Prime Minister David Cameron may be losing voters to further right parties ahead of next year's general election due to a perceived lack of interest in countryside issues.

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According to figures presented to Environment Secretary Owen Paterson by the countryside Alliance, which claims to represent 'the voice of rural Britain', 13 per cent of a sample 1,000 Countryside Alliance members now intends to vote Ukip in the next general election.

The proportion of Countryside Alliance members who said they would vote Conservative in 2015 dropped to 66 percent in the survey, a reduction of almost 20 percent in the space of two years. Two percent said they intend to vote Labour, and four percent Liberal Democrat. The swing to the right is remarkable, as support for further right parties in the last CA survey was negligible.

According to the Countryside Alliance, which primarily campaigns on hunting issues, the drop in Tory support amongst its membership comes in response to Conservative policies such as the HS2 project, a perceived lack of action on fuel prices, planning reforms that reduce the power of local communities to resist developments and inaction on repealing the hunting ban, which Cameron promised to do whilst in opposition.

The government has pledged to hold a vote on a full repeal of the ban, but said it cannot guarantee that this will take place in the current parliament.

Changes to planning laws have indeed caused widespread discontent, and some senior Tories have expressed concerns over the plans for a high speed rail line that would cut through the Conservatives' rural heartlands. Dissatisfaction with Coalition policies that affect rural Britain is clear, as the Tory-led 'Rural Fair Share' campaign serves to illustrate, but the case for hunting may not be so clear cut.  

Proposals to relax hunting ban

Those opposing the ban, introduced in 2004 under the previous Labour government, claim Mr Cameron was happy to champion their cause before coming to power, but that he has since abandoned them. However, the Prime Minister was last week said to have "sympathy" with proposals that effectively relax the ban.

Pro-hunting MPs claimed cross-party support for the move, which would allow an increase in the number of dogs used to flush out foxes to guns (ostensibly to benefit hill farmers). However, the research underpinning the call has been questioned, as it was commissioned by hunting interests, has not yet been peer reviewed, and seemingly presents a problem for upland farmers were the proposed solution would be rolled out for all recreational hunts. Critics claim that, if passed, the measure could lead to a 'back door' relaxation of the hunting ban.

Responding to the proposals earlier this month, Shadow Environment Secretary Maria Eagle said, "Ministers are kidding themselves if they think there is a cross-party consensus on hunting. If the Tories insist on trying to change the law, they will find that they simply don't have the votes in Parliament."

The Countryside Alliance's claims that hunting is a rural issue may also be an oversimplification; a 2010 YouGov poll revealed that, if any geographical distinction can be made, it is that Londoners are slightly more supportive of blood sports than people in other areas of the country. Figures from December last year show 76 percent of the British public still support the ban on fox hunting. An Ipsos Mori poll revealed that attitudes to hunting in the UK had not changed despite campaigning by the Countryside Alliance.

On Thursday, Joe Duckworth, Chief Executive of the League Against Cruel Sports condemned the pressure group's lobbying work as "a desperate act of manipulation." He said the renewed pressure on MPs from the Countryside Alliance is in response to successful monitoring and legal challenges brought against hunts that are defying the ban by organisations such as RSPCA and the League itself.

Duckworth said the League's new team of investigators has already secured more prosecutions during the past 2012/2013 season than in the last seven years put together and that several more are in the pipeline. He elaborated, "Hunters were not concerned about repealing the act as [they] were getting away with illegally hunting by pretending they were trail hunting. However, this has changed, our teams of specialist investigators, mostly ex-police officers, are catching them at it. So once again the hunters are back bullying the politicians to get rid of the ban."

He added that the absence of a vote on repealing the hunting act stems from a lack of parliamentary support, not from a fear of alienating urbanites. Mr Duckworth concluded, "The pro-hunt lobby needs to wake up to the twenty first century and accept that the law of the land accurately reflects what the majority of people want, rural or urban, and that Parliament reflects that view."