Back to HOMEPAGE Justice Cranston rules himself out
of foxhunting case
Valerie Elliott
Countryside Editor, The Times
Filed 29 Jul 08
©Valerie Elliott
This article was originally published in The Times on 29th July 2008.
It is reproduced here with the kind permission of the author and of the Newspaper
A High Court judge ruled himself out of a case involving hunting yesterday after it emerged that he had spoken out against the sport’s “barbarity” and voted for a ban when he was an MP.
Mr Justice Cranston, a Solicitor-General in Tony Blair’s Government, was due to hear a dispute between huntsmen and animal welfare activists. He stood aside after 30 minutes of legal argument when lawyers representing an alliance of landowners in Sussex raised formal objections.
The episode has raised questions over the need for a judicial register of interests.
A four-day case was due to begin yesterday in an attempt by the Crawley and Horsham Hunt on behalf of 88 landowners to ban animal welfare activists from almost 100,000 acres of open countryside in West Sussex.
Under the Protection from Harassment Act the hunt had hoped to win an injunction against the West Sussex Wildlife Protection Group and its main organisers, Simone and Jaine Wilde, of Bognor Regis, West Sussex, to take effect from September 1. Sir Ross Cranston, a former Labour MP for Dudley North, accepted that it was inappropriate for him to continue as judge in the case after Tim Lawson-Cruttenden, the lawyer acting for the hunt, alerted the court to Sir Ross’s views on hunting.
Mr Lawson-Cruttenden referred to an article in the Stourbridge News in December 2000, in which Sir Ross was quoted as saying: “I am confident the vast majority of my constituents share my view foxhunting is not a sport but a barbaric and cruel activity.” He said he welcomed the chance to vote in favour of the Hunting Bill.
Mr Lawson-Cruttenden argued that, while not suggesting that the judge would be biased, there might be “an appearance of bias” in the eyes of the public.
Sir Ross told the court that he could not remember the press release and that an MP’s vote did not necessarily amount to an expression of a passionate personal belief. He also emphasised that he had had taken the judicial oath to “do right to all manner of people . . . without fear or favour, affection or ill will”. He ordered legal costs of the hearing of about £10,000 to be paid from public funds.
©Valerie Elliott |
