The Countryside Alliance on Wednesday arrived en masse at Westminster to protest against the proposed ban on hunting with dogs.

Signs on two horse trailers were among a convoy of 12 tractors, making a circuit of the area for three hours, beginning at noon.

The route included the Palace of Westminster, both Westminster and Lambeth bridges, Millbank, Parliament Square and Smith Square, where the department for rural affairs is based.

The demonstration, coinciding with the chancellor's budget, was designed to announce the campaign group's demands for the rural economy.

The Countryside Alliance called for the standard spending assessments to be increased in rural areas, and for a fifth of these funds to remain in the locality.

Public services should be as accessible in rural areas as in urban areas, and measures should be taken to ensure that renovation of older houses is more cost-effective than building new ones, they claimed.

This protest was the first in a series planned by the pro-hunt lobby, dubbed the "summer of discontent".

A second major march into the capital has already been scheduled for Sunday September 22.

"The purpose of this march will be to show parliament that it would be foolish to ignore the scale and depth of distrust and anger rural people feel at this moment," said Countryside Alliance chief executive Richard Burge.

"Politically, the countryside is tinder-dry. Hunting has become the touchstone for the countryside's overall concerns. Rural people have lost faith that the institution of parliament will deliver a fair and just resolution to this problem."