D66 senator Henriette Prast (63) has given up her seat in the upper house and is leaving the party because of its stance on animal welfare, the Volkskrant reported on Wednesday.

Prast said her decision was prompted by a vote in December on a motion to include hares, rabbits, wild ducks, pheasants and wood pigeons on the list of animals that cannot be hunted for pleasure.

The motion was narrowly rejected by the senate with Prast the only one of her party to vote in favour. Labour, GroenLinks, SP, Partij voor de Dieren and PVV also voted in favour of the plan.

Prast, who is professor of financial planning at Tilburg University and a former columnist for the Financieele Dagblad, has gone against the party line where animal welfare is concerned on a number of occasions.

She said that when she entered the senate in 2015 she made her stance on the subject clear.

‘I had hoped to change their minds on animal welfare because in other respects D66 is my party. But as far as animal welfare is concerned things have gone from bad to worse. The election programme of 2012 still featured a ban on hunting for pleasure but in the wake of the vote on the motion I began to feel I no longer belonged in D66,’ Prast told the paper.

She is not contemplating a move to the pro-animal Partij van de Dieren. ‘It is too early for that. I would have to find out how they feel on other issues,’ she said.

The government agreement does not contain any stipulations on hunting for pleasure and the 2017 D66 election manifesto does not mention it at all, the paper said.