Baroness Fookes

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That the Bill be now read a second time.

Baroness Fookes (Con)

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My Lords, I declare my animal welfare interests as set out on the register. It will therefore be no surprise to know that I warmly welcome the opportunity to take the Bill through its proceedings in the Lords, it having been ably monitored by Henry Smith MP in the House of Commons. Although it is in the form of a Private Member’s Bill, it has government backing, and in fact it implements a commitment made in the 2019 Conservative manifesto—although I have no doubt that that will not endear it to some colleagues around me on these Benches.

To deal briefly with the terms of the Bill, it bans the import of any animal trophy into the UK, with a slightly different arrangement for Northern Ireland. It defines precisely what a trophy is and restricts the ban to the lists set out in the wildlife regulations, which go back to the convention on trade in endangered species. There are two lists, the first of animals in danger of extinction, and the second of those getting close to that point. The Bill also arranges for an expert committee of three to be set up by the Secretary of State. He is under an obligation to do so, but, so far as I can judge, he has no obligation to ask it to advise him. That was added during the Commons consideration.

It is of course important to make clear that the Bill does not prevent any hunter from this country going to any country in the world and, subject to whatever regulations there may be in that country, killing an animal for whatever purpose he thinks necessary. What is prohibited is bringing back any part of an animal to this country as a trophy.

Of course, some of us may have had rather romantic notions about intrepid hunters risking life and limb, trekking through wild country in pursuit of a quarry. That is not what happens today. A business called a hunting outfitter either owns or obtains a lease on land for hunting and then sets up a comprehensive service, which will include lodges for overnight accommodation and food. It will provide every kind of expert equipment or weapons that may be needed, local guides and, I gather, transport to a suitable location where the animal may be found. Furthermore, to the best of my knowledge and belief, most of these outfitters are run by white people of European origin, not by indigenous people from Africa. Let us make no mistake: for those few who enjoy its fruits, this is big business. I can quite understand why they will make every attempt possible to get rid of any threat to that business.

Those who watch the wonderful wildlife films we now see, and have access to the much greater information that science has provided about the wonderful interrelationship of animals and the threats that greatly interfere with it, will wonder why anyone should want to bring back trophies of slaughtered animals that, let us face it, are in grave danger. In this Bill we are not dealing with animals that are plentiful. However small a part the Bill may play, we have to try to ensure the conservation of these precious species.

I know that many of those who speak today will describe various reasons why this is of benefit to the local community and for conservation purposes. I remain to be persuaded. No doubt, a great deal of this information will be provided to me—we shall see. As far as I can see, the impact that hunters have is even greater than taking out species already under threat. One of the problems is that hunters will naturally want for trophy purposes the best that can be found. Do not tell me that they will be content with culling some poor weak animal; they will want the lion with the most wonderful mane, the elephants with the biggest feet or tusks, or the horns of whatever it may be. The likelihood is that they will take out the best of the species, which unbalances that very delicate ecosystem, as we have seen having a devastating effect all too often.

There is some evidence that because elephants are shot for their large tusks, the elephants that remain are now producing elephants with smaller tasks—evidence of the way in which genes can be manipulated. There can also be other untoward effects, for example when a major, dominant bull elephant is killed. That leaves young males without what might be called the father figure or the controlling figure, and they can run amok. Again, that can destroy a delicate ecosystem.

I could continue with numerous examples of this, but I hope that others of my persuasion will be able to produce their own very relevant examples. I am concerned about the fact that many people in Africa do not share this view of trophy hunting. I would like to bring to your Lordships’ attention a letter that I think has widely circulated in the House; I will quote from it. It is a letter with 103 signatories, people who live or work throughout Africa. They include wildlife conservation experts, advocates, community representatives and people with detailed knowledge of what they are talking about. They write to

“express our steadfast support for the Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill, sponsored by the Rt. Hon. Baroness Fookes, and to urge you to give the Bill your full support”.

Very tellingly, they go on:

“We are well aware that a small number of UK-based academics have been extremely outspoken in the UK media in their defence of trophy hunting in Africa and their associated opposition to this Bill. Although they purport to speak for Africa, they present grossly over-simplified and unsubstantiated arguments, and it is critical for Honourable Members of the House of Lords to acknowledge that they do not represent the views or experience of many scientists and community members living and working throughout the African continent. In addition, many international scientists have voiced their concerns about trophy hunting”.


They are speaking about Africa, of course, but it is important to note that the Bill would also apply to other parts of the world. Notably, Canada, which allows trophy hunting, has polar bears at threat of extinction for other reasons, to do with climate change, so it seems utter madness to allow such trophy hunting of these particularly endangered bears.

I am aware that many others want to speak, so I conclude by saying that I believe that the Bill is important and long overdue, and I commend it to the House. I beg to move.

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)

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My Lords, I am pleased to have the opportunity to support this Bill today and to thank the noble Baroness. Lady Fookes, for being such a doughty campaigner on animal welfare issues over the years. As we discussed on the Shark Fins Bill, the Government’s method of bringing in animal welfare legislation through a series of Private Members’ Bills is not the most desirable approach. Nevertheless, I have a great deal of admiration for the noble Baroness and I am sure that she will steward this Bill through the House with the utmost care and efficiency.

This is a Bill that has considerable cross-party support. The commitment to ban the import of hunting trophies appeared in both the Labour and Conservative 2019 manifestos. The Bill also has huge public support. The British people have made it clear in numerous polls that they do not want the UK to contribute to the suffering and inhumane killing of declining and endangered wild animals in overseas trophy hunts any more. For example, recent polling shows that nearly 90% of people support a trophy hunting ban, with 76% wanting a ban applied to all species. There is huge distaste and abhorrence for the spectacle of people killing magnificent animals for fun and then glorying in the display of body parts.

This so-called sport, with its roots in colonialism, has no place in a modern, compassionate society, and those who continue to partake in this activity, as we saw with the killing of Cecil the lion, are held in contempt by the vast majority of British people. The people involved in this sport are contributing to the decline of some of the world’s most endangered species. For example, wild lion populations have dropped to only 20,000 individuals and the previous population of 20 million African elephants has now reduced to just 400,000.

The argument that killing more of these animals somehow helps conservation flies in the face of common sense and does not withstand detailed scrutiny. If we are serious about conservation, we should be developing alternative plans that preserve the declining species and help communities through tourism and alternative forms of employment. The fact is that trophy-hunting tours feed relatively little back into the local economy and there is relatively little trickle-down to those in the local communities. In terms of economic impact, it is estimated to make up only 0.03% of GDP across eight trophy-hunting nations in southern Africa. It is not a sustainable way to bring new investment to local communities.

In addition, we have the spectacle of animals being bred in captivity simply to be shot by inexperienced hunters. This is a long way from the conservation aspirations that some in the sector claim as their purpose. In fact, there is no requirement for hunters to be experienced or proficient at using a weapon, leading to many animals being wounded and dying a long, slow death. The fact is that trophy hunting is a popular practice of a few wealthy game hunters, who are creating specious arguments to try to preserve their reviled sport.

This Bill is one step towards a full ban on the import of animal trophies. However, the UK has always been a world leader in conservation and animal welfare and the Bill represents another step forward in setting an example for other jurisdictions to follow. I therefore very much support it and hope that it can proceed through this House and make it on to the statute book unamended.

Lord St John of Bletso (CB)

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My Lords, while I personally dislike trophy hunting and for the last 20 years have been a trustee of Tusk Trust, which is one of the largest conservation charities in Africa, I have some reservations about this Bill as currently drafted. I am grateful to the Library for its research note and for the briefing that we had from Professor Amy Dickman and others.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, made a good point about canned hunting, which is what I take personal exception to. By canned hunting, I mean when wild animals, mostly lions but often cheetahs, leopards and others, are bred, in a confined area from which they cannot escape, for trophy hunting. This is particularly prevalent in South Africa. In fact, almost 83% of trophies exported from South Africa are captive-bred or non-nature species with neither a national conservation management plan nor adequate data on their wild populations.

I have read a lot of research showing that properly regulated trophy hunting incentivises hunters to participate in conservation programmes and has contributed substantially to wildlife protection. I know that those figures have been queried by the noble Baronesses, Lady Fookes and Lady Jones, but my point is simple: responsible wild trophy hunting has provided income for wildlife conservation and employment opportunities for local communities.

Rather than a blanket ban on the export of trophies, which covers 6,000 species, I would encourage more enhanced sustainable hunting practices and implementing far stricter regulations. A paper released this week by the Global Conservation Forum claims that not one species covered in the Bill will be threatened and that removing trophy hunting revenue without any alternative option will only harm conservation and livelihoods. It is well known that there is insufficient donor finance to sustain these wildlife areas.

Most of what I am saying today refers to Africa and I take on board the good point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, about wild polar bears. Currently, trophy-hunting concessions cover and protect a vast landscape of rich biodiversity. In Africa, one-fifth more land is conserved under local trophy hunting than in national parks. Those in favour of the Bill as drafted would no doubt argue that the benefits and revenue of trophy hunting can be easily replaced by photo tourism. I am afraid that this is factually incorrect. Almost 90% of African protected areas with lions are already significantly underfunded. If we accelerate the demise of wild trophy hunting without putting in place sustainable revenue that will continue to protect areas, this landscape is likely to be lost to wildlife due to increased settlement and cultivation. I would appreciate the Minister expanding on the role of the advisory board on hunting trophies in Clause 4 of the Bill.

In conclusion, while I do not like the practice of trophy hunting, the evidence shows that properly regulated and managed wild trophy hunting plays an important role in wildlife conservation. We need to explore alternative conservation strategies with more investment in habitat protection, anti-poaching measures, community-based conservation initiatives and education awareness programmes to safeguard wildlife. The Bill as drafted falls far short of these objectives.

Lord Bellingham (Con)

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My Lords, it is a pleasure and privilege to follow the noble Lord, who knows a lot about southern Africa, and we should respect his views enormously.

I was the original sponsor of the Bill, because I thought that it was well-intentioned and could be made to work. I put my name down and was its sponsor, but I reached the conclusion that it had flaws, which is why I withdrew my name from the sponsorship; hence my noble friend, who made an excellent speech, is sponsoring the Bill. The Bill is well-intentioned. I do not think that anyone can complain about stopping practices of canned shooting, as the noble Lord pointed out, or internet shooting, when you go online and select your target—you may be in America or 1,000 miles away. Everyone agrees that any big game hunting that impacts on endangered species should be curtailed.

On the other hand, the Bill will have unintended consequences. It sets out to enhance sustainability and improve conservation, but it could do the reverse. My starting point is very simple. The Secretary of State, the Minister and the noble Baroness sponsoring the Bill have all said that it is perfectly morally acceptable for stalkers and big game hunters from this country to go to African countries and hunt in the countryside. They also agree about hunting for the Alpine ibex in countries such as Sweden or Austria, hunting markhors in Pakistan or hunting red deer and roe deer in Scotland. No one is saying that is wrong. If the noble Baroness thinks it is wrong I will give way to her, but I do not think she does. As long as the hunting or stalking is sustainable, you have a shootable surplus within the herd, there is a habitat and conservation element, there is local employment, there is a humane killing of the quarry and the meat goes into the food chain—if those criteria are all met—I think we agree that this type of activity is perfectly acceptable.

Trophies are a separate part of the argument. Many hunters will go hunting or stalking because of a love of the countryside and a passion for the sport but are not interested in the trophy, while some hunters will want to bring the trophy back. If the hunting or stalking is sustainable and meets those criteria, and if taking the trophy back home will lead to money going into the local economy through taxidermy or the antlers being mounted on a plaque, local jobs will be created and there will be more money for sustainability and conservation.

A key point is what local communities think about this. I saw the letter in the press yesterday, written by the six heads of mission from southern African countries —South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. They made it crystal clear that many estates in their countries rely on a particular revenue model based on sustainable hunting. When I was Africa Minister 10 years ago, in the coalition Government, I had the privilege of going to all those countries and many more in Africa. I spoke to many Foreign Ministers, Conservation Ministers, Environment Ministers and Presidents. They all made the point very clearly: “Please let us judge this issue, because we represent those communities”. If we put our feelings on this before those of the communities, many of the communities that have jobs around big game hunting and conservation will look at alternatives such as more intensive farming, which will eat into the countryside and have a negative impact. They might also be less keen to control poaching. So getting the communities on side is imperative. There were comments from honourable Members in the other place that the animals should come before the communities in Africa. Frankly, I find that condescending, patronising and insulting.

There is a way forward. The Bill started out well intentioned. It has unravelled substantially because of the number of experts who have come up with very strong arguments to improve it. We need to move to a licensing system whereby we use the advisory board on hunting trophies and bolt on to it a certification scheme run in partnership with the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, so that in some cases people will be able to apply for a certificate and bring their trophy back. We would then have a Bill that does what everyone wants it to do—curb a small number of bad practices but allow conservation and sustainability to carry on in African countries, which we should not lecture.

Baroness Twycross (Lab)

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My Lords, I am pleased to support the Bill and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, for taking it through this House and no doubt withstanding some wrong-minded positions through the course of this debate.

My starting point is that it is almost incomprehensible to most people in 2023 that it is not already against the law to import hunting trophies. For the reasons laid out by the noble Baroness in her excellent introduction, the Bill makes absolute sense. As my noble friend Lady Jones said, this was in both the Labour and Conservative manifestos at the last election. The noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, also outlined the nature of the hunting sector. As she said, it is big business, and opposition to it is about supporting that big business, which has no place in a modern society. Trophy hunting can have adverse impacts on the biology and ecology of targeted species. It risks increasing in-breeding within species by removing reproductive-age animals from the population. I urge the Government not to be swayed by those who wish to see us retain an outdated practice. I was sorry to hear that the noble Lord, Lord Bellingham, has changed his mind.

Those who wish to undermine the Bill suggest that hunting brings much-needed revenue to communities that need it. They pretend that, far from damaging conservation efforts, it does the opposite. They pretend that it is essentially a good thing. If it is such a good thing, why do the vast majority of the population of the countries where this practice continues not support it? As Members will be aware, 68% of people in South Africa are against trophy hunting. We know that in Botswana, banning trophy hunting benefited threatened species such as elephants and brought prosperity to local communities. The ban contributed to the creation of jobs and opportunities by investment in photo safaris instead. There is no real evidence that trophy hunting helps conservation. Most of the money created by the trophy hunting industry never reaches conservation programmes, and nor do local households benefit to any great extent.

Like others, I want a commitment from the Government that they will not back away from their support for the Bill. If they fail to support it, they will essentially be supporting a practice that was described by Members from all sides in the other place as neocolonial. The Government should support the Bill for its considerable animal welfare and conservation considerations and to avoid this country looking like it is failing to move on from attitudes from previous centuries.

In the other place, questions were raised about implementation and how this was going to be enforced at the border to avoid smuggling. This will be key to ensuring that the Bill is not just in statute but is effective. Can the Minister tell the House what training the Government intend to put in place for Border Force? Will they prevent companies advertising and promoting trophy hunting tourism in the UK?

Above all, will the Minister commit to wholeheartedly rejecting the specious and inaccurate claims that have already been made and are likely to be made during this debate in support of the continuation of this vile and totally outdated practice, and will the Government honour a manifesto commitment by supporting the Bill?

Lord Mann (Non-Afl)

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My Lords, I would like to speak about male obsessions. I am currently trying to climb every Munro in Scotland, a male obsession that is a tradition of this House; consider the noble Lords, Lord Smith of Finsbury and Lord Elder. This summer the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, is about to complete every Munro top—282 Munros and another 300 bits of Munros—in great glory. Why do we do it? We do it because it is there. If any land-owning Scottish Peer of the realm has an obscure bothy that I could borrow, I might get to every one myself in the not-too-distant future. It is a benign obsession, although if I used an urban tradition and tagged my name on rocks on the top of every Scottish hill and mountain—“Lord Mann was here”—it would be seen not as benign but as a problem. Doubtless some quasi-privileges committee would throw me out of here for bringing the House into great disrepute, and rightly so.

Those obsessions are unstoppable. There is a football programme on sale today. Only one is known to exist in the world. It was discovered under floorboards in Leeds recently—a Leeds City 1906 programme. There will be men—I know them—bidding for that. Owning every Leeds United home programme since 1955, I would quite like to have it myself. My wife will be delighted to know that I will not be bidding, because there would be a bit of a domestic if I spent the £5,000 or £10,000 that would doubtless be required to fulfil that obsession.

However, if a Billy Bremner stocking tag from 1974 became available, a large number of people would attempt to purchase it—that is the nature of obsession— and they are not all men of course. I have never actually seen women buying at a football programme collectors’ event, but there will be one or two; it is not entirely men, but there is a psychology to collecting.

I will go to Wrexham at some stage to maintain my membership, which is an entirely theoretical membership, of the 92 Club. I have been to 91 of the 92 Football League clubs and Wrexham has just rejoined the Football League. I have not been there, but I will go, as will others. That is an obsession.

The trophy hunting mentality works in exactly the same way. It cannot be satiated; it is not possible. Those who are collecting will continue collecting not just in Africa but worldwide—the snow leopard or anything else that moves and breathes—because they feel they have to. If I was to take that spray can and tag every Scottish mountain, we would have to use our laws to stop me. That is precisely the logic of this Bill: some people cannot help themselves, so we have to do so for the better good of society and the planet.

The Earl of Erroll (CB)

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My Lords, this is a well-intentioned but mistaken Bill, which tweaks the heartstrings of many people who do not live among nor manage animals in the wild. They seem to think that a wild animal will live a long, peaceful and contented life if left alone. I am afraid that that does not happen in the real world.

Wildlife must also be kept in balance for the sake of the habitat, or the habitat can be destroyed. I have certainly seen that happen in Africa, many years ago, when elephants wiped out the Maasai Mara for several years and it took some time to recover. So culling will take place: it is part of good wildlife management.

Often, older males who are past their prime and excluded from the herd, group or whatever can die unhappy, cantankerous and alone, while trying to upset the dynamics of the group. Those are the ones that one often wants to cull. They can also make for more interesting trophies, because of their age and seniority, so why not convert the cost of culling to an income and take money from rich people to help conservation?

A hunting safari will employ more local people per tourist, with its few visitors, than big national park photo tourism will ever do. It will also probably employ more experts, who need to know more about the habitat and habits of the animals being hunted. Most of that hunting money will also go straight back into the local economy, because it is being paid directly to the people who manage groups that run safaris. The suggestion is to replace it with government grant aid, which will go in at the top while administrative filters, or whatever you want to call them, leach out a lot of the money so that only a little trickles down into the local area. At least that is the experience of many places.

The noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, mentioned quite correctly that there is already the perfectly good Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, known as CITES. It has been in operation since 1975. This prevents the import of a trophy from any country where that animal is endangered. Very few species are endangered in every country; you cannot aggregate numbers across continents. In certain areas, there are problems with oversupply and other places are undersupplied. An example that was given to me was of a trophy hunter who might go to Chad to shoot something that is endangered there. First, CITES would not give them permission to import the trophy. Secondly, why would you go to Chad to shoot an endangered lion, when you can shoot better specimens elsewhere? I do not think that happens very often, but I may be wrong. I stand to be corrected.

Poaching, usually done cruelly, has an impact on the gene pool of these animals that is an order of magnitude more serious than that of a few controlled hunters. I am very surprised by the idea that trophy hunting will hugely affect the gene pool because of the number of hunters.

There are an awful lot of experts—and we have been sent this stuff, as well; there are a lot of international signatories to these things—who say that hunting purely for trophies is not a key threat. I have met several representatives from concerned African countries who do not think we should be interfering in their economies and are against the Bill.

Local population management and control is often essential, so why not allow the preservation of an interesting head or trophy? Another interesting thought occurred to me: could there be a new trade or business out there of 3D printing accurate, scanned replicas of trophies? They could then be legally imported or even sold as an NFT.

Lord Selkirk of Douglas (Con)

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My Lords, last year I made inquiries as to whether the Government were going to show more urgency in honouring their 2019 manifesto commitment to ban the import of hunting trophies acquired from endangered animals. Delay inevitably meant that many more animals, whose future was already under threat, would die unnecessarily and their body parts would continue to be allowed to form degrading and inhumane displays on the walls and floors of various buildings in this country. I am therefore delighted to offer strong support to Henry Smith’s Private Member’s Bill, to which Ministers have given a fair wind to help its passage through Parliament.

I am extremely proud of my cousin, Dr Iain Douglas-Hamilton, a zoologist and expert on wildlife who was a founding father of the charity Save the Elephants, which is based in Kenya. Of course, local residents must be allowed to defend their families and their rural livelihoods against any threatening or dangerous wildlife, but the preservation of biodiversity is now a great global concern. Elephants, for example, are afraid of African honeybees, so creating fences formed from beehives is one innovative way of preventing them from damaging crops and antagonising local farmers. The charity’s aim is to secure a future for elephants in harmony with people, and it has played a vital role in stopping the illegal trade in ivory.

By banning the import of hunting trophies from animals whose future on this planet is of concern, we are not telling other countries what they should do or how they should act to conserve their wildlife. This legislation applies to the territory of Great Britain, and passing the Bill is our way of making a contribution to the preservation of the amazing variety of animals, with which we share this earth. We are telling the world that we will not facilitate the taking of an already endangered animal’s life for pleasure and we will not help a hunter bring home some sadistically obtained souvenirs.

The great moral wrong of trophy hunting must not be justified because some of the money paid to indulge this repulsive practice is reportedly used to help fund local conservation policies. Indeed, there are arguments over how much of such money actually reaches local communities.

A poll in 2020 showed that 80% of the British public support a ban on the import and export of hunting trophies. Those who inflict pain and death on animals for fun or pleasure stand against the tide of history. Future conservation policies cannot be based on disreputable foundations.

There has to be a better way. We must encourage the kind of visitors who care about the welfare of the animals and who travel to Africa and other countries. These are the ecotourists who pay to learn more, in particular about Africa’s wonderful diversity of wildlife, and who want to hear from local conservationists as to how they can help to ensure a future for these animals, while photographing and recording their activities. The honourable Member for Crawley, when introducing his Bill, stressed that in a recent poll

“only 16% of people in South Africa supported trophy hunting, and that 74% wanted the Government to focus on nature tourism and photo safaris instead”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/11/22; col. 573.]

—shooting with cameras, not guns. That is the kind of responsible wildlife conservation strategy which we should all support.

I would like to end with a story of Androcles, a slave who had escaped and who met a lion in the cave. The lion was in tremendous pain. Androcles took the large thorn out of the lion’s paw and subsequently met the lion again at the arena. The Roman emperor was astonished to see that the lion refused to kill Androcles, having remembered that he had helped him a great deal. As a result, the Roman emperor pardoned Androcles from slavery and also freed the lion. Surely that compassion and lasting friendship are the noble values that should uphold conservation policies, not bringing pain, death and damage to our precious planet. Indeed, we should all support this Bill.

Lord Robathan (Con)

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My Lords, it might amuse my noble friend who has just spoken that I played the lion in the Bernard Shaw play, “Androcles and the Lion”, when I was about 10. I was not very good, actually.

I was going to make a speech to ask whether the bien pensant, well-meaning people in this country should know more about this than the people who live in Africa and in those communities? It was illustrated by the letter that was in the Times yesterday. I saw my noble friend the Minister a couple of nights ago and told him I had a medical appointment, and he said: “Nothing trivial, I hope?” His hopes are fulfilled. The result is that I cannot be here for the wind-ups so I cannot ask questions, and will not make a speech.

Lord Lilley (Con)

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My Lords, I was going to say what a privilege it was to follow such a brilliant speech from my noble friend, but I am sure we all know how brilliant it would have been.

I will try to be brief; I find the idea of shooting a noble animal and displaying its head, tusks or hooves on the wall in one’s home somewhat repugnant. But if I did wish to ban this practice—and the fact that it is repugnant does not necessarily mean it should be banned—I would begin by banning it at home, and stopping the export of trophies from this country, thousands of which are exported every year to other countries. This Bill does not do that; it leaves us free to do these things within our own country and export these things to other countries but simply bans the importation of trophy animals from abroad, in practice from developing countries.

I respect the passionate animal lovers in this place, not least my noble friend Lady Fookes, who automatically supports any measure to protect animals. But it is another aspect of this Bill that I take issue with. I have been struck time and again, since I have been in this place, by the residual imperialism of the attitudes that prevail. Now, one might expect that there might be a certain nostalgia for empire to linger on in the right but, although we hear incessantly from our liberal intelligentsia about the need to decolonise our minds, institutions and history, and lay down and check our white privilege, it is above all on the progressive left—who I confidently predict will support this Bill unanimously—that these neo-colonialist attitudes linger on and who most need to check their own white privilege and decolonise their minds. This Bill absolutely epitomises that; it assumes that Africans do not know what is in their own interests and cannot run their own countries, and that we have a right to tell them how to do so.

In Bleak House, Dickens ridicules this sort of thing as “telescopic philanthropy”, a misguided and patronising obsession with far-off problems about which his anti-heroine, Mrs Jellyby, knew little. Indeed, in some ways this Bill is worse than Mrs Jellyby’s telescopic philanthropy; she may have ignored poverty at home, but at least she wanted to relieve it abroad. But some of this Bill’s advocates are guilty of telescopic misanthropy; they are solely interested in signalling their virtue to their friends, even though the result of their actions can only be to impoverish people far away and put at risk the survival of the creatures they claim to want to protect. They accept that it will deprive some poor people of their income. One very thoughtful letter I have had from an advocate of this Bill said “Oh, it’s only £200 million that will be lost”, but £200 million goes a long way in a poor country. But that is tough—if they lose their income, it makes liberal white people feel good, and they patronisingly tell Africans who lose their jobs that they can still rely on our aid programmes, which makes white liberals feel better still.

The Bill’s advocates also ignore the fact that it will remove the incentive to protect and conserve these animals from the two great threats they face—poaching and habitat loss—and that therefore some species will be made at greater risk of extinction as a result of this Bill than would otherwise be the case. It is time we recognise that our former colonies are sovereign independent countries; they are the best judges of their own interests, and they have every interest in preserving endangered species. It really is time we help the intelligentsia in this country rid themselves of their liberal imperialism, lay down their white man’s burden, and focus on problems which are our own responsibility.

Lord Swire (Con)

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My Lords, it is a very great pleasure to follow on from some of the speeches we have had so far in this debate today, not least the noble Lord, Lord St John—I second him in his praise for Tusk, an organisation for which I have raised money in the past and of which I know he continues to be a trustee—and the noble Lord, Lord Selkirk, about his cousin Iain Douglas-Hamilton, who I met in Kenya some years ago. I am aware of his work; he was, of course, one of the founders of Save the Elephants. I listened closely to what they said.

I was going to say that I have no dog in this fight, but I thought that might set a hare running. What I will say is that I have absolutely no desire to kill any of these particular animals myself, nor do I particularly like seeing photographs of pot-bellied Texan dentists with sets of improbable teeth kneeling next door to their fallen prey like Cecil the lion. We must all agree that the optics of that sort of behaviour are atrocious. But good legislation looks at unintended consequences not at headlines.

I was taken by the fact that paragraph 37 of the Explanatory Notes to the Bill talks about the financial implications of the Bill. Well, here is the problem: it only alludes to the financial implications of the Bill so far as it affects the United Kingdom. Of course, the financial implications of this Bill are surely about the negative consequences to the finances of those countries which would be affected were this Bill to become law. I note that my noble friend Lady Fookes quoted a letter, which I have just read online, from a whole raft of people across Africa and wider afield. But she did not refer to the letter in the Times—yesterday, I think it was—from the high commissioners and ambassadors from Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Tanzania, which makes a very different argument.

I gently ask my noble friend whether she has had any discussions with these high commissions and ambassadors, and if not, why not? Frankly, it is condescending to tell these countries how to run their internal affairs and to second-guess them as they struggle to keep poaching under control, very often risking the lives of their game rangers in so doing. What nobody has said so far today is what happens if these animals are not in some sense controlled. If there is no economic interest in preserving them, they run amok, running down crops, endangering lives and villages and becoming prey to even more poaching. That is the reality, so anyone who genuinely cares about animal welfare and the survival of species rather than favourable headlines must, by definition, oppose this Bill.

The British public will be rather amazed that we are debating this with the cost of living crisis, Ukraine and so forth, and I suspect a lot of them are, like me, made uneasy by the somewhat high-handed and neocolonial tone of this Bill. I think they expect better of us, as do those countries that will be affected by it, to which we should say, “We stand with you, we support you, we hear you and we will learn from you. We will work with you, not against you, to help put in place the best possible protocols which enhance conservation.” That should be our aim. I rather regret to say that this no doubt well-intentioned Bill does not achieve that. Regrettably, it suggests that if it were to become law, it would ensure the precise opposite.

Lord Remnant (Con)

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My Lords, it is with some diffidence that I venture out of my natural habitat of the financial services jungle into the open savannas of this debate, especially following the erudite words of my noble friend Lord Swire. This is a debate not so much on the narrow topic of the importing of hunting trophies but on trophy hunting itself, as several noble Lords have indicated today. Any such ban will affect the practice of hunting abroad, which will in turn have a far-reaching impact on conservation efforts. I believe that this will be a profoundly negative impact. I am no supporter of trophy hunting in and of itself, in fact I find it distasteful, but we have to look beyond the narrow picture to the wider canvas.

I am concerned that if this Bill were to be enacted in its current form, it would represent a triumph of emotion over reason. We must respect the rights of countries and conservationists to determine for themselves how best to manage their own wildlife resources. All of them require significant funding to achieve their objectives. The challenges facing the people and wildlife in Africa are greater than ever. We are losing animals and indeed species much faster than the natural extinction rate, and this is caused almost entirely by human activity. This will only worsen as the human population continues to grow and consume ever more natural resources.

The poaching and illegal wildlife trade is the fourth most lucrative international crime after drugs, arms and human trafficking. As a result, the African elephant population, for example, has fallen by more than 30% in the past seven years largely due to poaching. Trophy hunting reduces this threat as the operators generally invest significantly in antipoaching activities which protect both hunted and non-hunted species. Habitat loss represents the greatest threat to the majority of wildlife. The survival of many African species is dependent on healthy habitat, and the demands on land will only intensify with the rapidly increasing population. Arguably, the ultimate conservation challenge is finding a solution that benefits both people and wildlife. The revenue from trophy hunting helps incentivise landowners to maintain land as wildlife habitat, rather than to convert it into agricultural use or for urban or industrial development.

It is simplistic to suggest that you can just replace this revenue by funding from other sources, such as photographic safaris, because in many cases this is simply not an option in places suitable for trophy hunting. Related to this is the conflict between humans and wildlife. The clearance of land for settlements and agriculture not only results in loss of habitat for wildlife but forces wild animals into close quarters with humans. Retaliatory, or even pre-emptive, killing of lions by the local population has become one of their greatest threats. However, because it generates income, trophy hunting increases the willingness of local people to tolerate dangerous and destructive animals. The income funds not only physical barriers and deterrence but enhances human understanding of the importance of wildlife and how to avoid conflict.

In summary, when local communities, conservationists and other stakeholders see economic benefits to co-existing with wildlife, conservation can, and indeed does, succeed. However, conservation in general is largely underfunded, and wildlife authorities in many countries have insufficient budgets to manage protected areas and the species within them. Whether we like it or not, trophy hunting makes significant contributions to those budgets. Any benefits accruing from the enactment of this Bill will be marginal compared with the serious harm it will do to conservation efforts worldwide. These damaging and doubtless unintended consequences must be avoided. As this Bill progresses, I hope that my noble friends Lady Fookes and the Minister, who always displays total mastery of his brief—possibly up until this morning—will recognise the concerns of many noble Lords and strongly support an approach to achieve this.

Viscount Trenchard (Con)

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My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Remnant. I always agree with what he says about financial services, and I am happy to say that I also agree with what he has said today. I respect the motivation of my noble friend Lady Fookes in introducing this Bill. I know she believes sincerely that it will prevent the overexploitation of endangered species, thereby assisting the stabilisation of populations of such species. However, I think that my noble friend is misguided because in the main, trophy hunting is beneficial to local communities in many African countries. It is also much better that affected countries be left to decide for themselves how they manage trophy hunting, and that we should not be seen to interfere.

Furthermore, the Bill would clearly be counter-productive. In Namibia, for example, trophy hunting contributes 20% more to the national economy than the whole small livestock farming sector. It just is not true that it is necessary to ban licensed and managed hunting in order to save species from extinction. Of the 73 CITES-listed species of animals which have been imported into the UK in the past 22 years, none is seriously threatened by trophy hunting. On the contrary, properly managed, licensed hunting assists the good management of wildlife. In the case of many species, culling a quota of older animals is helpful, even essential, for the sustainability of the herd as a whole. It is exactly the same with deer stalking in Scotland, from which many thousands of trophies are exported every year. Does this Bill not show us in rather a hypocritical light? I am sure that many animal rights activists would like to ban deer stalking, but I am certain that the result would be a marked deterioration in the quality and number of healthy wild deer roaming Scotland’s Highlands.

I have observed that the keenest participants in field sports are, in the main, the same people who care most for their quarry, the animals. Salmon fishermen have contributed significant resources towards improving our rivers and trying to rescue the Atlantic salmon. If salmon fishing with rod and line were banned, it would do nothing for the salmon or the quality of our rivers. The same logic applies to game reserves in Africa. This Bill would certainly make many managed game reserves economically unsustainable, and the result would be an increase in poaching, less management and less observation of wildlife herds, because the income from photo-tourism and other alternative sources does not begin to approach that which many communities receive from trophy hunting.

I am opposed to this Bill, which I consider unnecessary and, in its effect, harmful to nature. It is also meddling where we should not meddle. There may be ways in which it could be made less harmful, and I would support those, but the best thing my noble friend could do for the future of the species covered by the Bill would be to withdraw it. I have heard that a number of ambassadors and high commissioners from affected countries have expressed concerns about the impact of the proposed ban on the livelihoods of their rural communities and on the conservation of wildlife, even in national parks and game reserves in those countries.

I want to ask my noble friend two questions: first, does she want to ban deer stalking in the United Kingdom? Secondly, how many approaches from ambassadors and high commissioners wishing to meet her to discuss the Bill has she received and how many meetings has she held as a result? She said in her introductory remarks that she remains to be persuaded and that she expected to receive much information today. As my noble friend Lord Swire has also asked, why does my noble friend not meet the representatives of countries affected by the Bill? They are the people best qualified to tell her the facts as they are. I look forward to her winding up and to the Minister’s reply.

Lord Lucas (Con)

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My Lords, I am a practical person and, for me, the practical benefits for wildlife outweigh any considerations of my sensibilities. My judgment is that this Bill as it is will damage conservation; I therefore support the suggested direction of amendment that my noble friend Lord Bellingham proposed.

The flow of money is important to conservation; we can see that in this country. Let us take the example of the long-standing RSPB reserve Lake Vyrnwy in Wales and the RSPB’s recent application for many millions of pounds of funding. The RSPB says that, unless it gets all this money in this area of Wales, red grouse, black grouse, hen harriers and waders will all become extinct—and I can understand why. It takes a great flow of money to achieve effective conservation. By contrast, the RSPB, as reported in its publication today, is heavily opposed to driven grouse-shooting—but if you go on a well-managed driven grouse moor, as I had the privilege to do this spring, it is a place alive with waders and, indeed, as a properly managed moor, with raptors too. It is a buzzing ecological community, and that is managed because of all the effort put in to maintain grouse-shooting.

In contrast to the RSPB seeing hen harriers as dying out in Lake Vyrnwy, the picture in England is that we have gone, since 2017, from 10 chicks fledged to 190 chicks fledged due to the collaboration between Natural England and grouse-shooting. The high principles and purity of the RSPB are leading to the hen harrier dying out; the “killers” and their policies are leading to it flourishing. That seems to me to be an interesting parallel to what we are being asked to consider in this Bill. We may not like trophy hunting, but the proceeds of trophy hunting, flowing into a well-managed conservation effort, are immensely beneficial to wildlife.

We are asking African people to live alongside lions and elephants and yet, considering the debates in this country on the reintroduction of the European lynx—a little baby cat—we ought to understand what we are asking of these people. It is not just, “Be nice”; it is, “Do something that will have an immense impact on your life”, or, in many cases, “Put your life in danger”. People are killed with some regularity by the wildlife in these areas outside reserves. We are asking people to take a huge responsibility. For us, 30 by 30 is nice—it just means more butterflies—but when you talk about more big game and letting it thrive, you are talking about a big impact on your life. We must support the efforts these countries are making to make conservation possible. We must respect what they say is necessary and what they say works and find ways of supporting that.

We might deprecate the people who trophy hunt—it is not something that I wish to do myself—but very many of us watched the first episode of the recent Attenborough series where the white-tailed eagle was hunting the goose. The experience of that is so close to the experience of hunting an animal oneself that I could not separate it. We are built as hunters; we are not descended from rabbits. We are hunters, and that which is expressed as pleasure by trophy hunters is in most of us. We ought to recognise that; they are not something apart but an expression of one aspect of humanity.

I hope we will be able, without too much argument, to amend this Bill to allow whatever structures we think appropriate in this country to collaborate with conservation structures and Governments abroad and allow trophies to be imported from those countries where we are absolutely clear that this is making a substantial contribution to conservation in those countries.

Lord Reay (Con)

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My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the wise words of my noble friend Lords Lucas and a great privilege to participate in the debate on this Bill brought forward by my noble friend Lady Fookes, for whom I have great admiration—and I am not just saying that as I happen to be her Whip. Her passion for the welfare of animals is well recognised.

On the topic of hunting after sporting trophies, I am sure the House would join me in extending the best of wishes to Ben Stokes and his England cricket team as they commence today their bid to regain the Ashes urn.

I support the intentions of this Bill to protect endangered wildlife but fear that, as currently drafted, the unintended consequences will have detrimental effects on conservation efforts, not to mention livelihoods, in Africa and elsewhere. As we have heard from several noble Lords, regulated trophy hunting plays a significant role in funding conservation initiatives, particularly across the African continent. Hunters who legally acquire permits contribute substantial amounts of money to local communities and conservation organisations. These funds are used to support anti-poaching patrols, assist with habitat protection and benefit the overall management of wildlife areas.

A ban on the importation of hunting trophies will inadvertently deprive these communities of a vital source of revenue. This loss of fee income, jobs and indeed animal meat, will severely impact conservation efforts, leaving wildlife populations vulnerable to poaching and habitat destruction. Without adequate resources, Governments will struggle to employ game rangers, invest in surveillance technology and implement effective wildlife management strategies.

This is precisely what happened in Botswana after the Government introduced a hunting ban a decade ago. The policy resulted in the displacement of communities due to income reduction and the destruction of habitat caused by the absence of land management. It was evident that not only does photo tourism fail to fill the income gap but it tends to take place in more accessible landscapes. Thankfully, the Government there recognised the damage caused and reversed the ban, and mammal numbers have improved. Kenya, on the other hand, has lost 70% of its wildlife since hunting was banned in 1977.

The main threat to wildlife globally is the conversion of land from wildlife habitat to agriculture or industrial development. Revenue from trophy hunting helps to incentivise landowners to maintain land as a wildlife habitat. When carried out under strict regulations and quotas, trophy hunting can also contribute to and enhance the preservation of species. By targeting older post-reproductive males, hunters can play a role in population management, ensuring the genetic diversity and long-term survival of species. This has been demonstrated in various African countries, including Namibia, where well-regulated hunting programmes have resulted in a more abundant elephant population.

The Bill would be more acceptable if it permitted the import of trophies from places where it could be shown that hunting makes a positive contribution to conservation and local livelihoods. That would be in line with the approach taken by the US authorities. Import certificates could be granted by the JNCC, the UK Government’s scientific advisory board for nature conservation.

The UK Government, in response to the potential harm caused to the livelihoods of communities affected by the Bill, have suggested that aid should be used to mitigate the loss of income. History and experience demonstrate that such aid is rarely, if ever, delivered to the right place. Aid initiatives often fail to create jobs, frequently fuel corruption and render the recipient state dependent on foreign donors.

This legislation also creates certain inconsistencies. An elk hunter in northern Europe, for instance, where hunting is highly regulated and state quotas ensure that numbers do not get too high or too low, would be banned from importing elk antlers into the UK. However, as we have heard, a red deer stalker in Scotland is rightly allowed to export stag antlers from this country.

The proposed Bill will have severe consequences for international conservation efforts. By cutting off a significant source of funding, the legislation will weaken anti-poaching measures, hamper wildlife management and jeopardise the livelihoods of local communities. It is crucial that we recognise the importance of sustainable hunting practices and work towards collaborative solutions that balance conservation goals with the needs of local communities. We should strive to protect and conserve Africa’s and other continents’ remarkable wildlife heritage for generations to come.

Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)

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My Lords, this is a very bad Bill because, while we all support what it is trying to achieve, which is to ensure that endangered species of animals do not become extinct, it will actually achieve the opposite if it takes effect in the way that is intended.

I am going to talk about Africa. I shall start at the beginning. Population growth is finally stabilising in this world. It will probably top out at about 9 billion. One of the reasons for that is that, with better health services in China and the one-child policy, it looks as if the Chinese population is not growing any more, and India is closely following. The exception to this is Africa, where, for many reasons—I suspect it is the inadequacy of health services as much as anything—populations are still growing exponentially. I shall therefore concentrate most of my remarks on what is happening there. There are trophy hunters who export trophies from countries such as Pakistan, Turkey, Mongolia and indeed of course the United Kingdom. As many people have mentioned, we export a large number of trophies, mostly from people who have shot red deer.

I would love to be able to say that I am not a trophy hunter and it has never appealed to me as something I want to do, but actually I have shot a significant number of red stags in Scotland and have on occasion taken their horns down to England, where I live. I therefore suppose I have to qualify as a trophy hunter—it is quite difficult to say that I am not one—but it has certainly never appealed to me to shoot a magnificent beast in Africa. But, of course, it does bring significant income into those countries.

As we know, the growing populations of many of these African countries mean that the demand for land is getting greater all the time. You preserve endangered species from the predations of man only by having conservation areas, and they cost serious money to maintain. Indeed, where the whole essence of a conservation area breaks down in civil war, of which Africa has had far too much experience, invariably what happens is that poachers run wild, the predations of man get much worse and endangered species decline as a result. So we must do everything we can to ensure that as much finance finds its way into these areas as possible. For that reason, if we have qualms about trophy hunting in these areas, we should suppress them, because it is channelling funds into areas of Africa where they are most desperately needed—and where in many cases the populations of endangered species are actually growing rather than shrinking, which is an essential requirement if we want to ensure that they do not become extinct.

A noble friend of mine who has now left this House produced a special breed of pig. He always said that if you wanted to keep a special species of pig, the best thing to do was to eat it. I am afraid we have a very complicated relationship with animals, because we do eat them in prodigious quantities, and for that they have to be slaughtered. We cannot get away from that contradiction, with which we live in this country, and our complicated relationship with animals, because at the end of the day we have to manage wildlife in a way that keeps them in existence and enhances their prospects of living on this planet with us. If we do not do that, we will lose everything.

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)

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My Lords, consider the tale of two African countries. In the late 1970s, as we have just heard, Kenya banned the hunting of elephants and the sale of tusks and saw an upsurge of poaching to such a degree that elephants were almost wiped out in that country. At almost exactly the same time, Zimbabwe—or Rhodesia, as it still was for a couple more years—made elephants the property of whoever’s land they were roaming on, with the result that there was an upsurge in numbers because, as Aristotle teaches, that which no one owns, no one will care for.

It can take an effort of will in a country like this to imagine what it is like to live next to some of these large mammals. We encounter them even before we go to school. They are presented to us in the first books that we see as toddlers, smiling, colourful and anthropomorphised. Then we come across them later as teenagers in documentaries, endangered, handsome and gracious—but of course that is not exactly how they seem when they are next door to you. A lion might carry off a child. An elephant will trample crops and possibly push over your dwelling. Rhinos and hippos are more dangerous still. Even the giraffe, which looks so graceful when we see it on television, competes for scarce water resources with local herders. So, if we want to preserve these animals and their habitats, we have to give local people an incentive to treat them as a renewable resource—in other words, to give them an incentive financially by being able, in a licensed and qualified way, to sell tusks, hides and, yes, hunting licences.

When South Africa decided to do something about the decline of white rhinos, it became almost the only place in the world where numbers stopped falling; 80% of white rhinos, which were nearly extinct in the rest of Africa, are now found in South Africa because it used trophy hunting and the revenue therefrom as a way of incentivising local people to become custodians—each to become a gamekeeper, if you like.

Last year I had the great privilege of spending some time visiting the northern parts of Pakistan, with beautiful, austere landscapes where there is an unusual mountain goat called the markhor, which has amazing screwdriver horns like a drill. It is a most magnificent animal. In the 20th century it was this close to extinction, with fewer than 500 left. The Pakistani authorities then began to auction a very small number of hunting licences, three or four a year. They now fetch immense sums: $500,000, or upwards of that in some cases. That money is reserved for the local communities. The people in those communities then make damn sure that no one comes near any of those animals, except the elderly post-reproductive ones that are marked for hunting. People who previously had no incentive to look after the numbers have, if you like, all become rangers in a way that overstretched Governments are not able to do. We made it everybody’s business.

This, it seems to me, is a question which pits aesthetics against intellect. It pits how we feel about something, our sentiment, against what we think is most in the interests of endangered species. Like my noble friend Lord Swire, I do not particularly like the image of American dentists squatting by fallen lions. Maybe it is that we all have a problem, on some deep psychological level, with dentists—I do not know. But it is not fundamentally for us in this House to consider the aesthetics; it is for us to consider the effects. Above all, surely that is why we are here: as a check on the radicalism of the popularly elected Chamber. It is exactly our job to think about the effects rather than simply about the headlines.

There is a difference between saying, “I disapprove of this thing”, or even “I find this thing unspeakably ugly”, and saying, “Therefore this thing should be banned”. That is not just a semantic difference. The difference between those two things contains the entirety of what we mean by a free society.

Lord Mancroft (Con)

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My Lords, it is always a privilege, and a very exciting one, to follow my noble friend Lord Hannan. I never know where his speeches are going to take us, but they never disappoint.

This is a very short Bill and it contains only one measure, which is to prohibit, as we know, the importation of hunting trophies. Trophy hunting is perceived by the Bill’s sponsors as a threat to a number of important species and they consider that prohibiting the import of their trophies will reduce the amount of hunting and thus assist in conserving those species—it is pretty simple. The restricted species, as we know, are set out in annexe A or B of the principal wildlife regulations, as described in Clause 2.

Annexes A and B includes over 6,000 species. As I am sure your Lordships will know, they include 2,000 corals, 585 lizards, 300 hummingbirds, 299 frogs and 96 molluscs—I could go on. None of these, by the way, are hunted. In fact, only 53 of the species have been imported in the last 20 years, amounting to about 100 trophies per annum. Just to put that in perspective, it is estimated that 96 elephants are poached every day.

The Bill, if enacted, will have so small an effect as to be of no practical benefit whatever. Not to put too fine a point on it, it is completely pointless and nothing more than symbolic. In addition, while some of the animals from which those 100 trophies come are endangered, none of them are endangered by trophy hunting. There is also the law of unintended consequences. Opponents of this Bill have argued that there is a significant negative consequence that far outweighs any miniscule benefit. They have produced substantial evidence that the revenue derived from trophy hunting safeguards habitat and pays for the prevention of poaching. The Bill’s supporters, on the other hand, argue that the revenue is insignificant, does not achieve these benefits and, when it reaches local communities, it is of no consequence.

Your Lordships always have to sift through the evidence and weigh up the arguments. No politician can know everything; one of the skills we have to develop is sifting through the information we receive. In the last few days, as my noble friend Lady Fookes said in opening this debate, we received a letter from the Humane Society International UK—an offshoot of the Humane Society International, which is a leading animal rights organisation. It raises a lot of money and is a lobbying organisation, but it is not engaged in conservation. I am sure all your Lordships looked carefully at the signatories. There were apparently government officials and conservationists, but I could not find many of those. I saw several human rights activists, some pastoralists—I am not sure what they are—a teacher and one chap who rather bravely described himself as a scholar. The most well-known signatory is Dr Ian Khama, the former president of Botswana, who was indeed responsible for banning trophy hunting in 2014, but that ban was lifted by Botswana’s present Government in 2019. The acting Botswana high commissioner, who was kind enough to come to this House to brief us the other day and meet colleagues, has made it clear that his Government do not support this Bill.

The reason why so many African countries and the leading conservationists from Oxford University, the University of Gloucestershire and the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which is the world’s leading organisation in the monitoring of species and advises Governments, including our own, are so concerned about the Bill is simple. Their opinion, which is supported by research, hard evidence and examples, is that the income from trophy hunting does have a significant effect in protecting habitat, deterring poaching and incentivising local communities to accept wild animals as a beneficial resource. Without trophy hunting, habitat where hunting currently takes place will be lost. In its place, there will be increased development, particularly of agriculture, along with an increase in human/wildlife conflict and a rapid rise in poaching. It is those, rather than hunting, which threaten the survival of species.

It is clear the Government accept that there is likely to be a drop in income if this Bill proceeds because, in her letter to the Namibian high commissioner on 25 April, the Defra Minister, Trudy Harrison, wrote:

“As you will know, DEFRA has a suite of programmes aimed at protecting and restoring nature, contributing to poverty reduction in developing countries, and supporting local communities … This funding far exceeds any financial benefits for conservation that may currently be derived from the small number of hunting trophies imported into the UK”.


When he comes to wind up the debate, will my noble friend the Minister confirm that it is now the Government’s policy to enact measures to create poverty in developing countries and then simply substitute grant aid for the lost income? I find that very difficult to believe.

There have been some pretty unpleasant accusations about post-imperial policies, about patronising attitudes towards former colonies and even a racist tone in some of the comments made. I find those deeply uncomfortable, but I also find it difficult to ignore or deny them. What I can do is to quote a letter from the official representatives of Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe to my right honourable friend Andrew Mitchell on 25 May. They said:

“While respecting the Minister’s opinion, we regret to inform that we take exception to this position that it is tantamount to subjecting those likely to be adversely affected by the Bill, to a beggar-like dependency on external support for their livelihood. We do not find it appropriate to relegate these proud, hard-working communities who have successfully forged a coexistence with nature to a position of surviving through aid”.


Nevertheless, against my better judgment, I am persuaded by the conservationists I have spoken to and the representatives of the various African Governments that the Bill probably should proceed to the statute book, with only a small but hugely important tweak. In Committee, I will seek to move an amendment which has been described as the “conservation amendment”. It would allow that, if there was a demonstrable conservation benefit—I stress, a demonstrable conservation benefit—from the hunting, a trophy could be imported. It would require a permit from the JNCC, which is the Government’s scientific adviser and currently issues all the CITES permits. It has already confirmed that it has the capability and resources to do this. This would allow the Government to surpass their manifesto commitment.

This simple amendment will address the concerns of those scientific conservationists who have been critical of the Bill. I believe it will also satisfy the African, eastern European and Asian Governments who have been unanimous in voicing their concerns. It will turn the Bill from one that will do much more harm than good into one that will genuinely advance the conservation of vulnerable species. I look forward to meeting my noble friend Lady Fookes and the Minister to work with them to get this Bill on the statute book in a way that we can all support.

Baroness Sanderson of Welton (Con)

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My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Mancroft and I am very pleased to hear that he would like the Bill to reach the statute book, for I rise to speak in support of it and of my noble friend Lady Fookes.

I am not going to go over the arguments as to whether trophy hunting is important for conservation. As we have heard already, plenty have used the science to say that it is and others have used it to say that it is not. Frankly, I very much doubt that either side will change its mind by listening to the evidence put forward by the other. Instead, there is another and more fundamental question to consider. It is whether we really believe that, in this day and age, trophy hunting can be seen as a reasonable endeavour, even in the name of conservation, as its supporters claim.

Many in this Chamber have talked about how distasteful this is as a practice. We have not actually spelled out the reality, so I will take a minute and go through what it means. A group of men, sometimes women, will pay to go on what seems, on the face of it, to be a standard safari. There is a nice lodge, a glass of wine and plenty of time to relax in between game drives, but there the similarities end. You do not have a guide on these drives; you have a PH—a private hunter—and there is a difference. A safari guide has to learn how to interpret and be respectful of the wilderness and its wildlife. They are the link between nature and guest. A private hunter just has to know how to hunt. What they really need to do is make sure that, if their clients miss, they can tell them where to shoot next. In truth, that is the only tricky bit. It is called hunting but very often there is no chase, and it does not take great skill.

I asked the South African wildlife journalist and academic Dr Adam Cruise, who is here today, to tell me a bit about it, as he has been on many of these hunts. He explained:

“The animals are used to the vehicles and the elephants and the lions don’t run anyway. It’s as simple as going out, seeing the zebra, say, getting out of the jeep, taking a few steps and shooting the zebra—if they get it wrong the first time, which they often do, the PH is there to guide them ... bit lower, bit higher … while the animal writhes on the floor. It can often take them 10 or 15 minutes to die but when the job’s finally done, the staff clean off the blood, the client has his picture taken, jumps back in the jeep and the team will either put the animal in the back if it’s small enough or chop off the head if it’s a lion or an elephant and leave the carcass behind.”


He went on to talk about one hunt he was on:

“A lot of the animals are bred for the purpose so even something like a rhino can be quite tame—”

Lord Mancroft (Con)

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My Lords, I wonder if my noble friend would be so awfully kind as to give way? What she is saying is very interesting, of course, but she is talking about canned hunting in South Africa. That is not the subject of this Bill.

Baroness Sanderson of Welton (Con)

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I am not talking about canned hunting. I am talking about the experience of an academic and journalist who has been on many different types of hunts, including canned hunting. I am not talking only about that, so if my noble friend would let me finish, I would be grateful.

It is reasonable that, if we are going to talk about this, we talk about the reality of it. Dr Curtis went on one hunt where the rhinos were grazing around the chalets. He asked the client, “Which one is next on your list?” Pointing at Dr Curtis’s hand, which was stroking the rhino’s head because it was so tame, the client said, “That one”. I take the time to speak about this because, when I hear such things, I just think that there has to be a better way.

I would say to my noble friend that I am not some woke warrior. I do not think that this can be compared to a grouse shoot. I am not even a vegetarian, and maybe there is hypocrisy in that. However, I think that the killing of these magnificent animals for no purpose whatever is sickening. We have some children here today. My godchildren will not go to a zoo because they do not like to see wild animals caged up; they would rather watch Attenborough on television. The world is moving on.

As has been said by many in this Chamber, nobody here wants to go on these hunts; they want to support conservation, and I appreciate that. However, I point out that only 11 of the 54 countries in Africa allow trophy hunting. It is true that some of them do not have the game to support it, but Kenya does—admittedly in reduced numbers, as my noble friend Lord Reay has pointed out—as do Malawi and Ghana. They face the same problems with habitat and want to protect their communities. They want to support them but they do not want trophy hunting on their land. Does this not rather disprove the point that trophy hunting is a necessary evil? It is not; it is a choice.

In this country, we are doing something smaller in scope. Some noble Lords have argued that it is so small that it is nothing more than virtue signalling. Others have said that it is not small at all and that its impact is quite damaging, and that it is not up to us to tell other countries what to do. On the latter point, I agree that it is not up to us to tell other countries what to do, but we can, as a country, take a stance. I think we can take a stance on this pathetic sport. That is not virtue signalling; it is the right thing to do.

Lord Howard of Rising (Con)

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My Lords, many heartfelt arguments have been put forward in favour of the Bill, and I respect them greatly. My sympathies are with the animals. I have been hugged by a fully grown tiger, walked with gorillas and had close contact with other large animals. I have no wish at all to ever hunt one, let alone import a trophy, but, however much anyone might be emotionally in favour of the Bill, I do not believe that it will contribute to the preservation of wildlife.

As was said, there is clear evidence that, where controlled hunting of wild animals is permitted, there is considerably enhanced conservation—more wildlife and more habitats. The payments for hunting are such that it enables an area to be properly patrolled and for the animals to be properly protected and not overhunted. As was said, it is obvious that, where this income and livelihood exist, steps will be taken to ensure that animals are preserved so that they continue.

I had first-hand experience of this when I lived, for a year, one mile away from the northern part of the Kruger National Park, over 100 miles away from the nearest tarmac road. Within the boundary of the heavily patrolled park, where there were strict controls on entry, there was very limited poaching. Outside of that boundary, poaching was rife, not just for trophies but for the meat, which was considered highly desirable by the local residents.

There is also the question of whether we in this country should take action that could go against how the Governments of other countries wish to run their affairs. Representatives of countries where hunting is permitted are here today, and I hope that they will realise that not everyone wishes to impose their own values on the countries concerned but are happy to leave them to manage their own affairs. It might be possible to understand and sympathise, but there is a clear danger of the loss of the species. Under the present rules and the way things are managed, there is no danger of such a loss. As many pointed out today, allowing big-game hunting in a controlled fashion works to preserve the animals concerned.

The Earl of Caithness (Con)

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My Lords, this has been a fascinating debate. I have no interest to declare except that I have a passion, just as great as that of my noble friend Lady Fookes, for nature, conservation and biodiversity. As I had no knowledge of what trophy hunting was really about, I sought to educate myself over the past months. What were my conclusions? First, there is far too much focus on Africa alone. Secondly, rational discussion is impossible—the sides are too embedded—but I will come back to that. Thirdly, no one really seemed to understand what we are talking about with this Bill.

As some have said today, the Bill talks about just over 600 species, but the only species that have been mentioned are lions, elephants and markhors. What we import is 0.1% of the 6,000 species subject to CITES control. It is therefore no surprise that my noble friend Lady Fookes did not wax lyrical about the tree snail, because it is extinct—it is still protected by this legislation but we are talking about a past species. Another conclusion that I came to is that canned hunting should be banned, and one good thing we could do is alter the Bill so that it reflects that wish.

During the numerous conversations I have had with both sides on this, I was sad that so many of the arguments are contradictory and how much they change as soon as facts are provided. I am in good, detailed discussions with the Born Free Foundation at the moment, and have received another letter from Dame Virginia, which is highly contradictory; I will reply to it as soon as I get time to get back to my computer. Having contradictory arguments does not help the case of those who wish to stop trophy hunting.

I will pick up some points that have been mentioned. My noble friend Lady Fookes mentioned the letter. It was very sad that the so-called experts said that the case for trophy hunting is

“promulgated by certain conservation scientists, many of whom have proven funding ties to the trophy hunting industry”.

That is not an accurate statement. Also, those in glass houses should not throw stones. A lot of the pro-trophy-hunting NGOs fund scientists. I believe that our scientists, whether they are funded by one side or the other, in large or small part, are above being influenced by that organisation.

My noble friend also talked about elephants producing smaller tusks. There are a lot of problems with the number of elephants killed—96 a day—while we import, under CITES control, about six year a year. What a huge difference.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, talked about the derisory 0.06% of GDP. That is twice what the UK fishing industry brings into this country. I am sure that my noble friend the Minister would be very happy to say goodbye to the fishing industry using the same argument as the noble Baroness.

The noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, fell back on an argument that has been put to me so many times: that, as soon as one is challenged on fact, one relates back to an ethical argument on a moral issue. The moral issue is that there should be no shooting. When I put that argument in relation to red deer in Scotland to the NGOs, they do not want to discuss it with me.

My noble friend Lord Selkirk talked about ecotourism. Tell that to those in Tajikistan. They do not have a wildebeest migration that brings in 300,000 people a year; they do not have the roads that my noble friend Lady Sanderson thinks that one can get access to; they do not hunt in the way that you do in a tame place in Africa, where you can walk for miles and might not get a shot at all. I am glad that my noble friend Lord Hannan referred to the markhor. It is by local conservancy set-ups and hunting in Tajikistan that the snow leopard is thriving in a way that it has not done before. That is because there is now enough food for it.

We know there are three basic ingredients to good biodiversity management: habitat, feed and predation. We in this country are talking about increasing and making wild belts as the green lungs for our national parks. The hunting conservancies in parts of the world are those green lungs that we wish to establish—1.3 million square kilometres, one-fifth more than national parks. We do not want to destroy that.

Trophy hunting is not, and has been proved not to be, a major threat. Habitat and prey loss and conflict among people are much more important, and the Bill does nothing to help with that.

Lord Rennard (LD)

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My Lords, I shall begin my contribution with six words very rarely used by me on these Benches: I support the Government on this. There are some people, including some here, who have been busy praising Boris Johnson in the manner of Shakespeare’s Mark Antony’s funeral oration following the murder of Julius Caesar. They ignore the line

“The evil that men do lives after them”,


and heap praise upon him for his election victory in 2019. But as the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, said, they should all remember that this Bill was part of the manifesto commitment of the Conservative Party in that election. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, confirmed, it was in Labour’s manifesto to support a Bill such as this. I can confirm that my party’s manifesto supported a ban on the importation of hunting trophies, albeit with reservations.

We should all note that the Bill was supported without opposition in the House of Commons, where a substantial majority of MPs was elected on the basis of the Conservative manifesto. The Daily Mirror reported this as, “Victory over cruel hunters”, and it was. The Times, in an editorial in 2019 said:

“Killing lions bred in captivity for fun is heinous and should be stopped”.


It is four years since Cecil the lion was killed by a Minnesota dentist, prompting an international outcry against big-game hunting. The public are firmly behind the Bill. A survey of 2,000 adults found that 86%, almost nine in 10, were in favour of banning trophy imports as soon as possible, rising to 92% of Conservative supporters. Anyone who wants to see film illustrating the cruelty of the industry can see videos on Twitter, using the hashtag #BanTrophyHunting, or find them on YouTube.

It is important to understand that only around a dozen African countries currently permit trophy hunting, and that the contribution of trophy hunting to their GDP is minuscule. It means that the economic productivity of these blocks of land is actually very low, and that hunting is not an economically sustainable land-use solution.

We have heard expressions of support from all parts of the House today for the welfare of wild animals. The International Fund for Animal Welfare told me this week that it is opposed to trophy hunting. It believes that it cannot be justified as a conservation measure and that the economic contribution from trophy hunting cannot be shown to adequately protect endangered wildlife and local livelihoods compared to alternative positive conservation measures.

It is very misleading to suggest that hunting businesses are about supporting poor people in Africa. A survey by the United Nations and a pro-hunting group found that hunting companies contributed only 3% of their revenue to communities living in hunting areas. The issue is not about charity but about profits. Millions of dollars are being spent on lobbying to protect those profits—profits that are derived from cruelty, not sport. As the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, said, it is big business.

We have heard several noble Lords today say that they support the aims of the Bill but consider that it requires some form of amendment. I simply say that I have sat here on many Fridays supporting Private Members’ Bills seeking to end the ludicrous process of holding by-elections for new hereditary Peers, but they have all been thwarted as a result of unnecessary amendments being tabled. We should all be aware that any amendments passed by your Lordships’ House would also need to be agreed by the House of Commons, and that no more sitting Fridays are scheduled in the Commons for such business to be considered. Therefore, any amendments passed in the Lords would have the practical effect of killing the Bill.

The noble Lord, Lord Robathan, albeit very briefly, and the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, suggested that this Bill is about colonialism and is an issue for the liberal intelligentsia, but they ignore what Conservative voters actually care about. The views of Conservative voters forced their own party to scrap plans to repeal the Hunting Act during the 2017 general election.

I draw the attention of the House again to the letter from 103 wildlife conservation experts, scientists, government officials and community leaders who live or work in different parts of Africa, in countries such as Botswana, Tanzania, South Africa, the DRC and Zimbabwe. They urge all of us to back an import ban on the prizes of what they call the “morally reprehensible colonial relic” of trophy hunting.

Will the Minister confirm today that business managers in the Commons will guarantee time for any Lords amendments to the Bill to be considered? If not, we will know that any talk about amendments is really talk about killing the Bill, as well as killing animals for fun.

Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)

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My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, for bringing this forward today and Henry Smith MP for steering it through the other place. This is clearly an issue on which there are strong feelings. It is clear from this debate that there are strong views on each side and, frankly, I do not think there is much room to come together in the middle. When the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, was talking about old cantankerous males, I wondered whether he was actually referring to some Members of the House of Lords—let us hope not. I thank the noble Baroness for her very powerful introduction to this Bill; her passion for animal welfare brings her huge respect across the House.

I remind noble Lords, as others have done, that the proposed ban has widespread support from the public and, as we have heard, clear cross-party support in Parliament. As noble Lords have said, it was in the manifestos of major parties. Action against this terrible sport—if you can call it a sport—has already taken place across the globe. France and Australia banned the import and export of lion hunting trophies in 2015 and the Netherlands banned trophy imports of more than 200 species in 2016. The noble Lord, Lord St John of Bletso, talked about canned hunting in South Africa. A few years ago, as I am sure he is aware, South Africa unveiled plans to terminate its multimillion-dollar lion-breeding industry, which supplies lions for trophy hunts as well as for tourism and traditional medicine. If there is one point of agreement in this debate, it is how appalling canned hunting is.

I will pick up some of the main points that have been discussed. We have discussed that hunting supports conservation and local communities. We believe that trophy hunting can have detrimental effects on wildlife populations, especially when conducted irresponsibly or without proper regulation. Some endangered or threatened species may be targeted by trophy hunters, exacerbating their decline and hindering conservation efforts. Trophy hunting has a history of mismanagement, with quotas based on inadequate data, unsustainable hunting quotas and a lack of transparency. The economic benefits generated from trophy hunting have also often been overstated, with only a small proportion of the revenue actually reaching local communities or conservation programmes. Such assertions are data-deficient and have been shown to be false whenever even the most basic interviews with communities and independent analysis are conducted. If such funds reach local communities, they are entirely negligible for conservation efforts compared to the damage inflicted by the industry through the irreversible loss of key natural resources.

There has been much talk about evidence and experts, on both sides of the argument. From my reading and research, the argument that trophy hunting is necessary for conservation funding does not seem to stand up to scrutiny. Surely, it is simply counterproductive to the overall idea of conservation. Why do you need to shoot something you are trying to protect?

Trophy hunting can also disrupt the delicate balance of ecosystems, as noble Lords have mentioned during the debate. We have heard that removing key individuals such as dominant males can lead to social instability in animal populations, affecting their reproductive success and overall health, and that this imbalance can have a cascading effect on the ecosystem as a whole.

There is a wide variety of targets a trophy hunter may focus on. However, the most common targets are the African big five: the African elephant, the Cape buffalo, the African leopard, the African lion and the black rhino. Four of these majestic animals are currently considered to be endangered. In the sport of trophy hunting, it is also common for hunters to find the largest and strongest male. A number of noble Lords have talked about the impact this can have on the gene pool for such species, leaving each generation weaker and making it more difficult for them to survive in the long term.

Although hunting groups will claim that controlled trophy hunting does not harm populations, that evidence seems to show that the opposite is true. Approximately 600 African lions are killed every year on trophy hunts, including those in populations that are already declining from other threats. The adult male lion is the most sought-after trophy by wealthy foreign hunters; shooting an adult male, such as Cecil, can generate a one-off trophy fee of around $15,000.

Let us have a further look at the economics. In its report Big Game Hunting in West Africa, the International Union for Conservation of Nature says:

“Returns for local populations, even when managed by community projects … are insignificant, and cannot prompt them to change their behaviour regarding poaching and agricultural encroachment. The number of salaried jobs generated (15,000 all over Africa) is low considering that 150 million people live in the eight main big game hunting countries, and that hunting takes up 16.5% of their territory.”


Hunting also directly competes with and undermines truly sustainable and economically important revenue generation from alternative means such as ecotourism and photographic. The noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson of Welton, gave some examples of this. Just because the alternatives for economic development may not necessarily work to begin with does not mean that more work should not be done and they should not be invested in and developed for the future. There is no reason why they cannot generate revenues to cover the real cost of conservation and effective anti-poaching work, as well as providing well-paid permanent jobs for local people without causing harm to animals.

Poaching has been mentioned at length in this debate. We need to recognise that trophy hunting, as well as being cruel and unjustifiable, in my mind, can act as a cover for illegal poaching. While a certain amount of regulation does take place, it is not enough to prevent trophy hunts being used as a cover for poaching. According to a report entitled The Myth of Trophy Hunting as Conservation, by Save African Animals,

“Opening up even a limited legal trade creates a smokescreen for poachers which is almost impossible to police.”


Let me draw a comparison with whaling. Before the whaling moratorium was introduced in 1986, legal quotas were widely used as covers for poaching, driving some species near to extinction. The same is now happening with the trophy hunting of endangered species.

We have also heard about the idea of a licensing exemption—that has been talked about quite considerably. The noble Lord, Lord Bellingham, introduced that element in his speech. I may be wrong, but this appears to propose a model that resembles licences for trophy imports awarded under the United States’s Endangered Species Act. I think it would be disproportionate to include this in the legislation, as it would introduce considerable cost and administrative burdens, as well as creating the risk of judicial review. Indeed, a director for the US Fish and Wildlife Service explained that it faced challenges during a recent lawsuit. He said:

“The International Affairs Program currently has a backlog of applications and insufficient staffing and resources to keep up with the very high workload and backlog. Staff time also must be spent defending against multiple lawsuits filed in federal court concerning the Service’s administration of permits to import sport-hunted elephant trophies and other permitting responsibilities”.


Surely this is not a situation we should seek to emulate.

Moreover, a system to assess whether import permits should be issued for hunting trophies from threatened species according to certain criteria would be heavily, if not exclusively, reliant on data and reports from exporting countries, which have proven time and again to be unreliable. It is of particular note that a letter we discussed mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, signed by African experts, said:

“Trophy hunting has a history of mismanagement with quotas based on inadequate data”—


as I have said.

There seems to have been an element in this debate of picking and choosing which experts you want to believe. It is not reasonable for the people who signed that letter to be completely dismissed, just as we need to listen to other arguments being put forward. I do not believe that trophy hunting is helping to save our planet; it is driven by the trophy hunters’ desire to kill and then boast about it. As inhabitants of our planet, it is our responsibility to address this, as losing animals of such great importance would be a terrible loss. In my personal opinion, trophy hunting is cruel, inhumane and unjustifiable. It is also morally objectionable. Killing animals for so-called sport or as a form of entertainment is unnecessary and cruel. It also raises questions about our responsibility towards other living beings and challenges the notion of conservation based on killing. I have never been able to understand why anybody would want to kill a beautiful creature then pose for a photograph with a dead animal, let alone bring its head home.

We have heard that society is changing, and it is. Societal attitudes towards animals and conservation are evolving, and there is growing pressure on Governments to re-evaluate their position on practices such as trophy hunting. The noble Lord, Lord Selkirk of Douglas, talked about it as a moral wrong, and I agree with him, so I am proud to support the Government today and hope that the Minister will be able to address many of the concerns, because it is time the UK joined others around the globe and banned the importation of hunting trophies for good.

The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)

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My Lords, I speak in support of the Bill on behalf of the Government and thank noble Lords on all sides for the quality of this debate. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Fookes and my honourable friend Henry Smith in the other place for their progress with the Bill thus far.

It is clear from the debate and from the noise around it that trophy hunting is a controversial issue. There are those who point to the evidence about the potential benefits of well-managed hunting and those who point to the evidence of harm or poor practice. The Bill is about imports to Great Britain. The import ban will, of course, not prevent a UK resident or citizen from participating in hunting while overseas. Trophy hunting will continue around the world, and it is right that each country should be able to decide how best to manage its wildlife. The Bill does not change that, but it is also right that we listen to the British public, and there is a clear and strong message to bring an end to the import of endangered animals taken for the purpose of trophies. The Bill before us will therefore fulfil our manifesto commitment to do just that and, in doing so, it would help us to better protect some of the world’s most endangered species.

On the Bill itself, Clauses 1 and 2 together make provision for the import ban; it will cover trophies brought into Great Britain from animals hunted after this legislation comes into force. The definition of a hunting trophy in Clause 1 is:

“the body of an animal, or a … part or derivative of an animal, that … is obtained through hunting … for the hunter’s personal use”.

That is how hunting trophies are defined in our current controls under CITES—the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. This means other types of item will continue to be subject to our current controls—for example, under CITES. Trade in those other types of items will not be affected by the Bill.

Clause 2—and this leads to the point raised by my noble friend Lord Mancroft—means that the import ban will cover all species listed in Annexes A and B of our wildlife trade regulations, which implement Appendices 1 and 2 of CITES in Great Britain. The annexes cover species that the global community has agreed to protect through trade restrictions in the light of their endangered status. The Commons narrowed the scope of the Bill by making an amendment to remove a power for the Secretary of State to add the species that would be covered. To use Annexe A and B listings with no additions or variations is the best way for the Bill to address imports from endangered species. As a result, the Bill will end the permits system for imports of hunting trophies from these species. There are no provisions for exemptions to the import ban for hunting trophies from those species.

Clause 3 is about movements from Northern Ireland to Great Britain. Let me be clear that we will do as much as we can to ensure that Northern Ireland is not used as a stepping stone for imports to Great Britain. The EU wildlife trade regulations continue to apply in Northern Ireland under the Windsor Framework. Our CITES authorities will carefully scrutinise permit applications for Northern Ireland to ensure that imports meet the strict requirements set out by those regulations to ensure that trade is sustainable and legal. We also have controls in place for movements of endangered species from Northern Ireland to Great Britain, and those controls will apply to all hunting trophies in scope of the Bill.

Clause 4, added on Report in the Commons, is about the advisory board on hunting trophies—and some comment was made on this. My colleague speaking in the other place welcomed the principle of receiving expert advice, and I agree. For example, we already receive advice on international wildlife trade issues from the JNCC, which is the UK’s scientific authority for CITES. We are aware there is an unclear reference to “Committee” in Clause 4(3)(a), which a number of noble Lords have raised with me. That will be corrected to “advisory board” on printing. There is no need for noble Lords to make an amendment in this regard, and I put on the record that the Government have no concerns about the drafting.

Lastly, Clause 5 considers extent, application, commencement and short title. The import of endangered species is a reserved matter, and consequently there is no need for a legislative consent Motion, which saves me the embarrassment that I indulged in on an earlier piece of legislation today. I was always told that it is crucial on the Front Bench to make everyone think you know what you are doing, but clearly I failed on that occasion. However, I am grateful for the engagement of the Scottish and Welsh Governments on these issues.

On some of the comments raised in this debate, the difficulty with issues such as this is that it becomes an argument of “I see your experts and raise you mine”. Undoubtedly, there are a plethora of experts of varying degrees, scientists and not scientists, bringing their sway into this argument. They can be prayed in aid by different sides of the argument, and everyone has to make a judgment on that.

With regard to the eloquent words of the noble Lord, Lord St John, I think the whole House agrees with him about canned hunting. However, I urge noble Lords not to go down a rabbit hole that tries to define it. The repulsive prospect of an animal being contained in a small enclosure and shot with none of the danger that one would find shooting even a cow in a field is abhorrent to all of us. However, if one tries to define that in law, one starts to say, “How big an enclosure?” There are some wildlife conservancies that are contained but which are to an extent false ecosystems, because animals cannot move within and without them. However, I think we all share the noble Lord’s and others’ abhorrence of certain hunting practices that may be defined in that way.

I understand the points raised by many noble Lords, but I do not quite know whether to commiserate the noble Lord, Lord Mann, on Leeds or to congratulate him on Wrexham—maybe both. But he made a very interesting point.

The point about UK exports was raised. The Bill is about imports of hunting trophies from endangered species and animals abroad. We are taking action to address the public’s concerns over that. We have appropriate controls in place to protect our wildlife and to manage hunting in this country; we will not be amending any of our legislation or regulations on hunting in this country.

The noble Earl, Lord Erroll, and others raised issues about support for communities in countries that may be affected by this legislation. I know that the letter from my honourable friend the Minister that was referred to may have been misconstrued. I urge noble Lords to delink this legislation from all the other provisions we make to support countries to maintain their environment and wildlife. That is an ongoing commitment of support, whether through ODA or a variety of different international fora. For example, our £90 million Darwin Initiative and Darwin Plus are hugely appreciated in these countries for the work that they do to protect wildlife. The £30 million action on illegal wildlife trade and the £100 million biodiverse landscapes fund, which works across six landscapes and multiple different countries’ borders to protect wildlife, are nothing to do with this legislation. That is ongoing and our support for our friends, whether in Africa or elsewhere, will continue. The UK is fully committed to practical, meaningful support for conservation and for developing sustainable livelihoods based on wildlife. Our official development assistance will not replace trophy hunting and that is not what it aims to do.

My noble friend Lord Lilley made an impassioned speech, and I just say that we have appropriate controls in place to protect domestic species. According to CITES data, the UK has recorded only seven exports of hunting trophies from annexe A and B species in the past 10 years. Of these, two trophies were from barasingha deer, which were hunted in this country. The barasingha is not native to this country and is kept in private collections. Other trophy exports recorded by the UK were re-exports, originally from other countries.

My noble friend Lord Swire asked about impact. We recently published an impact assessment for the Bill, which discusses the impact of this reform on the UK, in line with the usual practice. Our impact assessments discuss some of the difficulties in evaluating the wider impacts of the Bill; it is complex and difficult to assess the impacts of further action on UK imports.

My noble friends Lord Reay and Lord Hannan and a number of others spoke about Kenya. I know a bit about Kenya and the declines in wildlife are for more complicated reasons than may have been prayed in aid in this debate. Differences of animals’ abundance will occur within particular parts of countries, and there are parts of Kenya where animal abundance is being restored in remarkable ways. I join with my noble friend Lord Selkirk in paying tribute to Iain Douglas-Hamilton, whom I know, and his daughter Saba and other members of his family, for the remarkable work they have done with Save the Elephants.

The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, asked whether there will be time to deal with amendments. I cannot give him that assurance. I do not know and have not spoken about that in detail, but in the process of this Bill we will seek to tease that out.

For my final point, I am grateful for the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, but I urge a little caution because, domestically, some of the richest wildlife habitats that we find anywhere on these islands are sustained through the activities of people who hunt for sport. They do that off their own back, out of their own pocket and often with little impact on the public purse. We need to be careful with the language that we use and make sure that we support those who deliver wildlife hotspots up and down the country.

This Bill to ban imports of hunting trophies has come from the other place with cross-party support. It is here with the Government’s full support. I urge noble Lords to lend their support as it makes its way through the House. We know from repeated rounds of consultation that the public expect us to deliver on this commitment. In closing, I thank my noble friend Lady Fookes for her efforts in leading this important Bill.

Baroness Fookes (Con)

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My Lords, I have been called many things in my time, but to be referred to as a neocolonialist is a new one for me. I would have thought it would be applied more appropriately those who wish to perpetuate the trophy hunting culture, but I will leave that aside because we have had a long debate. There have been wind-up speeches from the Front Benches and, of course, from the Minister, who was almost doing my work for me, so I will not detain the House too long.

However, I want very firmly to challenge the view that the revenue gained from trophy hunting contributes greatly to local communities. My understanding is that very little percolates down to them, and that is something I stand by.

I was also challenged on why I was not meeting the high commissioners whose letter appeared in the Times yesterday. They are joint signatories to a letter. One of them is the high commissioner for Tanzania. Tanzania is engaged in a bitter dispute with its own people, a Maasai tribe who are being forcibly evicted from their lands. They have even sought help by coming to Europe as a delegation and going to various European countries and the European Parliament. So if trophy hunting is of such benefit to local communities, I wonder why the Maasai are taking that action. I suggest that there are far better ways of dealing with the problems of cohabiting with animals, crops and so on. There is no time now, but there are plenty of opportunities and plenty of examples whereby careful, thoughtful management of land can get animals and people to cohabit.

The Earl of Caithness (Con)

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I was told on the question of the Maasai that it also involved ecotourism.

Baroness Fookes

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I have no knowledge of ecotourism. My concern was that they were being forcibly evicted from their land in a way they did not wish. Beyond that I cannot comment.

I can see that there will be no great meeting of minds on this one, so let us be quite frank about it. I believe that the Bill has a modest and useful part to play, and I am encouraged in this by a letter I received this morning from the former President of Botswana, Lieutenant-General Dr Seretse Khama Ian Khama. He writes: “My experience based on facts over 23 years as head of the Defence Force, as Vice-President and then as President, are that hunting contributes to the decline in wildlife populations as hunters in several cases also poached. They corrupted the system to obtain higher quotas of animals to shoot. They seriously undermined the gene pool of male lions, elephants and other species by only shooting the most magnificent species in each category”. He adds that he believes that photographic safaris contribute far more in the creation of employment, revenue streams and so forth. I accept that is not possible everywhere in Africa, but I think we should be looking far more to schemes which allow animals and people to cohabit.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

The Earl of Caithness (Con)

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My Lords, this Bill has very little effect in or on the UK, but it potentially has huge effect in every country of the world where trophy hunting takes place. As was made very clear at Second Reading, many of the reasons for this Bill are emotionally, rather than scientifically, based. The position of the proponents of the Bill is entrenched.

The Joint Nature Conservation Committee, better known as the JNCC, is a public body set up by Parliament that advises the Government and devolved Administrations on UK-wide and international nature conservation. It is very relevant to this Bill. On its website it states:

“As the UK’s statutory advisor on international conservation matters, we have a long history of experience in this area. We play a leading role in providing high-quality evidence and technical advice on the development and implementation of international nature conservation agreements, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity … the Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats … and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES)”.


Thus, the JNCC performs a similar role for the Government in respect of animals as does Kew in respect of plants. Crucially, it provides scientific advice to the UK CITES management authority, Defra, as to whether imports are likely to be detrimental to species survival or not. Its views are of the utmost importance and its advice should be followed, unless there is good reason not to. It has given independent advice to the Secretary of State, who has ignored it. Although she was warned it would happen, in doing so she has undermined its credibility and the standing of the UK in international conservation. If its own Secretary of State does not heed the advice of the JNCC, why should any other nature organisation in the world do so?

To me, the most striking pieces of independent advice and damning criticism that the JNCC has given the Secretary of State, and which she has ignored, are: Defra has no interest in the efficacy or the impact of legislation; the consultation on the Bill was expressly designed to create a political mandate for action; Defra and the UK will need to own the negative consequences of any ban, as well as taking the plaudits from those in favour; and an outright ban is likely to have unintended and perverse consequences for wildlife conservation and the viability of communities reliant on hunting revenue.

It is the last piece of advice by the JNCC that inspired this amendment. I am grateful to it, and to the freedom of information laws in this country which have allowed its advice to be made public. My amendment would require the Secretary of State to be advised each year about the unintended consequences of trophy hunting that the JNCC believes will occur, and to publish their judgment. If it is found that there are unintended consequences, Clause 1 would cease to have effect.

In moving Amendment 1, I confirm that I have no interest to declare. I do not own a hunting trophy and agree that some criticisms of trophy hunting, when it is not carried out to the highest standards, are justified. When it is badly managed, trophy hunting can be unsustainable. It can lead to local level overexploitation of some wildlife species and illegal killings. When it is badly managed, it can affect the social structure, behaviour and genetics of some species. It can affect other wildlife and tourism. Some benefits that should reach local communities do not, and it can engage in unethical practices which affect wildlife conservation. However, these criticisms do not apply to all trophy hunting and one should not throw the good out with the bad.

Let me mention some of the benefits of well-managed trophy hunting that justify my amendment. The most important is that as a result of trophy hunting, land is set aside for wildlife. The greatest pressure on wildlife is from human population growth, with its demand for food and the increasing expansion of agriculture and urban development in former wild areas. To avoid this pressure, the remaining wild areas must provide jobs, resources and other financial benefits.

In Tajikistan, trophy hunting conservation initiated by NGOs and the local community started in 2008, and now about 420,000 hectares of land is managed by local, traditional hunters from a community living an almost subsistence existence. Around 300 jobs have been created and 20,000 community members benefit indirectly. Sadly, all too often with human beings comes organised crime. That crime, poaching, has facilitated a dramatic decline of elephants and rhinoceros in parts of Africa and southern Asia, reversing decades of conservation achievements. Poaching is indiscriminate as to age, sex or species and in most cases leads to a painful and lingering death for the animal, whereas trophy hunting can be selective, with a clean and quick death. Poaching in the hunting areas of Tajikistan is now almost non-existent. The numbers of Asiatic ibex and markhor have increased and the decline in the population of snow leopards has been reversed. There is a much more stable food supply for the community.

In neighbouring Pakistan, in Gilgit-Baltistan, there are now more than 50 designated community conservation areas, covering more than 30% of the total land area—about 21,750 square kilometres. As a result of the community-based trophy hunting programme there, the population of Astore markhor, which is the national animal of the country, increased from 1,900 in 2012 to 2,800 in 2016. Similarly, in Balochistan, the population of Sulaiman markhor, which is an endemic sub-species that had a highly threatened status because of the Afghan war and the tribal area system—which had no solid implementation of wildlife laws—doubled between 2000 and 2011 to over 3,500. As a result, markhor were upgraded to near-threatened species by the IUCN in 2015. For anyone interested in conservation that is a remarkable success story, due to trophy hunting.

Trophy hunting helps to conserve over 1.3 million square kilometres of land in Africa, which is approximately the size of France, Germany and Spain combined. It is also a fifth more than the combined area of the national parks there. If these vast areas of land were not used for wildlife conservation, in all likelihood they would see alternative and less conservation-friendly land uses.

Another important benefit is that trophy hunting earns money for conservation. It provides economic benefits to government organisations, wildlife agencies, local communities and landowners. Trophy hunting is the major source of livelihood for the communities in the far-flung mountainous areas of Pakistan. Village-based conservancies have been formed there and the money obtained from trophy hunting has been distributed through them. Eighty per cent of the revenue generated through trophy hunting goes into local communities, most of it being spent on public welfare works, while 20% of the total revenue generated goes to government departments, which usually pay the local watchers and staff salaries from it. In the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan a total of $1.35 million has been generated between 2017 and 2020, while in Balochistan, since 1989, trophy hunting has brought in a total revenue of nearly $1.75 million, of which about $1.4 million has been given to the local communities, with almost $300,000 paid to the Government there. These are substantial sums of money, especially when one considers that the per capita income is less than $1,000.

In Mexico, bighorn sheep were reintroduced to the island of Tiburón in 1975. The island is owned and managed by the Seri Indians. When numbers grew above the carrying capacity for the island, the surplus stock was either licensed for trophy hunting or young animals were sold for translocation. Between 1998 and 2007 the Seri, who controlled the process, raised $3.2 million. The funds provided much-needed income locally and were reinvested in Seri community projects, the management of the bighorn sheep population, and the maintenance of the island in an undisturbed state.

In Canada, the polar bear hunts form part of a larger indigenous co-management system in which Inuit communities participate because they choose to. Legally, they can hunt what they want so the choice is very deliberate, because they believe in co-operation. The USA tried to help polar bears by reducing hunting through a trophy imports ban, but totally ignored the fact that local communities can legally harvest their quota of bears regardless. The result has been a considerable loss of income to the Inuit community in these small, remote areas, where there have been very limited ways of generating income.

For most hunters, bringing a trophy back is important. If one is prevented from doing that, either the hunt will not take place or, if it goes ahead, the hunter will not have to pay a trophy fee. In many places, the trophy fee makes up a significant part of the revenue and its loss would weaken the economic model of that area. Thus, the effect of the Bill will be to undermine, and perhaps stop, trophy hunting, with a consequential loss of revenue for conservation and local communities.

Lord Bellingham (Con)

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My noble friend talks about loss of income. One of the points put forward by proponents of the Bill is that that loss could be made up through ODA and the aid budgets of different countries. Does he agree that it would not be a good use of overseas aid to make up for the money that is going to these communities as a result of trophy hunting?

The Earl of Caithness (Con)

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My Lords, I totally agree with my noble friend on that point. One also needs to bear in mind that the local communities do not want aid. They want actually to be able to look after themselves, generate their own income and manage their populations without being given handouts by countries. They need help but do not need the type of money my noble friend has just referred to.

Another benefit from trophy hunting is that other wildlife that is not targeted for hunting is also protected, as are the local flora and fauna. I mentioned the trophy hunting of the markhor and ibex, and I add the argali sheep. Research has shown that, because those animals are now licensed to be shot, not only have their numbers increased but the wildlife population has also grown overall. This means a greater supply of food for the snow leopards and, consequently, more are found in hunting reserves in Tajikistan than outside them. Having a greater supply of food means there is less conflict with humans and their livestock. In hunting areas in Pakistan, the number of retaliatory killings of carnivores such as snow leopards, wolves, bears and foxes has been reduced, and tolerance has increased because of the economic benefits of trophy hunting.

Lord Swire (Con)

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I am extremely grateful to my noble friend for giving way. I entirely agree with him that this must be evidence-based legislation, and a lot of a misleading and mischievous false information has circulated around this subject for some time. Does he share my surprise that the Minister for Environment and Tourism in Botswana felt obliged to issue today a press release, which I think was circulated to all noble Lords, refuting the allegations made by the acting CEO of the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting, Dr Adam Cruise, concerning trophy hunting in Botswana? Is that not precisely the sort of misleading information—rather arrogant and high-handed to a country such as Botswana—that we should avoid?

The Earl of Caithness (Con)

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My noble friend is absolutely right, and I am sure that the source of that misinformation will not be a surprise to him or anyone else. It is a regular source of misinformation, and it was quite correctly shot down in flames by the Botswanan Government.

My noble friend raised an important point, on which I will end. We should use the Bill to improve conservation by getting rid of bad trophy hunting practices, while at the same time keeping the good and improving standards and welfare for all. I beg to move.

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)

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My Lords, I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, for bringing the Bill to the House and championing it. For the Green group, I express my strongest possible support for the Bill as it stands—and opposition to all the amendments.

I have been in your Lordships’ House for nearly four years, and I have to admit that I was rather surprised when I looked at the misnamed “grouping of amendments”. I have never seen this before: it is a list of 62 amendments in 62 groups. It is surprising that people who might perhaps regard themselves as champions of the traditions of the House have produced something that has not been seen in recent history—and I checked with someone who has been around the House for much longer. It could keep this House going for several days. Those who would champion the traditions and progress of the House appear to be heading in the opposite direction with this.

It is interesting to look at the gender balance of the names on the amendments: every single one is male. There is something to be said there. Only the other day, I had a conversation with a noble Lord about how it has often been put forward that, if we could hand over some countries in the global south to the women, and let the women run things, they would look different. That might be an interesting case study tonight.

Lord Robathan (Con)

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I understand what the noble Baroness is saying, but is she really implying that those people, such as myself, who put down amendments have no right to express an opinion on this, and that their views are valueless because they are not female?

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)

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I would love to see a true balance of gender in contributions in your Lordships’ House, as I would love to see a balance of membership in it. Of course, we are a long way from that point here and in the other place.

Something else that joins the people expressing views here tonight in terms of moving the amendments is that these are a small number of people who appear to think that hunting is a sport. It might be something like a sport if you gave the elephants, lions and birds guns but, until you do that, it is a slaughter—and that is what is being supported by the proposers of amendments to this very modest and heavily supported Bill.

It is noticeable that the amenders and the people sitting in the Chamber tonight are all largely sitting on the Benches on one side. But this was a 2019 Conservative manifesto promise—to ban imports of hunting trophies for endangered species. The intent for such legislation was in the Queen’s Speeches in 2019 and 2022. A 2022 public opinion survey showed that 80% of the British public support a ban on the imports of hunting trophies. Again, for those champions of tradition who say that we are the unelected House and that we should not stand in the way of the will of the House of Commons, the Commons passed this Bill with only minor amendments in March 2023.

I want to pick up just one point expressed by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, who spoke about closeness to nature. We are talking about imports of these trophies into the UK. Practices of indigenous people embedded in local landscapes is one thing; a UK dentist or aristocrat bringing back a trophy from Africa is something else again. So I ask everyone proposing amendments to this Bill to search their conscience to ask themselves what they are really doing in the Committee this evening.

Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)

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My Lords, I express my support for the amendment moved by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. I support it as the first amendment because it highlights straightaway the need to put conservation at the heart of this Bill—not simply disgust at the idea of trophy hunting, but conservation. I hope that the Government will take account of this and of the arguments that they will hear this evening on both sides and that they will be able to bring an improved Bill back to the House.

I was struck on reading back through the Second Reading speeches, which unfortunately I mostly missed, at how widespread the disgust is at this practice. I share it, as I have never shot anything or hunted anything, and I cannot imagine why people want to do this. But of course the point of this Bill is not to express disgust at this; it is to improve the prospects for animals that are being hunted. To do this, we have to look at the broader context. Particularly in Africa, we have a situation of huge rising demographic pressure and huge rising demand for the products of poaching, especially as those countries that believe in traditional medicine get richer, and the pressure on poaching for the ingredients for traditional medicine becomes more severe year by year. We can make sense of this Bill only by looking at that wider context and looking at whether it takes account of those pressures.

In the earlier debate, there was a certain amount of, “Well, we all pick our experts, don’t we?” Of course, we do all pick our experts to some extent—but I am sure that noble Lords would agree with me that this is not a reason not ever to listen to experts. I was extremely struck by the recent letter to the Times, signed by almost 200 different experts, who were very clear in their request that our Government

“should support an amendment whereby hunting trophies are permitted only if”—

I would say if and when—

“they demonstrate clear benefits to both conservation and local livelihoods, fulfilling the government’s manifesto commitment and helping, rather than harming, conservation.”.

I do not know whether any noble Lords have ever been involved in trying to put together a letter to a newspaper, but when you get one that is signed by almost 200 people from a very wide range of countries and associations, you have to feel that there must be some major arguments and major concerns that need addressing. Just to name some randomly, we have: Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, the Frankfurt Zoological Society and the charity Stop Rhino Poaching; and we have experts from Kew, Oxford and Cambridge. Those are experts that we need to take some account of.

I was also very struck that, in fact, our Government internally recognise that hunting is not necessarily at odds with conservation. In fact, the Minister made this point himself at Second Reading, pointing out that

“some of the richest wildlife habitats that we find anywhere on these islands are sustained through the activities of people who hunt for sport”.—[Official Report, 16/6/23; col. 2245.]

I want to emphasise the need to take account of expert opinion, and the need to look at the context within which trophy hunting takes place. This does not mean that there is no place for this Bill. As the noble Earl has said, there are nuanced arguments. But when there are so many people arguing that we need to amend and improve this Bill, we should take these recommendations seriously and make sure that conservation is at the heart of this Bill. I therefore support the amendment.

Lord Mancroft (Con)

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My Lords, I believe that most reasonable people, and certainly most noble Lords taking part today, support wholeheartedly the objective of conservation that the noble Baroness was just talking about. We always want to protect our shrinking wildlife on this planet, so it is always helpful to start on the areas on which we agree, and that is one of them. But the perception on which this Bill is based is that a number of the world’s most endangered and iconic species are threatened with extinction by excessive hunting, and that by prohibiting the importation of trophies taken from these animals we will set an example to other countries and, perhaps more importantly, prevent the decline in the numbers of those species.

The argument on the other side is that the income derived from hunting for these trophies—the trophies themselves do not matter, of course—improves conservation in a number of different ways. The most obvious way—and I think that my noble friend Lord Caithness mentioned it—is that, in hunting areas, the habitat is being protected. That is the most important thing, because it is loss of habitat that is the greatest threat to wildlife. On the other side of the coin, we have learned in the course of this Bill that trophy hunting is not actually a threat to any endangered species at all—it is other things that threaten them, but not trophy hunting. None of the animals that would be covered in the two annexes to which this Bill will apply when it becomes an Act are at all threatened in any way, shape or form by trophy hunting. They are threatened by other things, the most important of which is loss of habitat; that is, to some degree or another that is open to debate, protected by trophy hunting. If you have a concession, a piece of land on which you are conducting your hunting business, you are obviously going to protect it because otherwise it damages your business. That is widely demonstrated.

It is often said that this House has an expert on almost every subject. I have to confess that I am not an expert on the subject before us this evening, although I have some experience of conservation here in the United Kingdom, and I have a passion for the wilder parts of the world, some of which I visited, and the creatures that live there. I have never shot game in Africa or in other parts of the world—the Far East, or whatever—so I, too, have no direct interest to declare in this Bill.

It is clear that opinion is divided in the Committee, as it is everywhere, on which side of the argument one falls—and that is quite normal. What is interesting to me, as the noble Baroness touched on, is what has happened during the course of the passage of this Bill, in its passage to the other place and in the several months since it came here first in June—rather a long time ago. I have been involved in a lot of Private Members’ Bills over the past 35 years that I have been in this House, and I cannot remember any on which such an extraordinary deluge of information has been poured on our heads and through our letterboxes. Of course, some of it is very good and some of it is not so good—that is a fact of life.

We have had an extraordinary amount of high-quality information provided by academics. Two speakers have already referred to the letter from academics that appeared in a newspaper. I have tried to get letters into newspapers, and it is very unusual to do so. Getting 10 Peers to sign one brings herding cats to mind, so getting 150 academics from across the world—which must also be a bit like herding cats—to sign a letter is extraordinary. These were not just any old people. It is a pretty impressive list. I do not remember it happening before.

I also do not remember another piece of legislation that does not really affect this country at all but does affect others. The way some people speak, you would think that hunting is a minority activity. Actually, 99% of the countries in the world have hunting; those that do not are the minority. It is normal in most parts of the world and cultures. I have never come across a situation where more affected countries have been so vociferous in their opposition to a Bill that affects them. I do not remember the British Government—although I am sure there is a case of it—enacting a piece of legislation like this, which has an economic, social and cultural effect on other countries, without asking or meeting them and completely ignoring their views. It is quite extraordinary.

The countries most affected by this—the southern African countries that have hunting—have, like the academics, been unanimous in their opposition. Two groups took the trouble to get on an aeroplane and come over here. Can noble Lords imagine the Minister jumping on a plane because of something happening in the South African Parliament and dealing with a group there? We had a Minister, heads of wildlife departments and an MP come to this House because they were so horrified by what would happen. The evidence we were given was extraordinary, detailed and backed by hard, peer-reviewed research.

One thing that affected me most was that one of the people who came here, an MP from a constituency in Botswana that I could not begin to pronounce, on the edge of the Okavango, told us: “It seems to me that British parliamentarians care more about animals than they do about our people. I go to funerals of my constituents who are killed because they live alongside wildlife. Their cattle are killed and their crops are destroyed. Four or five constituents every year, usually children on their way to school, are killed by animals”. That is a fact of life when humans live alongside wildlife.

We have debates about rewilding in this country—sometimes very sensible and sometimes not quite so sensible—in which people say that we do not want wolves in England because they are too big and might kill our sheep and dogs. It is quite right that we have those impassioned arguments, but can you imagine saying to someone in Surrey, “We’re going to put a couple of prides of lions outside Esher and a herd of buffalo in the Surrey Hills”? They would not be very happy about it. These people live alongside these animals all the time. This MP was saying that it looked like we cared more about the animals that we do not have to live with than his constituents who do. We need to take that very seriously.

As my noble friend has said, trophy hunting is a major force for conservation. The 1.3 million square kilometres in Africa is one-fifth more land than all the national parks combined. We need to think carefully, because this is big stuff. Trophy hunters obviously want to continue hunting, so they preserve their quarry in those areas and actively protect the habitats and other related animals around. More importantly, the communities are therefore incentivised, economically and in other ways, to accept the animals, which are undoubtedly difficult to live with, and prevent poaching. If they have no value to those people, if they are a negative and not a positive, how on earth can we expect them to protect them? Surely, the object of this Bill is to protect them, so we need to incentivise those people. Trophy hunting is one of the main ways at the moment to do that.

Trophies can account for up to 50% of the revenue derived from hunting, as I think my noble friend mentioned. If you remove the ability to take away the trophy, you take 50% of the income away, for no real gain to anybody. After all, trophies in themselves are not important. What matters is how we manage the wildlife and the consequences to them, not the trophy. Although we have been told that you do not really need hunting and could replace it with photo tourism, we need to be clear that the overwhelming evidence we have received is this: of course you can increase photo tourism, but that will not work in the areas in which there is trophy hunting, because they are different. There is not the infrastructure and they are not the sort of places that are good for photographic tourism anyway. It simply will not work. We were told that not just once or twice but by all the evidence we received, which was detailed and explained why.

The evidence we received on the other side of the coin, which said that you could do tourism there and do not need trophy hunting, gave no specific examples at all. I found it extraordinary that I got from the JNCC—many of your Lordships will have too—nine detailed pieces of peer-reviewed research demonstrating where trophy hunting occurs, how and why it is important and the numbers, while we did not receive a single piece of specific evidence going the other way that we could rely on.

Welfare has come up in this debate. This is not a welfare Bill, but a conservation one. It is important to note that the two are different subjects. I am not a naturalist or an expert in these things, but I can give noble Lords a fact which I know to be completely true: 100% of wild animals will die. Some 99% of them will die of injury, illness, starvation, lack of water, competition with others and being predated upon—not a very nice one—while probably less than 0.01%, a tiny number, will be killed by trophy hunting.

I can also assure noble Lords that, of all the deaths that wild animals undergo, probably the one with the least welfare concerns is to be shot by a bullet. No wild animals die in their beds or have palliative care. None is surrounded by its relatives when it leaves this planet. They all die nasty, painful and long-suffering deaths. That is what nature does. The only ones that have a short, quick death are those that are hunted. A welfarist wanting to improve the welfare of animals—which is not the point of this Bill—cannot object to this on those grounds. I see the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, shaking her head, but this is a fact. If she thinks I have got something wrong, I invite her to come in on it, because this is pretty factual.

I said at the outset that we cannot all be experts on every subject that comes before this House, although some noble Lords seem to think they are from the frequency with which they bend our ears. We must therefore rely, to a certain extent, on the information we are given. We have to decide, sift it and look at the reliability of its sources. As I have said, I have been extremely impressed by the evidence that has come to us supporting the conservation points of this Bill and making it clear that, as drafted, it does not have the conservation benefits we would want.

Lord Bellingham (Con)

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Before the noble Lord moves on, will he also reflect on one point? We have indeed, as he rightly pointed out, been inundated with extremely interesting and very knowledgeable briefings from both sides of the argument. The overwhelming conclusion of those people who are concerned about the Bill, do not want to stop it in its tracks but want to improve it, is that they feel very strongly indeed that, with the right amendments, the Bill could in fact be fit for purpose and could command widespread support, particularly among those countries in southern Africa that he referred to.

Lord Mancroft (Con)

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I am grateful to my noble friend. He is absolutely right: all those countries that we have all had letters from said that they would support the Bill if it had a proper conservation amendment in it, as is on the Order Paper today. We have had fascinating information. To me, the most fascinating information—I think it has already been referred to—was the stuff from the JNCC, the Government’s official adviser on conservation. It was consulted over a period of time by a number of Ministers as the Bill was formed over a period of years, drafted and redrafted. I have seen, and I am sure that your Lordships have, too, lots of advice from different committees, groups and people to Ministers. I do not think I have ever seen a more categorically strong piece of advice from a government advisory body saying, “No, this Bill as you have drafted it at the moment will have severe conservation problems and deficits”.

If we want the Bill to be a good model of conservation and to help the wildlife we all want to help, it needs to have in it certain measures, and those measures are in an amendment of mine that we will look at later this evening: Amendment 34. In the meantime, Amendment 1 from my noble friend Lord Caithness is very interesting because it would give the Secretary of State the ability to look in advance at what the results are going to be. It would give him or her a duty to do that and to see whether the Bill is going to do the good that some claim it will or the harm that others claim. As such, I would be very happy to support my noble friend’s amendment.

Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP)

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My Lords, as we move through the early stages of this debate, I think it is important, first, that collectively, as a House, we recognise that there is a wide range of opinions not simply within this House but without it. I think it is right that we conduct this debate in a tone and a manner that does not denigrate anyone’s opinion. I think that what is held is held very passionately by a number of people and that both the movers and the opponents of the amendments are doing so in a very sincere manner.

I take exception particularly to one thing that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, said: I think that every Member of this House has the complete right, irrespective of gender, to put forward whatever they feel to be in the best interests of legislation and to contribute to this debate. It will not come as a great surprise that I do not intend to undergo a course of gender reassignment or self-identification. As a DUP Peer, I think, to be fair, we have a reputation: we are not regarded as a particularly woke bunch, or indeed as people who would be naturally inclined to a left of centre approach to things. It therefore may come as a bit of a surprise that this may be the first time in my number of months in this House that I find myself, not necessarily in terms of tone but in terms of content, largely in agreement with the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and commending the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, for her actions in bringing this forward.

There will be others who speak in this debate who come with a greater level of expertise, and we can all trade statistics and representations that have been made to us. I have to say that I think the case for this amendment and from some of the opponents of the Bill has been heavily oversold. Trophy hunting does not create, as the impression has been given, some great utopia for society that will cure all our ills. It seems from the supporters of this amendment to simultaneously both preserve the ancien régime of indigenous peoples while at the same time being the principal driver of social progress within these countries: it seems to be the close correlation, if not the main motivation, behind female emancipation and education. If people are making the case for this amendment, it is important that it is not oversold.

I believe that trophy hunting makes an economic contribution to these countries, but there are some statistics that suggest that this is fairly minimal. As for the idea that this is being done as some form of benevolent social welfare for some of the residents, we know that, at the end of the day, for those on the ground this is making a very small contribution. The trickle-down effect is very limited. The range of these amendments would make the Bill much more complex and open to legal challenge than would otherwise be the case and create a regime which would enhance the level of uncertainty within the Bill.

I appreciate that the job, particularly in Committee, is to see what improvements can be made within the Bill. I have to say that, generally speaking—and I do not want to prejudice any of the arguments that will be made—it would appear that most of these amendments come from people who are vehement opponents of the Bill. That is a perfectly legitimate position, but let us not pretend that the intention of the amendments is particularly to improve the Bill. I think their impact would be to create the death by a thousand cuts of the Bill and to create a range of loopholes across the Bill that that would fundamentally weaken its purpose.

While I mention loopholes, I have not put down an amendment, but it may be useful if the Minister, whenever he is summing up towards the end, could deal with one loophole in the Bill that I think needs to be closed. In another place, my colleagues raised the issue of why Northern Ireland was excluded from the Bill. The argument was made that it would be in some way incompatible with the single market, to which Northern Ireland is apparently still subject. Leaving aside constitutional issues that I have some concerns about, I have to say that as an argument there has been a level of misinformation there. Irrespective of whether you are in favour or against these amendments, the single market is not an excuse for Northern Ireland’s exclusion, as four countries within the EU have either enacted very similar legislation or are in the process of doing so. So I urge the Government to consider this again.

For me—this may be a simplistic approach—this is about the signal that we send out as a civilised nation. Trophy hunting and taking back those trophies to the United Kingdom is something that is no longer part, if it ever was, of a virtuous, civilised nation. Therefore, I urge the Committee not only to reject this amendment but to oppose the amendments throughout the Bill, which will not necessarily improve the Bill but will act as a device, bit by bit, to water it down.

Lord Swire (Con)

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My Lords, I must take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Weir, because I do not think that these amendments that some of us are proposing this evening are designed to wreck the Bill. On the contrary, the conversations I have had with my colleagues, who take this issue very seriously, are all about improving the Bill, which is why I will support the amendment of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. I think there is a better amendment coming from the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, but I think this is a good amendment and this is the role of the second Chamber.

Without giving too much away, some of us have been lobbied quite hard over the past few days about the Bill and told, for instance, in that famous Whips’ argument, “If you don’t accept this, you will get something much worse”. Well, if we accepted that as a serious argument, there would be no point in having this revising Chamber at all: we would just accept all bad legislation coming from the other place and roll over and have our tummies tickled. We might as well stay away. The point of this House, if it is to have a point at all, is to examine legislation, reject bad legislation and, where necessary and feasible, improve the legislation. So, I utterly reject the noble Lord’s comment that this is designed to wreck the Bill.

I have various declarations to make. My first declaration is that I have no desire to shoot an animal in Africa, nor to bring a trophy home. In fact, I believe that if my wife were to wake up in the morning and find a kudu head at the end of the bed, she might react in the same way as if it were the severed head of a horse, to use an analogy from a film—which is quite a dangerous thing to do and was recently done rather poorly by President Biden.

However, the point is not whether I want to import trophies here from Africa or elsewhere. I set aside my own personal views and want to look at the legislation as it stands. The other two declarations I should make is, first, that I consider the Minister to be a close friend of mine—I do not know whether he will consider me in the same light after this—and I am afraid that for him it is a question of the cab rank principle of KCs that he has to accept whatever brief is coming his way. However, he is nothing but a serious conservationist, and I slightly wonder what is going through his mind privately—but we will not dwell on his grief: he will do this job in the entirely professional way that he handles so much of his brief, which seems to be a brief without beginning and without end.

However, the second and more serious point I want to make—this is a proper declaration—is that I am the deputy chairman of the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council, which is designed to grow intra-Commonwealth trade. We heard in the previous Statement about the rise of Africa and how the African Union will now be represented at the G20, and Africa is coming of age. Everyone is looking at Africa. Hopefully, the British Government and our allies will look a bit more closely and try to fill the void that has been left by some countries to stop the Wagner Group, China and others exploiting that magnificent continent.

I am therefore very conscious of the role of the Commonwealth and of the perception that in some way the Commonwealth is a hangover from colonialism and the British Empire. Manifestly it is not; you only have to look at the most recent accession countries to the Commonwealth to see that they have absolutely no historic connection with this country whatever. However, it is there, and we should accept that there is that lingering suspicion. I am therefore enormously sensitive and immediately alert to the possibility that anything we say or do in this country about developing countries, particularly in Africa, could be conceived or misconceived as some form of neocolonialism. I know there is a temptation, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, from the other side tried to paint this as an all-boys club gathering—I was rather amused that the next, excellent speaker was the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, which put paid to that rather cheap accusation.

The point is that Africa is watching. As the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, said, we had a delegation of Ministers from some African countries. As a Minister I certainly would never have gone to an African country in the same way they came here to make these points. They came all this way to talk about what they wanted to do in their own communities, with their own experiences, and not the great principle of whether trophy hunting is morally right or repellent—which some people feel, and I absolutely accept that—but what it means to their local livelihoods and their local population. We should factor that in.

It makes me feel extremely uncomfortable that here we are, sitting on our well-upholstered behinds in the lovely gilt and leather confines of the House of Lords, telling people in Africa, in this century, in this day and age, how they should go about making their living. What an appalling idea that we could think that we could replace what they are trying to do by making this illegal, destroying that part of their livelihood and saying that we will replace it with aid. That is not what aid is meant for. It is not meant to make populations dependent; it is meant to liberate people, to encourage them to get up, do their own thing to the best of their ability and trade their way out of poverty. I will never vote for anything in this House which has an adverse effect on the livelihoods of people in those countries. We should think very carefully before we start telling those people what they should be doing.

Lord Turnbull (CB)

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My Lords, I am sorry that I was not able to speak at Second Reading; I found out that it was scheduled only after the speakers’ list had closed. However, I have read the Hansard for that debate.

Like others, I am now struggling to find a rationale for choosing which amendments to support and which to oppose. This is difficult, as the Bill is flawed. Its stated aim, found in the impact assessment, is

“to ensure that imports of hunting trophies to the UK are not placing additional pressure on species of conservation concern”.

This muddles up two completely different objectives, the promotion of conservation and limiting import of trophies. The link between the two is tenuous. Acting on trophies will do precious little to promote conservation. As the Bill applies only to imports into the UK, it will do nothing to curb the appetite of the legendary Minnesota dentist.

The Earl of Erroll (CB)

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My Lords, funnily enough, that is a very good note on which to start. I will come to the specific amendment in half a second. But one of the things people do not realise is that the whole thing about trophy hunting—by the way, I do not go in for it at all, but I know something about herd management from deer in Scotland; not that I manage myself, but I know people who do—is that you do not want to shoot a young male coming along because it has a magnificent pelt. You want it to develop into a full-blooded animal, and when it is just past its prime that is when you cull it, for exactly that reason: the dynamics of the crotchety old male which is causing disruption. The noble Lord is absolutely right. If you are managing the whole thing properly to improve whatever it is people wish to hunt, it will be done in a much better and more sustainable way for nature as well.

It comes back to what the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, said. The essential message is financial incentive. This is what I got from the delegates from Africa who came over, whom I also met. They want to be able to manage these things in order to get the funding, and incentive and local buy-in from the low-level population to support this in order to get the conservation side right. That is the trouble: it is all very well pouring aid in from the top, but sometimes it does not get anywhere near the bottom. It is much better to have stuff coming in to give the ordinary people on the ground an incentive to try to work in an environmental and conservation way. The objective is to conserve properly: you get your herd profiles right and then you do some hunting.

The reason this amendment is so important is that it is about the unintended and perverse consequences. The Bill says that you cannot import trophies

“on behalf of the hunter”,

meaning the person who killed the thing. If you think about it, if you are managing a herd, you will have deaths at all age profiles in the herd, and people are going to hunt for meat. Many of the animals that have been taken out for meat will have horns and other bits that are useful for creating mementos for tourists. I should love some reassurance that this is not banning the production of tourist mementos which are not trophies—they are not the thing that the person paid a fortune to go to kill, but what you might call by-products of the results of it. I am afraid you will have culling going on in the herd, and there will also be animals that die, so why cannot their body parts be made useful, for greater sustainable use?

These are not plastics, poisoning the planet; they are naturally produced things. It will be much better to make all sorts of products and ornamental things from them than from fossil fuels. If one of the unintended consequences of the Bill is that it prevents all use of all animal body parts, it really should be examined again. We are just wasting a whole natural resource there, and I am a great believer that we should be using natural products, not artificially produced plastic products, which are killing the planet.

The main thing is that we have to get the financial incentives in the right place, to incentivise at the bottom level, and we also need to use all the animal stuff. This great fiction that people just go out to shoot a few trophies and that these will be animals in their prime is not really how it should work.

Lord Lucas (Con)

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My Lords, I can see that this could be a very constructive Bill, particularly if we got back to our manifesto promises—to refer to what the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, said. The manifesto pledge was to ban imports from trophy hunting of endangered animals and, when we come to my Amendment 4, that is something I will enlarge on. This Bill goes a great deal further than that and, in doing so, as my noble friend Lord Swire said, it starts to create a very inappropriate relationship with the Governments of countries where trophy hunting takes place. We ought to be working with these countries to help them conserve the wildlife which they have—and which we would be terrified to have.

We in this country cannot even contemplate the return of the lynx, never mind the wolf. As for bears, certainly not, although they used to live here—never, not allowed. The pigs that escaped in the great storm are relentlessly persecuted. We have no concept of what we are asking these people to do in living alongside elephants, hippopotamus and rhinoceros, let alone lions and the other big predators. We should have such respect for and understanding of them, and we should be working really closely with them to enable that symbiosis to continue. If they are telling us that trophy hunting is part of that, we can ask them how they can grow through this and go beyond that, as well as offer real support in getting photographic tourism going and working on how we bring that idea back to the UK—not that it is the easiest, when we are all being told that we cannot fly any more. It ought to be a process where we are working closely with African Governments, not having them come here to protest what we are doing. This ought to be a process we are in together.

Lord Bellingham (Con)

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Would my noble friend reflect on one specific point around all this? When we started out on this Bill, all those months ago, I do not think any of us believed for one moment that the importation into this country of, I think, two lions’ heads a year and 115 trophies a year would give rise to so much interest and concern from those countries in southern Africa that he mentions. Surely now they have made their point so clearly and powerfully, we should really take that on board, and therefore consider the amendments they support to improve the Bill.

Lord Lucas (Con)

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I would have thought so.

We need to be rational about conservation. Conservation often involves killing. It is one of the reasons why the RSPB is not as successful as it should be in preserving wildlife; it is not good at controlling predators. Humans create predators—foxes live in towns, and the number of crows is enormously increased as a result of human activity. Together, they make wildlife extremely difficult to maintain, unless you do something about the predators.

We should understand that our nature as hunters and the role that we have taken on as the top predator carry with them responsibilities. In looking at what is going on in a community in Africa with a lot of wildlife, if we do not collaborate in providing it with income—something that makes that symbiosis profitable for them—that community will choose a different balance. That balance will be the balance we have chosen for ourselves here: “Let’s not have anything that causes us inconvenience”. We here are the example of what we wish Africa to become, as symbolised in this Bill. We want wildlife eliminated, or at least restrained only to parks, and not part of people’s lives.

We should revise our thinking on this and, as my noble friend says, go back to our friends in Africa, work out how we can do this well and support what they are doing. If that involves trophy hunting, and that results in good conservation, that is something we should support for as long as it is necessary—though I have not, and never hope to, taken part in it myself.

Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)

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My Lords, we have been debating this amendment for some considerable time. There is a concern that we will not be able to get to the amendment with the real meat in it, so I will do my bit now.

I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, on her stamina and determination to do everything she can to protect animals from cruelty, harm and death no matter where they live. She has a reputation for being a doughty campaigner and is to be congratulated on agreeing to sponsor this Bill through the Lords. I have no interests to declare. I am not an animal expert but I have read the briefings.

This is a Bill that has government support. Originally, the measures would have been in the kept animals Bill, which was abandoned in favour of introducing various measures through Private Members’ Bills. This should have shortened the time taken to get measures on to the statute book. The glue traps Bill in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, was one such Bill; the Sharks Fin Bill in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, was another.

I apologise for not being present at Second Reading due to other commitments, but my noble friend Lord Rennard covered the ground very thoroughly at the time. Although not perfect, this Bill is short and to the point and bans the import into Great Britain of a trophy from an endangered animal that has been hunted. This trophy can be any part or derivative of an endangered animal that has been obtained by hunting.

We on the Liberal Democrat Benches fully support the aims and objectives of this Bill, as I believe do the Labour Benches. However, from the number of amendments that have been tabled, it is obvious that this Bill does not have unanimous support on the Government Benches. But it does have overall support across the whole House, as the hunting of wild game animals, while a sport that attracts those with unlimited resources to spend on their pursuits, is abhorrent to the vast majority of the Chamber and the general public.

Turning to Amendment 1, the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, gave—at length and very knowledgeably—the rationale for his amendment, which would in effect ensure that the Bill is not able to progress. The effect of this amendment is, first, to grant the Secretary of State alone the power to decide whether a legal prohibition applies that is beyond the scope of the proposed prohibition, which is intended to be a blanket ban. Secondly, the proposal is not a standard clause retained in conservation or animal welfare legislation. On that basis, we do not support this amendment.

I regret and apologise for the fact that I am not able to stay until the end of this evening’s business, which I suspect will be long-winded and repetitious. What we have before us this evening is a Minister of great integrity, knowledge and compassion alongside four female Members of the House from different political parties all attempting, on behalf of their parties, to enable the aims and objectives of this Bill to move towards ending animal trophy hunting by preventing the importation of those trophies into Great Britain.

I regret to say that, ranged on the other side, we have some of the landed gentry of the country—mostly hereditary Peers—doing their utmost to filibuster and talk the Bill out. They are entitled to express their views, of course. I generally have great regard for the contribution made to the work of this Chamber by the hereditary Peers, but I fear that, this evening, they will not do their reputation among their colleagues or the public at large any favours at all. Despite the words of the noble Lord, Lord Swire, the opposers of this Bill will take the opportunity this evening to attempt to kill it off by filibustering to ensure that there is no Report stage due to a shortage of time. They do this because they know that if the Bill got to Report, none of their amendments would be passed and they would be roundly defeated.

This tactic was used to talk out the hereditary peers by-elections Bill, despite what the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, said, and came mostly from a section of the Conservative Benches. The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, would have us believe that trophy hunting is of great benefit to all, including the animals. I take completely the point about conservation and economics but the view of the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, that the trophies themselves do not matter at all is breathtaking.

The hunting trophies Bill was in the Conservative 2019 manifesto. Although supporting the Conservative manifesto is not my main aim in life, I and my colleagues do support this Private Member’s Bill and are passionate about protecting endangered wild animals from the revolting practice of being killed for their body parts. In whatever way those opposing this Bill may argue their case, they are unlikely to get support from the Liberal Democrat Benches.

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)

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My Lords, after that speech, I should begin by declaring a few non-interests. I am not a hereditary Peer. I am not a landowner unless you count a small garden about half the size of this Chamber on the Hampshire/Berkshire border. I am not a trophy hunter, nor do I oppose the import of all trophies.

However, I speak in support of my noble friend Lord Caithness’s amendment. I go back to where he started, namely with the markhor—that is, Capra falconeri, the screw-horned goat that is the national animal of Pakistan. Last year, I was lucky enough to see the extraordinary landscapes where these animals live in Baltistan, Chitral and Hunza; there are also isolated pockets of them in Afghanistan and India. In fact, they were thought to be extinct in India as recently as the 1990s and were in the most extreme category of UN extinction watch as recently as the end of the last century—that is, until their numbers were revived through the carefully targeted sale of a very small number of hunting licences, the revenue from which is reserved to local communities. Those communities then have every incentive to preserve habitats and are in effect turned into so many gamekeepers that they ensure that no animals except the elderly, post-reproductive males marked for culling are in danger. The result of that change is that the markhor has rebounded immensely.

It is not the case that trophy hunting is always a tool of conservation. That is why I say that I am not against the whole concept, but I want to speak in favour of the distinction that this amendment makes. Let me give an obvious example from the other side. There is no evidence that the ban on whale hunting has had a detrimental effect. On the contrary, the recovery of whale numbers has been one of the unremarked miracles of the past couple of decades. We have seen an amazing bounce-back in the number of humpbacks and bowheads although, sadly, we have not yet seen the same for blue or gray whales.

Even there, there is a habitat aspect to things. A lot of whales are killed because they swallow fishing gear that has been discarded or get in clashes with vessels. However, I am not going to argue—I do not think that anyone else will—that a hunting ban there is ineffective or that a trophy ban would make a difference but, where we are talking about habitats, it is vital to give local people an incentive to conserve that habitat. I cannot put it better than my noble friend Lord Lucas just did: it is easy for us to be sentimental at a distance about lions, tigers, elephants and so on because we do not have to live next to them. Without any incentive to preserve their numbers, local people will naturally see them as, at the very least, competitors for resources but also as a danger. Without the right incentives, they will have every reason to hunt them to extinction, as I am afraid human populations have done to large mammals on every continent going back to our hunter/gatherer days.

This amendment draws a distinction, giving the Secretary of State a last-ditch power to decide where there would be an unintended consequence for conservation. By the way, I would love to have a general power to stop unintended consequences of legislation. Almost always you get the most unintended consequences from Bills that have been passed in response to some public campaign. People have not thought through all the implications and we hear exactly the arguments that we are hearing tonight, that the public demand this law. If you are presented with, as a general proposition, the idea that we should not kill magnificent animals, then of course, everyone will agree with that—I would, and I hope that everyone would. However, we are looking at ways in which to modify this legislation so as not to have a detrimental effect on conservation.

I do not want to be accused of filibustering, so I will keep this very brief and close by saying that, as I understand it, that is precisely the reason why we exist here as a second Chamber. What function do we have if not to act as a break on the necessary radicalism of the popularly elected House? Being here, we have the privilege to look beyond the headlines and to consider in full the implications and the potential unintended consequences of laws that have been drafted in a knee-jerk way. This legislation is precisely an example of such lawmaking. Therefore, it seems to me the proper role of this Chamber to approve it and to take out the parts of it that would have the most harmful impacts.

Lord Trees (CB)

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My Lords, we have heard some very strong speeches, though many have had a rather tenuous connection with any particular amendment. I and others would like to speak to Amendment 34, which is much the most important and seeks to strengthen this Bill, if that might be allowed.

Lord Harlech (Con)

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I understand the noble Lord’s point about wanting to speak to a specific amendment, but he will have to wait until we get to the group that Amendment 34 is in.

Lord Trees (CB)

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I am sorry, but there is no grouping, is there?

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)

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Every amendment is in a group.

Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)

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Can I invite the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, to support our amendments tomorrow, since he clearly laid out what this House does? Some amendments tomorrow exactly cover the kinds of issues that he was talking about.

Clearly, the Bill deals with a very passionately felt issue, with strong views on both sides of the argument. That has come across today in Committee and previously. The debate was introduced by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, with his Amendment 1. However, before referring to that, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, for introducing this Private Member’s Bill and for her excellent introduction at Second Reading. We offer our strong support to this Bill. I remind noble Lords that the ban which has been debated has widespread public support and clear cross-party support in Parliament.

There are many amendments in front of us today, but our concern around Amendment 1 is that the effect of the noble Earl’s proposal would be to grant to the Secretary of State alone the power to decide whether a legal prohibition applies, where it is within scope. We do not think that is the correct way to go forward with any legislation. We have said with regard to many Bills that the strong Henry VIII powers being given specifically to Secretaries of State is not how to go forward with legislation. Also, the proposal is not a standard clause retained within conservation or animal welfare legislation, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, mentioned. That is specifically why we would not support Amendment 1.

The noble Lord, Lord Trees, tried to speak to Amendment 34. I would like to make a point about the groupings. Degrouping every amendment from the proposed government groupings to deliberately frustrate the progress of this Bill is pretty poor and undermines a manifesto commitment of the party that those noble Lords say that they support. They are part of this Government. They sit on the Government Benches. This is pretty poor behaviour on their part, and I want to put that on the record.

Baroness Fookes (Con)

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My Lords, we have already spent a considerable time on this first amendment. I take what I think is a minority view about the purpose of Committee: it is to look, in detail, at amendments to improve a Bill or reject various parts of it, as the case may be. Speeches should be closely argued on the amendment concerned, or the amendments if they are grouped, and they should be concise. The time spent on this amendment has been miniscule in comparison with the time spent on what were, in effect, Second Reading speeches. I am sorry, but I deplore that as a Committee issue.

I turn then to the actual amendment. It gives the Secretary of State the requirement, not just once but each year, to make

“a statement in writing to the effect that, in the Secretary of State’s view, its operation will not cause unintended and perverse consequences for wildlife conservation”.

I once chaired the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, and I was always very wary of giving the Government, Secretaries of State or anybody else unfettered discretion to do things. This seems to me to fall into that category, because there is not even a whiff of parliamentary scrutiny. For that reason, I am very much opposed to this and, as I wish to be concise, I will sit down and leave the Minister to speak.

The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)

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My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, for tabling and moving this amendment, and the other Peers who have proposed amendments. However, I must say that the Government are disappointed that the House has not thus far been able to agree a way forward for this important legislation. My experience is that there is always a deal to be done, and I hope we may yet find some way forward. I was interested to hear the words of the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, whose experience in these matters is hugely valued. I will take up any opportunity to find a way forward.

Lord Mancroft (Con)

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I thank my noble friend for giving way; I am most grateful. I too would like to have found a way forward, which is why I made clear what my proposal was on 16 June at Second Reading. I am very sad that my noble friend Lady Fookes has declined to discuss it with me. I asked on three occasions, but she felt she could not—that is her right, of course. I also rather regret that over two and a half months, the first squeak I heard out of the Government was last week, and no proposal or ability to find common ground was offered. The only direct approach I had was yesterday, 24 hours before Committee. That is no way to find agreement; nevertheless, my door is open and I look forward to agreement, because most of my noble friends here do not wish to kill this Bill. We would like to see a good Bill on the statute book.

Lord Benyon (Con)

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I thank my noble friend and understand the point he makes. Like other noble Lords, I commend my noble friend Lady Fookes for her commitment to this Bill and her hard work to support it.

I shall set out the Government’s position on the Bill and speak to the issues raised by a number of amendments. First, as noble Lords will know, the Bill before us would deliver our manifesto commitment to ban the import of hunting trophies from endangered animals. I recognise that this is a controversial proposal in this House, and I accept that there is a range of views and evidence on trophy hunting, including that it can be beneficial in conservation terms and for local livelihoods if well managed. The Government’s position, having listened to a number of different sides and gone through all the options, is that an import ban is the best way forward. An import ban would address the public’s concern about imports of hunting trophies, delivering a policy that is clear, comprehensive and practical to implement and enforce.

This is why we have a problem with the so-called “smart ban” amendments put forward, such as Amendment 14, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton of Epsom and the noble Earl, Lord Caithness; Amendment 19A, tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness; Amendment 34, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft; Amendment 39, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas; Amendment 40, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Robathan; and Amendment 41, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Bellingham and Lord Roborough. What is being proposed in those amendments is effectively a licensing system based on criteria about conservation impact or wildlife management practices and regulations. That is, broadly speaking, what we already have in place. The effect of these amendments would be to negate the purpose of the Bill.

There are a great number of amendments which deal with items in scope of the ban, concerning changes to the definition of a hunting trophy or the species, items or conditions under which a hunting trophy would be subject to the ban. This includes Amendments 3 to 7, 9, 10, 12, 15 to 18, 20 to 28, 31 to 33 and 35 to 38, in the names of the noble Earls, Lord Leicester and Lord Caithness, the noble Lords, Lord Lucas, Lord Hamilton, Lord Swire, Lord Robathan, Lord Reay, Lord Howard of Rising and Lord Roborough, and the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard.

The definition of a hunting trophy used in the Bill, in Clause 1, is consistent with the definition agreed by CITES and is already used by our authorities for CITES controls. Our current controls would continue for imports that are not hunting trophies. There is already provision in the Bill for consideration of imports for scientific or educational purposes, for example for the import of items for personal use that were not obtained through hunting. The scope of species is clear and comprehensive. Annexes A and B of our wildlife trade regulations implement appendices 1 and 2 of CITES in Great Britain. They cover species at risk from international trade, including elephants, giraffes, rhinos, big cats, bears, primates and hippos.

The Earl of Caithness (Con)

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My Lords, I would like to thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate, and I thank the many noble Lords for their support for my amendment.

I was particularly interested in the speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Weir of Ballyholme, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, because I do not think that either of them actually listened to what I said. They came with pre-prepared speeches—the usual claptrap they produce when it comes to trophy hunting. I mentioned all the disadvantages of trophy hunting and said that I was trying to improve the conservation of animals. If the noble Lord does not like my examples, well, I am sorry, but at least he has not challenged the efficacy of them. I think that would have been a more helpful and constructive approach than just spieling out the usual generalisations, which we have become use to accepting from the proponents of the Bill.

My noble friend Lady Fookes gave one of the most remarkable replies from a sponsor of a Bill that I have ever heard in over 50 years in this House. She did not comment at all on any of the information that I gave, which contradicted a lot of what she said at Second Reading in generalisations. I gave specific examples which she has not contradicted—so I presume that she accepts them but does not like them.

Baroness Fookes (Con)

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May I intervene? I did not deal with any of those issues because I regarded them as a Second Reading speech. I am not going to answer that kind of thing. I hope the noble Earl will not take it that I agree with everything he said, because I do not. I was trying to keep to what I believe is the purpose of a Committee stage.

The Earl of Caithness (Con)

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I think we all fully accept that my noble friend will not meet anybody to discuss this Bill and will not discuss it. That is very clear.

I respect the position of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, who said that it is cruel to kill any animal. I do not agree with her, but I respect her position. I wonder whether she might just consider the very fine deer herds in this country, such as in Richmond Park. They are only fine deer herds because of culling and because beasts are shot and taken out in order to continue and improve the herd. If we did not have that, we would not have the very fine deer herds we are privileged to have in this country.

My noble friend Lord Benyon said he was disappointed that no compromise had yet been found. There is a compromise. The Government have ignored the compromise and the advice of the JNCC, which is the specialist advisory body. There is no need for an advisory board. If the Government would look again at my noble friend Lord Mancroft’s amendment as a suitable vehicle to get the benefits for conservation and for local people that can be achieved, there would be a sensible way forward. Given the support I have had, I would like to test the opinion of the Committee.

The Earl of Caithness (Con)

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My Lords, this is a very simple amendment. It makes Clause 1 subject to Clause 4, which relates to the advisory committee, which we will come on to discuss in some detail. I think it is a very flawed clause of the Bill, which needs amendment. The point of this amendment is simply to make certain that the advice will be understood and taken on board by the Government when it comes to the implementation of Clause 1 of the Bill.

It is very depressing that the Government have turned their back on and totally ignored the information from their advisory body, the JNCC. It has set a bad precedent. It has undermined the JNCC and has reduced the efficacy of the Government’s work on conservation abroad. It is a very damaging decision that the Secretary of State has taken, against normal precedent. I hope therefore that, by my simple amendment, at least the consideration of the advisory board will be taken a little more seriously by the Government than they are taking advice at the moment. I beg to move.

Lord Benyon (Con)

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My Lords, I have already set out the Government’s position on this matter in my response to an earlier group. I have no further comments to make, and I will not be supporting this amendment. I hope that the noble Earl will withdraw it.

The Earl of Caithness (Con)

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My Lords, I am grateful for all the support around the Committee I have received on that one. In view of the brief but factual reply from my noble friend the Minister, I am happy to withdraw this amendment.

The Earl of Leicester (Con)

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My Lords, I apologise that I was unable to attend Second Reading. I was very keen to do so but unavoidably had to attend an important meeting at home. I refer to my interests as set out in the register. That includes my family’s management of Holkham National Nature Reserve, one of the most prolific in terms of conservation success in the land. I also stalk red deer in Scotland but have never hunted in other parts of the world.

This Bill will provide the legislative framework for understanding when someone commits a criminal offence. Therefore, in order to be fair and to avoid multiple legal challenges, clarifications around the definition of animals impacted by the Bill and the hunter himself or herself are required. Without clarity around these definitions, the Bill in its current form raises challenges for import and export agents preparing documentation relating to the importation of a hunting trophy into the UK and for Border Force officials tasked with enforcing the new legislation.

The purpose of my amendment is to highlight the extent to which the Bill has expanded in scope from the original manifesto commitment, which addressed endangered species—perhaps 10, in the recent UK context—to over 6,200 species, and the extent to which this highly disproportionate approach will create a far greater administrative burden than seems necessary. Amendment 3 would ensure that the new words “a wild” precede “animal”.

The Bill is clearly meant to be about conservation. That much has been made clear by the Government, who have stated that it was to be enacted in order to protect the world’s threatened species. If the Bill is about conservation, then it should be about wild animals, as the hunting of domestic, non-wild or captive animals is not a conservation concern. Such a ban does not, therefore, advance the intention of the Bill. This is not a small matter. There are many cases where animals are killed in situations which would not be classed as wild. The killing of tigers in South Africa is one such example. While very many of us would find that morally repugnant, it is clear that this Bill is about conservation and that the killing of a tiger in South Africa has no detrimental impact on wild tiger conservation in Asia.

If this is not about conservation and the killing of wild animals but more about welfare, then we should presumably take this time to address the killing of livestock in this country. It is worth remembering that, every year in the UK, approximately 2.6 million cattle, 10 million pigs, 14.5 million sheep and lambs, 80 million fish and 950 million birds are slaughtered for human consumption. Given that people can live perfectly well without meat, and plenty do, it is hard to argue that that kind of killing is not done only for the pleasure of people eating meat, but it clearly dwarfs by many orders of magnitude the average of 90 to 115 wild animals which are imported annually to the UK. The Bill, then, is clearly meant to be about conservation and therefore wild, rather than non-wild, animals.

Although it should be about conservation, in reality it can be tricky to find what is actually wild and what is not. We can see this complexity in our own wildlife legislation. Mark Avery has discussed this matter with regard to pheasants, which, for example, are determined as livestock when bred in captivity but, as soon as they are released, are deemed to be wild. This kind of complexity also applies to the kind of animals we see discussed all the time in the trophy hunting debate. Lions, for example, are one of the most high-profile species mentioned, especially since the killing of Cecil the lion. However, when is a lion a wild lion?

In South Africa, for example, there is a complex scenario where lions may be captive, managed or wild. According to credible organisations such as Panthera, South Africa has between 2,700 and 3,200 wild and managed lions, split roughly 50/50. The wild animals live in national parks such as the Kruger National Park; managed lions inhabit private reserves such as Phinda and Tswalu, and are managed in the name of keeping the gene pool diverse. Others are captive; the South African Predator Association keeps track of captive lions and captive breeding facilities, but not everyone who breeds lions in South Africa needs to be a member, and not everyone who is provides statistics. According to an article in National Geographic, the 2015 estimate was of around 7,000 lions in captivity.

Ideally, the animals covered by this Bill should also be wild animals which are native to that country. There are many cases where exotic animals cause immense concern in terms of their impact on nature biodiversity, particularly in Australia. One trophy-hunted non-native species in Australia is the camel, which needs to have its population controlled after feral populations were established by explorers and colonisers. Another example is the tiger, as I mentioned before. Although prohibited in a country in which tigers naturally occur, tiger hunting does happen in South Africa. Between 2002 and 2011, 17 tiger trophies were exported from South Africa—although, mercifully, none to the UK.

The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Morris of Bolton) (Con)

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My Lords, if Amendment 3 is agreed to, I cannot call Amendments 4 or 5 for reasons of pre-emption.

Lord Bellingham (Con)

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My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendment, which makes a great deal of sense. I think it is also just worth pointing out that he touched on a pertinent point: everyone is concerned about endangered animals. A lot of people feel strongly about animals in the wild, but what we have heard this evening, and what is obviously apparent, is that not all of these animals are wild. There are canned lions and the shooting of animals in enclosures. When I researched this, I was surprised that animals can be shot on the internet: you go online, pay your subscription—whatever it is—and then line up the crosswires on your computer to shoot an animal in an enclosure. I think most of us find that pretty distasteful and unnecessary, which is why there is a distinction between animals kept in artificial conditions and those that are completely wild. So I absolutely agree with what my noble friend said.

This goes to the essence of one of the points that many of us have made: the Bill is well intentioned. I have to say that I really resent some of the comments made this evening about how people on this side of the House—I am not a hereditary Peer, by the way—somehow want to sabotage the Bill. We do not. Surely the essence of any Committee stage is to improve a Bill. So, although some complain about the number of amendments—at the last count, it was over 60—and say that they are somehow unhelpful to the Government, egregious and wrong, I argue that this is actually the Chamber at its very best, trying to improve a Bill. It went through the other place very quickly, without any amendments, and it came here. We had a substantial debate on it, and a huge amount of information came our way over the summer and the latter part of the spring, from experts around the world, to help us to improve it. Surely that is the House taking this matter seriously. My noble friend’s amendment is one of many small but technical amendments. I really do find it hard to accept the idea that this is an all-male group of refuseniks living in a colonial world that is somehow trying to turn the clock back. We are actually acting in the best spirit of this House. We need time to get Bills like this right, and it may require a lot of technical amendments to be looked at, discussed and voted on.

It is incredibly important that we listen to the experts, who have not only commented on the generality of the Bill but picked up on some of the points regarding animals that may be wild or tame—that obviously goes to the core of my noble friend’s specific amendment. The Joint Nature Conservation Committee, which was mentioned, gave us evidence, but there are many other bodies, which I will come to at a later stage of the Bill. It is also worth mentioning that, when there is so much consensus among international bodies, we have to stop and take note. The International Union for Conservation of Nature made a strong case for the conservation arguments and highlighted the point about wild animals, as opposed to those kept in captivity. The Government have referred to that organisation in a favourable light on other occasions, but now they appear to be ignoring it.

There are other bodies as well. There is the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the IUCN, which is a global conservation authority. What is interesting about the advice that it has given your Lordships’ House and the Minister and the Government is that it is obviously not particularly comfortable in supporting trophy hunting. In fact, I would say that it is probably instinctively against it. But it is pragmatic. What it said was that trophy hunting was a possible threat to nine of the 6,200 species covered by the Bill, whereas it offers a very clear benefit to 25% of the wild species to which the noble Earl, Lord Leicester, referred.

Then you have the specific Governments who have given evidence to Members of this House and put arguments and sent letters to them, including Botswana’s Minister for the Environment and Conservation, who made it very clear that the

“importation ban of legally harvested wildlife trophies will negatively impact wildlife authorities, including Professional Hunting Associations and Community-Based Support Organizations”

and conservation bodies. What is relevant to this is that, recently, representatives of the community-run conservation areas in the four African countries that make up the Kavango-Zambezi trans-frontier conservation area—the so-called KAZA—stated that the Bill would have a “highly detrimental effect” on the protection of wildlife and the way of life of these communities. The way of life of the communities is something that is highly relevant to this specific amendment, which is why I support the noble Earl in his amendment.

Lord Mancroft (Con)

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My Lords, I want to make a comment about this and ask a question of my noble friend on the Front Bench. The noble Earl is quite right that we should differentiate. This is a conservation Bill and we do not conserve domestic animals—we conserve wild animals. So the argument that they should be wild is entirely correct.

There is a technical point that I should know the answer to and do not, so I shall ask my noble friend on the Front Bench. We in this country have different laws for wild and domestic animals; we do not treat our wildlife in the same way as we treat our domestic animals, for very good and sensible reasons. The law relating to them is different. But there is a reference to a wild animal that is “captive”—although I cannot remember the right word. I apologise to your Lordships, because I should remember it, but I have forgotten this legislation, which I used to know very well. There is a definition of a wild animal that is enclosed, or captive, or whatever it is—and when it becomes enclosed or captive, domestic welfare law applies. It is a different law. What I do not know, and I ask my noble friend, is whether that law applies abroad, under English law. If it did, canned lions in Africa would be subject to domestic law, because they would be captive wild animals, and the whole thing would apply completely differently. I do not think that they are really wild animals.

There is a difference between domestic and managed wild animals. We do not have any managed wild animals in this country, so it would not apply to us. I am not clear, but there are differences here and the law would apply differently if UK law were applied to, for example, canned lions in Africa. I am just not clear what the answer to that question is, and it would be helpful to know it.