons voted for a full ban, but the Lords is expected to overturn that during the committee stage of the Bill in October. Such a move will place peers on a collision course with MPs. Mr Luff and Baroness Golding are members of the All Party Parliamentary Middle Way Group, which has called for hunting to be restricted as a compromise between the current situation and a complete ban. Yesterday they condemned the level of spending on anti-hunting campaigns over recent years. Accounts released by the League Against Cruel Sports showed it had spent £5,819,624 since 1997 opposing hunting, while the MPs estimated the International Fund for Animal Welfare had spent £8.4 million and the RSPCA spent £15.6 million. The total spent on campaigning could be more than £29 million, the Middle Way Group said. The RSPCA has been running at a loss and is facing strike action from staff over plans to make 200 people redundant. Mr Luff said: "If this is the case, it is an unbelievably high sum and the really sad point is that not one animal's life will be saved as other methods of control will still be used and probably increase. "The RSPCA does excellent work, in particular the marvellous inspectorate, and yet at a time when the organisation is currently facing industrial action over job cuts, we see such sums being misdirected. It is a vast, wasted fortune." Baroness Golding said: "Wild-life protection must extend beyond the hunting with dogs issue. The sums spent in supporting this and previous Bills are totally out of proportion. In fact, a ban would increase animal suffering and we know that no animals will be saved. The Lords will, I hope, listen to the Middle Way Group's proposals for licensing hunts and inject a large portion of reality into this Bill when we come to debate it." An RSPCA spokeswoman said: "It appears the Middle Way Group has conjured up fictitious figures in an underhand ploy to create a pro-hunt story. "Only five pence in every pound raised by the Society is spent on campaigning across every area of animal welfare - from seeking a ban on battery cages and curbing cruelty in the broiler chicken industry, to asking zoos to phase out the keeping of elephants, finding alternatives to research animal use, and encouraging responsible pet ownership." A spokeswoman for the International Fund for Animal Welfare said: "These figures are not accurate." The charity could not say how much it had spent campaigning against fox hunting but it had required "considerable amounts of money," she said. "Once we get a ban on hunting it will be money well spent," she said. | 
