Fox hunters say they should be protected under equality laws in the same way as the Roma community and LGBTQ+ people.

Pressure group Hunting Kind says it has been advised by a human rights lawyer that it could secure legal protection for those who hunt under the UK Equality Act 2010.

While the status would not overturn the hunting ban, it would mean employers would not be able to discriminate against employees with pro-hunting views.

It could also protect hunt fundraising balls in the face of pressure from animal-welfare activists, or of hunters having their bank accounts closed down.

Hunting Kind says it favours ‘natural hunting with lurchers, hounds, terriers, ferrets and gundogs’.

The group said a senior barrister has advised them that a legal challenge could get them the same status as an ‘ethnic group’ as they have a long shared history, distinct customs and common ancestors.

Ed Swales, the chair of Hunting Kind, told the Fieldsports Channel podcast: ‘The qualifications of an ethnic group, there are five of them, and we hit every one straight in the bullseye.’

He added that he has spent three years in preparation of a legal challenge that has been reviewed by a human rights KC ‘who sits on the council of the European court of human rights’.

Mr Swales said: ‘The outcome of that from the human rights silk is that as a protected minority group under the Equality Act, we qualify, undoubtedly 10 out of 10.’

Being a protected minority would not overturn the foxhunting ban, but would offer protection for the holding of ‘foxhunting balls’ which might otherwise be subject to calls for cancellation by animal rights groups.

The protected minority status may strengthen the case against banning trail hunting – a pledge in the Labour Manifesto.

In a video on the group’s website, Mr Swales claimed Sir Keir Starmer would understand the legal challenge.

He said: ‘Keir Starmer, in his position as prime minister with a legal background, would one hopes understand the detail and the plain fact of the matter that we are a minority ethnic group of British people that hunt.’

Mr Swales added: ‘We see it as a really important part of wildlife management… We’re actually doing people a service. We’re picking up the foxes or the hares or the deer or the rabbits that are either old, they’ve got no teeth, they can die of starvation, or they’ve got the disease, or they’re just not adapted to outperforming a dog in that chase. So we’re happy with that natural selectivity.’

He also said hunting was not cruel. ‘I can tell you for a fact it is not cruel because I take no delights in the suffering of an animal. I am as animal welfare friendly as anyone I have come across, and my hunting compatriots are the same.’

In the video Swales said the group was committed to reversing the ‘Bambi effect’.

He added: ‘Animal rights unfortunately are coming at it from a very uneducated and anthropomorphic point of view, and they’re blinkered to what we see as rural reality and wildlife management reality. And they’re also deaf. They don’t want to listen.’

Critics on X said the group had ‘lost the plot’.

A former Labour minister, Mike Foster, wrote: ‘Show me an example of people who have lost the plot,’ the hunt lobby never fails to disappoint.’

And Chris Packham, the BBC presenter asked his followers on X, what they thought of hunters. He said: ‘What shall we call them – I’ll go first: ‘barbaric savages’.

Mr Swales said that the comments were ‘yet another example of the discrimination and prejudice that our community has experienced for decades’.

Prejudice against hunters has a long history. Oscar Wilde famously said ‘The English country gentleman galloping after a fox: the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable’.