Bird Control Licences

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Under our environmental land management schemes farmers will be rewarded for doing what we call public goods, and that includes creating habitat for wildlife and protecting species which will otherwise, on our watch, become extinct. I could go on about the curlew, as I do every day in Defra, a species for which you can map the point at which it will become extinct in a decade or two’s time. We do not save it then, we save it now, and so we must deploy every measure that we can, whether it is in government grants or activities that we allow land managers to perform to protect them.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

We should be grateful to the noble Baroness for initiating a brief but enlightening debate. I thank my noble friend for his answers, but can he add another factor? Game is about the most nutritious food that you possibly can eat. If the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, had a few more pheasants, she might find life a bit more agreeable.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, it is not my position at the Dispatch Box to prescribe noble Lords’ diets, but I entirely agree with my noble friend about the health-giving benefits of natural food.