English
In this case, the plaintiffs are three members of the Countryside Alliance, an association promoting issues related to countryside, and are opposed to the 2005 Hunting Act which ban fox hunting and makes it illegal to hunt with dogs except for some exceptional circumstances.
To do so, the plaintiffs challenged the parliamentarian procedure which has been used to pass the 2005 Hunting Act. Indeed, the absence of consensus between the House of Commons and the House of Lords on the matter led the government to use the Parliament Act 1911 as amended by the Parliament Act 1949 to pass the bill without the assent of the House of Lords. The plaintiffs argued that the 1949 amendment had not been lawfully passed because it was passed through a 1911 Parliament Act procedure. Consequently, the plaintiffs claimed that the 1911 Act was used to amend itself, which is not legal. As a result they claimed that the 2005 Hunting law was invalid because the parliamentarian procedure on which it was based was void. However, the Divisional Court and the Court of Appeal did not accept those claims as both courts considered that nothing could prevent the legislator of that time of using the Parliament Act 1911 procedure to amend it as it was a relatively straightforward amendment and that it did fundamentally change the relationship between the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
The plaintiffs appealed the decision of the Court of Appeal in front of the House of Lords. The House of Lords upheld the decision of the Court of Appeal as it considered that the Parliament Act 1911 did not have any limitations that would prevent it being used to enact the amendment provided by the Parliament Act 1949. As a result, the Hunting Act was also held valid and the appeal was dismissed.