Lead Shot Ammunition

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

Tuesday 8th December 2015 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)]

Let me begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Gerald Jones) on securing the debate. He showed the passion that he feels on this issue in his opening remarks. As we all know, lead is a noxious substance with potentially fatal impacts. This is therefore an issue that it is right for the House to address.

I pass on the apologies of the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), who has responsibility for this issue. Hon. Members will have noticed that he has been otherwise engaged in Cumbria in the past couple of days in his role as floods Minister. I am therefore responding to the debate on his behalf.

Government practice is to obtain and use the best possible evidence when taking decisions. That is why, almost six years ago, our predecessors chose to set up the Lead Ammunition Group, commonly known as the LAG—and I think one thing we can all agree on is that there was a time lag in that group’s concluding its work. The LAG began work in 2010. Although a creation of Government, it was deliberately set up as an entirely independent group, formed of experts who would approach the evidence from their various perspectives and provide clear advice on whether and what risks might be posed by lead ammunition and how they could be managed. The potential risks that it was asked to assess related both to wildlife, which is a DEFRA responsibility, and to human health, which is the responsibility of the Food Standards Agency. I hope that hon. Members will find it helpful if I set out the subsequent history.

First, the LAG was established in 2010 for an initial 12-month period, after which progress was to be reviewed. However, its final report was not presented to Ministers until June this year. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), asked when it was presented. That was on 3 June. Secondly, by the time the LAG reported, only five of its 10 members remained in place. The remainder had resigned, with four of those submitting a different set of recommendations.

We are therefore in a position in which we have no expert consensus about the impact of lead ammunition on wildlife or on human health. Nevertheless, we must start from where we are, so it is important that we look at the report that the LAG produced and the material that it contains. Even if that report has the support of only half its members, it is nevertheless a substantial document that represents several years’ worth of work. We must therefore consider it carefully, which is exactly what the Under-Secretary and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State have been doing since DEFRA received the report in June.

Subsequently, as a number of hon. Members pointed out, there has been the minority report from those who resigned and the report arising from the Oxford Lead Symposium, which was organised by opponents of lead ammunition. I realise that hon. Members and others outside the House are anxious to have our response to the LAG report, but it is important that we take the time to get this right and weigh up all the other comments, views and evidence that have been submitted to us. The time that it has taken to review that evidence reflects the fact that it is a serious debate and that my ministerial colleagues are looking at the issue closely.

Let me remind the House of the action that Government have already taken. Lead shot has been prohibited for wildfowling since 1999 by the Environmental Protection (Restriction on Use of Lead Shot) (England) Regulations 1999. Those regulations introduced a double restriction. First, lead shot cannot be used, on any game, in certain areas—namely, over the foreshore or over a list of named sites of special scientific interest. Secondly, lead shot cannot be used anywhere for shooting certain species—namely, ducks, geese, coot and moorhen. In passing, I will mention that the general supply of lead weights for angling was ended in 1986.

The 1999 restrictions reflected the resolution made that year through the African-Eurasian waterbird agreement, to which the UK is a party. It was agreed that members would work to phase out the use of lead ammunition over wetlands, reflecting the clear evidence that waterbirds can and do scoop up spent lead when feeding and suffer health consequences from doing so. We delivered on the resolution through our regulations of the same year.

There is of course nothing to stop those who shoot from choosing, of their own volition, to use alternative forms of ammunition. Although no other material has exactly the same combination of malleability and density as lead, a number of alternatives have been available, and used in the field, for some time. Those include steel and tungsten for shotgun cartridges and, for bullets for rifles, copper and copper alloys. Use of an alternative is compulsory for wildfowling, but the alternatives can also be used more widely. I understand that some shooters have made the switch, although others have not.

[Alex Cunningham]

I am intervening simply on the point about lack of compliance in relation to shooting wildfowl over wetlands and the use of lead shot in the killing of ducks. Will the Minister respond on the huge level of non-compliance?

[George Eustice]

I was going to come on to that. The hon. Gentleman highlighted a DEFRA study that did show—he is correct—that the level of non-compliance was up to 70% in certain areas. I will simply say this: it is the law. As my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) pointed out, we can all condemn those who are using lead shot where they should not be, against the law, and it is a matter for the police to enforce those existing regulations. Where the law is being broken, it must be enforced, and we are keen to work with stakeholders and others to ensure that we raise awareness of the 1999 regulations—the regulations that already exist. The key point made by a number of hon. Members was that the starting point should be to enforce the regulations that we have, rather than jumping to introduce new regulations.

My hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) made a very important point about the impact on clay pigeon shooting and the danger of steel ricocheting. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak) mentioned that some countries—notably, Norway—had introduced a ban and then reversed it. I understand that in that case, it was for the somewhat surprising reason that steel bullets were getting embedded in trees and that was affecting the machinery of timber merchants. That shows that all sorts of unintended consequences can come from these things. My hon. Friends the Members for The Cotswolds and for Richmond (Yorks) highlighted their view that some of the data used in the reports were out of date, particularly in relation to the Oxford symposium, and predated the 1999 regulations. I think that is probably a fair point, although other hon. Members have made an equally strong argument that the 1999 regulations are not being enforced as effectively as they could be at the moment; that is also very valid.

In conclusion, I agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) said: this is a very important issue. The contributions in the debate show how complex it is and how strongly felt views are on both sides. That is why the Under-Secretary and the Secretary of State are right to take their time to weigh up all the evidence carefully before submitting their response to the LAG report.