Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 12th September 2023 Lords Chamber

Finally, a word of caution on the reference of the noble Earl, Lord Arran, to older males who are past their prime and excluded from their herd or group, and who can die unhappy, cantankerous and alone while trying to upset the dynamics of the group. I wondered whether he was referring to this House, but I think in the end he was referring to the animals.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

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)]

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.

Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 16th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

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.

Game Birds (Cage Breeding) Bill [HL]

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 25th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I am sorry to intervene, but I asked whether I could quickly make a comment in the gap after listening to the debate. I am afraid that I have been abroad and did not get my name down in time.

The problem with the Bill is that it is trying to put together raised laying units and battery cages as if these were the same thing, and it is trying to trigger an emotional response in people to condemn both. I am not a game breeder myself at all, but I have read research which says that the raised laying units which are outside, have space in them and even give an enhanced environment and things like that are more hygienic and better for the birds, and you get less disease. That is a very different concept from battery cages, about which I know absolutely nothing. The least we can do in the interests of the birds is to give them the better, hygienic conditions. At the end of the day, this is not about trying to ban everything, but I think it is counterproductive if you deliberately make it worse for the birds in law. That is really all I want to say.

Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 16th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I first declare an interest in farming in that my family farms, but I am handing everything over.

I find this Bill woolly. Much is left to the discretion of the Minister and the Executive. I have heard it described as a paving Bill and an entry point; more legislation may follow. I am sure we will get lots of assurances from the Front Bench, but we should remember that no ministerial Statement or Government can bind the successor Governments and Parliaments that follow, so we have to be very careful; we need things to be in the Bill.

Several speakers have spoken about the Bill as being useful for protecting farm animals, but we already regulate farming in great detail—I am sure we will regulate more for things we have missed—so I presume this committee will look at wild animals. I very much like the points made just now by the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, about what other things it could cross over into and mess up, when we are trying to look at the bigger pictures. If we try to make animals the pure and total focus of everything, we need to realise that we are only another animal on the planet.

One of the things that really worries me is that the composition of the committee is very open to manipulation—several speakers have mentioned this. There is nothing there about long-term balance and ensuring that it stays balanced.

Another thing that worries me is this definition of sentience. Again, I was very interested by the noble Viscount’s points about that, because there is a huge danger of anthropomorphism. Most creatures, if not all, have an autonomous nervous response to stimuli. This does not require thought, so should we really be inferring sentience from it? Or does sentience require reasoning, and in that case to what level? I do not think we go as far as the ethics, which was spoken about before.

The other thing is about pleasure and the question of whether animals enjoy working; this concerns the closing down of the circuses and things like that. I know from my personal experience that animals do enjoy doing things and working—there is no doubt about it—but some people think it is demeaning and do not like that, because they anthropomorphise what they are doing.

I just hope that this committee will understand the difficulty of balancing biodiversity. One of the biggest problems we have with a lot of things, particularly with single-issue pressure groups, is that the solution to the overpopulation of a particular animal species is to relocate it. Sometimes that just messes up somewhere else—or it may mess up the animal; it may be totally unproductive. We say, “Oh, we don’t want to hurt these animals”, which at the moment are destroying this environment that they may require for their own survival, so we relocate them over there—but that may not be any good for the animals, and they may die anyway as a result.

Another problem comes with the overprotection of certain species. I have noticed this particularly with some of the hunting species, such as badgers. There is huge overpopulation of badgers at the moment. Badgers eat hedgehogs. Why do we have a diminishing hedgehog population? No one thinks about this. They blame all sorts of things but not the badgers, one of the few creatures that can open them up and eat the things. The other thing is bumble bees. Quite a lot of species of bumble bee nest in the ground in small nests. It is just like a bar of chocolate for a badger; they love them. A bumble bee is very different from worker bees that live in hives and go out all over the place.

The trouble is that a lot of people who live in towns have perhaps done a brief course on the environment at Durham University, borrowed a pair of welly boots for a farm walk or whatever and then become experts on the environment. I do not think they really understand the breadth of things you need to understand.

Just for amusement I was thinking about anthropomorphism. I was amused by the “Lobster Quadrille” by Lewis Carroll, and I think we are going in that direction:

“‘Will you walk a little faster?’ said a whiting to a snail,

‘There’s a porpoise close behind us, and he’s treading on my tail.

See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance!

They are waiting on the shingle—will you come and join the dance?”

The way we are going, I think they are about to join our human dance.

I was amused by the noble Lord, Lord Hannan. I was going to suggest that maybe bear baiting has been replaced with politician and celebrity baiting. I think that is the new sport—and maybe toff baiting as well, since I seem to be counted among those by some people.

The main thing is that I agree with those who doubt the Bill’s utility. I am not sure we should waste a huge amount of time on it—but I think we will have to, to make sure it does not become dangerous.

Agriculture Bill

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 10th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Erroll (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I have an interest to declare as I am now running my late wife’s farm until we get probate, and maybe for a bit longer. I am very glad to see in this Bill that there will be continuing support for farmers, as many have a very low net income. People always point at the ones who are bigger and better off, but they are also probably very efficient.

Many noble Lords have spoken most eloquently about standards and their intentions are good, so I want to make some observations about the barriers that put many farmers off the environmental schemes. We have had environmental schemes here since the early pilot schemes and the stewardship schemes, so we have been doing it for a very long time. Environmental protection is important, but it must be balanced with food production. The Secretary-General of the United Nations said yesterday:

“Our food systems are failing, and the COVID-19 pandemic is making things worse.”


That is at the global scale, but it is something we need to remember. If we get this wrong, we will not be able to feed people.

The real trouble is that compliance with rules costs money. Our producers need protection from competition from countries where they cut corners and to which we have effectively exported our consciences, so that we do not see where they are broken. We think we can do this by having strict rules on imports, but people launder import papers—it is amazing how things can move around so that they appear to be okay. Most realistically, we must continue to support our home production and underpin it in some way, as we have been doing with the basic farm payment system.

If we want to see good environmental outcomes—we all do; I do very much—we must remember that rules do not often recognise weather. They are very inflexible about certain operations, because very often they just look at one single issue of what is being protected. They also do not take account of local variations in flora and fauna and the normal behaviour of these things. Blanket provision for the whole country, from the lowlands of the south of England to the northern Scottish highlands, are often too crude—seasons move and things ripen at different times.

Inspections should establish whether a land manager is trying to get it right overall or whether they are taking the mickey. Inspectors ought to look at the environmental objective, rather than focusing on minor issues where a mistake, usually accidentally, has been made. Some rules actually hinder achieving the intended objective and we need to work out how to get around that. Inspections should be interactive, and advisory where this would be helpful.

My general theme is to get a good take-up of ELMS. It is important for systems to verify compliance work simply, too. I have been filing our cropping electronically since 2004 or 2005, when it was IAX, so I have some experience of this, and of running digital mapping. The online systems must work reliably and simply. Even now, the BPS is unreliable. It regularly loses one or two fields for us most years—I believe that they are called “parcels in the system”—and I cannot see why. The land use codes do not take proper account of the farming and environmental schemes that are overlapping one another, which can cause confusion. It is quite hard to get your EFA declarations right. Remapping is exhausting and disruptive, and causes problems between schemes, but thank goodness the helplines are very helpful.

I hope that in future the inspectors can also be helpful advisers.

Agriculture Bill: Food Production

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

Will the Government take into account, in international trade agreements that will be coming up, the fact that British farmers probably maintain much higher standards on the environment, livestock and farming as a whole than do our competitors abroad?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, we are committed to UK standards not being watered down in trade negotiations with other countries. I should say that treaties cannot change domestic law. Any changes to UK law required to implement a treaty will have to pass through Parliament. That is an important factor for us to remember.