THE Government's proposals for restrictions on hunting published this week have further served to demonstrate just what a pickle it has got itself into over an issue, at the end of the day, it doesn't truly understand.

The suggested legislation is a dog's dinner. The outright ban on stag hunting and hare coursing doesn't square with the compromise over fox hunting. Why can one form of hunting be permissible under certain circumstances while others are not?

Although the full details of the licensing system have not yet been revealed, it is difficult to see how the independent registrar and the appeals panel will balance the political desire of some parts of the Government to restrict hunting as much as possible with the reality in the countryside.

Should the Bill survive the Parliamentary process in the form it has been drafted, it is hard not to see chaos in its implementation.

The tests of "utility" and "cruelty" which will be brought to bear upon individual hunt licence applications seem to require more subjective than objective judgment. Every licence application will become a major battle, splitting local communities in some cases, simply inflaming them in others. It is hard to see many queuing up to be the independent registrar or members of the panel.

Caught between a rock and hard place, the Government has produced a piece of legislation which satisfies no-one and will just let the battle run on, in nobody's interests.

The Bill may be an exercise in political cynicism. There was speculation this week that the Bill would be mauled in committee to propose a simple outright ban, which would then be rejected by the Lords. The Government would then have a choice - to push an amended Bill through, blaming its left-wingers for the total ban, or accept that what emerges from the committee stage is not what it intended and drop the whole issue to deal with more significant matters of state.

Huntsmen and women can only hope for the latter.