The row over the ban on hunting has continued with warnings from the home secretary that the law will be fully enforced.

However David Blunkett also said the ban would be policed with "sensitivity" and "common sense".

Meanwhile, the Conservatives attacked the motives behind the ban, saying Labour was guilty of a "childish class war".

That comment came after Peter Bradley, the parliamentary private secretary to rural affairs minister Alun Michael, said pro-ban campaigners should "own up" and admit the legislation was "not just about animal welfare and personal freedom, it was class war".

Bradley argued in an article for the Sunday Telegraph that "it was not class war as we know it".

"It was not launched by the tribunes against the toffs - it was the other way round," he wrote.

"This was not about the politics of envy but the politics of power."

Following the article, shadow environment minister James Gray said he had written to Michael asking for "clarification" of the government's motives on the Hunting Bill.

"It is typical of Tony Blair's government to spend all its time fighting an old fashioned class war when all that the rest of the country wants them to do is fight crime and tackle the problems that really matter to people in Britain today," said Gray.

"Alun Michael said one thing to try to get this Bill through parliament but now his own assistant admits that this was just talk and that Labour are really motivated by a childish class war debate that the rest of the world left behind years ago."

Blunkett's warning

Meanwhile, speaking on ITV1's Jonathan Dimbleby programme, the home secretary said the police would enforce the law as passed by parliament.

But he confirmed there would be no extra resources, and indicated there could be scope for confusion over attempts to prosecute fox hunters.

Blunkett said he had preferred the option of licensed hunting, and had favoured a delay which "would have given us time to develop intelligence-based policing".

He said he would be working with chief constables "to provide guidance which will have commonsense built into it, namely, people can still go drag hunting".

The law is not "pick and mix", said Blunkett, and people cannot choose which laws they want to obey.

"They can't actually say 'look, we'll obey laws when we want them and we want other people to obey laws but not us'," he said.

"We want people to use common sense in reaching an accord with the police service that doesn't divert resources."

Questioned on possible court proceedings, Blunkett said that "if people are setting out to enjoy themselves and something happens and there's a doubt about whether they meant to kill a fox or not - that's one thing".

"If they deliberately say 'look we're going to break this law because we don't agree that in our democracy parliament should have voted this way', then of course the police have to take action," he added.

"Because the challenge is not just about hunting with hounds to kill a fox or a deer it’s actually a challenge to the basis of our legal system."