YORK Central MP Rachael Maskell says she will seek to introduce amendments to animal welfare legislation in Parliament to 'toughen up' the laws against the 'barbaric practice' of fox-hunting.

The Labour MP said that on Boxing Day - when many areas traditionally hold hunts - she wrote to 'half a dozen' major landowners to urge them to ban trail hunting on their land.

Hunting wild mammals with dogs was banned in England and Wales by the Hunting Act of 2004.

Since then, hunts have only been allowed to take part in 'trail hunts', in which an animal-based scent trail, usually using fox urine, is laid for hounds to follow.

But Ms Maskell says there is clear evidence that many hunts are using trail hunting as a 'smokescreen' to allow them to evade the law - and carry on hunting for real.

"They say 'oh, we were following a trail, but then the hounds picked up the scent of a fox'," Ms Maskell said.

In October, a director of the Masters of the Fox Hounds Association, Mark Hankinson, was found guilty of encouraging and assisting people to evade the ban on fox hunting, using trail hunting as a screen.

The National Trust announced in November that it would issue no new licenses for trail hunting on its land - citing the court case.

Ms Maskell said: "I think the evidence is clear that fox hunting is alive and well.

"The legislation is insufficient to stop people who are determined to break the law and keep on with this barbaric practice."

Earlier this month Ms Maskell resigned from the Labour shadow front bench because she could not agree with mandatory vaccination for all NHS and care staff.

She said that now she was a backbencher again she was free to introduce an amendment to animal welfare legislation in Pariliament to strengthen the law against fox hunting - and that she was determined to do so.

"The law needs to be toughened up," she said.

But Polly Portwin of the Countryside Alliance accused Labour of waging ‘class war’ - and insisted that trail hunting and popular festive hunt meets were an ‘important part of rural life’. 

“Labour have consistently performed poorly in the countryside in recent elections and it is no surprise when they pursue anti-rural policies,” she said. “It is high time they drop their bizarre obsession with class warfare and focus on addressing issues which actually matter to rural people.

“Anti-hunting fanatics have spent years making ridiculous claims about hunting yet, nearly every time they make allegations to the police or a court, these allegations are found to be false. There have been hundreds of thousands of days of lawful hunting carried out by hunts since the Hunting Act came into force and only a handful of convictions relating to registered hunts.”