PACKS of hounds have not been slaughtered. The rural economy has not imploded.

Vermin have not overrun the countryside. Centuries of tradition have not been discarded. One year after the hunting ban was imposed, it's pretty much as you were.

Was this the intended result of all those years of bitter debate? Countless hours of our MPs' time was devoted to what most of the population considered a fringe issue. Yet the outcome is as tangible as all the hot air expended to reach it.

According to the chairman of the Countryside Alliance, Kate Hoey, more people are hunting with hounds now than before the ban. Fewer foxes will have been torn to pieces by the pack. But somehow this much-deliberated law has failed to prevent dogs picking up the scent and pursuing a fox across miles of countryside. So the ban cannot even be said to have diminished the animal's suffering - except right at the death, if it is fortunate enough to be shot by a marksman before the hounds "accidentally" set upon it. We welcome the news that the predicted rural bankruptcies and job losses have not come about. Perhaps the pro-hunt lobby exaggerated these consequences, rather as the Government's opponents forecast chaos and depravity in the wake of licensing reform. An equally credible conclusion, however, is that this was a badly-framed, unenforceable law drawn up for political reasons rather than for the good of the country.

We hope ministers have learned a lesson from this. But with impractical legislation lined up on everything from religious bigotry to the war on terror, it looks to be a forlorn hope.

Updated: 10:58 Friday, February 17, 2006