Asked by: Lord Banner (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they continue to view badger culls as being “for the purposes of preventing the spread of disease” within the meaning of section 10(2) of the Protection of Badgers Act 1992, given the acknowledgment in the Labour Party Manifesto 2024 that they are “ineffective”; and if they do not, whether existing cull licences will be revoked under section 10(8) of the 1992 Act or, if they will not be revoked, why not.
Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Licences for badger culling are issued by Natural England under section 10(2)(a) of the Protection of Badgers Act 1992. The current round of licences, that is, licences that have already been issued, will be honoured. This gives us time to work closely and constructively with farmers and scientists to build an eradication package that will beat bovine TB.
Asked by: Lord Banner (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what record they have of the annual financial cost of the badger culls in England over the past five years, and when a written value for money analysis of that cost was last undertaken.
Answered by Lord Douglas-Miller
The cost of undertaking badger culling is paid for by industry. The Government pays for the licensing operation and monitoring, as well as the cost of policing culls.
Information on the Government badger control costs for 2022 and previous years is available at GOV.UK. The Government badger control costs for 2023 will be published in due course.
The most recent value for money analysis of the badger control policy was published on 28 October 2022. This can be found attached to this answer.