Ivory Bill

Debate between Baroness Vere of Norbiton and Lord Bassam of Brighton

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 12th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

I am sorry. This may be the only intervention that I will make in this Bill but I would like to understand how you are going to measure and assess the seriousness of the crime, particularly at an early stage in the investigation. Surely it will be quite critical to do so at that point.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, for his intervention. As I stated at the start, the operation of the enforcement system will be a topic for discussion later today, as there are many more amendments dealing with that. This is purely about reporting on the enforcement. As I said, the Government will monitor the effective application of resources over time.

Turning to the reporting, the amendment suggests that a review might be undertaken within 12 months of the Bill’s provisions being commenced. I suggest that this might not provide an adequate assessment, as it is likely that different levels of resources will be required in the early stages of enforcement, particularly for the early engagement and awareness-raising phase, and it is likely to take at least a year and probably more to understand the steady-state financial resources that are required to effectively police and enforce the ban in the longer term.

Therefore, we do not believe that a resources assessment on a specified date should be included in the Bill. The Government will, as a matter of course, assess the implementation of the ban over time—in particular, its enforcement. Much of this information will be available in the public domain and will be subject to public scrutiny. Therefore, a separate report is unnecessary and a drain on resources. We therefore do not believe that this matter needs to be addressed in the Bill.

I turn to the other two amendments in this group, the intention of which is for the Government to provide an update to Parliament, and the public, on the impact of the new Ivory Act, if passed, on the domestic and international ivory trade. Although the intention is commendable, we do not envisage that the full impact of the legislation, particularly on international markets, will be measurable in isolation within the first 12 months of it coming into force. It is logical that the international impact of the UK ivory ban—in reduced flows of ivory from the UK to the Far East or reduced prices—will be seen over a much longer term.

The Government have made it clear that they believe that the UK’s ivory ban, along with the fourth international Illegal Wildlife Trade Conference in October, will encourage other countries to follow the UK’s lead and implement their own bans. This will, in turn, further reduce demand and prices and, therefore, the poaching and killing of elephants. Again, the impact on international markets and the poaching and killing of elephants will be seen over a long period.

I am conscious that the proposed undertakings may, in effect, duplicate some of the work done under the auspices of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species—CITES—and would therefore be an unnecessary drain on resources. CITES reports on the illegal killing of elephants and the trade in ivory are presented every three years to the CITES Conference of the Parties. All countries implicated in the ivory trade, including the UK, appear in the cluster analysis of the ivory trade reports. These reports are the Monitoring of Illegal Trade in Ivory and Other Elephant Specimens and the Elephant Trade Information System.

The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, mentioned the enormous and ongoing commitment by DfID to tackle poaching. It is true that DfID is very involved in the tackling of the poaching of elephants but the funding is often inextricably linked to other illegal wildlife trading interventions, which are often undertaken with other nations’ programmes within these larger international umbrella schemes. For example, DfID and Defra announced back in July that they had helped secure an increase of £27 million, but this was from international partners; all of it was put into the Global Environment Facility’s Global Wildlife Program. Again, that programme is subject to rigorous scrutiny and stringent reporting requirements. I fear that we could end up with a reporting overload, and trying to narrow it down to one particular species from one particular country might not be the best use of time or resources. The obligation to produce additional and unnecessary reports would be a considerable and potentially expensive undertaking, and one which Defra is not particularly qualified to undertake. An objective report on the impact of the UK ban on the illegal wildlife trade would be best carried out by an organisation outside government; as I have explained, this is already the case.

For the reasons I have outlined, I cannot agree to these amendments. However, their intention has merit and we will consider the ways in which we make sure that the public have the right information about the impact of the ban and, indeed, the work that DfID and other parts of government are doing to tackle the poaching of elephants. I hope that the noble Lord feels able to withdraw his amendment.