Ivory Bill

Debate between Lord Grantchester and Earl of Sandwich

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

[Lord Grantchester (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 38 in the name of my noble friend Lady Jones and to speak to Amendments 59 and 60 in this group. Enforcement is a critical part of achieving the aims of the legislation and must not be neglected. This proposed new clause would require an assessment to be made and laid before Parliament on the level of resources allocated, or proposed to be allocated, to enforcement of the prohibition in ivory dealing. The Minister’s department must demonstrate determination to enforce the provisions of the Bill to underline its commitment.

As noble Lords will appreciate, enforcement is a resource-intensive undertaking. However, many of the agencies and authorities we expect to be involved with enforcement of the Bill are already struggling. Home Office statistics show that the number of police officers fell from 143,734 in March 2010 to 123,142 in March 2017. The CITES Border Force team has just 10 members, who carry out more than 1,000 seizures a year, each one generating months of work. The National Wildlife Crime Unit has only 12 members of staff, including administrative staff, to cover the entirety of its work across the UK. The team not only carries out investigations referred from the Border Force but works right across all the UK wildlife crime priority areas, which is a significant remit outside CITES and includes domestic wildlife, bats, badgers, and prosecutions relating to birds of prey, freshwater pearl mussels and poaching. All of these sit within the UK’s strategic priorities, and the work of the National Wildlife Crime Unit is split right across all these areas.

Ivory products are the most popular wildlife item on the international market, despite a global ban on ivory sales imposed by the 180-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. This legislation could therefore increase the Wildlife Crime Unit’s work exponentially. A strong commitment to future funding is vital if that important work is to continue. We have heard that the funding is committed until 2020 but, beyond that, the National Wildlife Crime Unit has had no formal indication that there will be continued funding, which clearly causes concern. It is unable to plan or commit to long-term strategies. It is very difficult for any agency to form business plans when, in 20 months’ time, it may not exist at all.

The APHA, an executive agency with an existing wide-ranging remit, will be responsible for administering and enforcing the registration and certification scheme. The Minister has previously confirmed that the APHA will be responsible for conducting spot checks on items registered, to check for accuracy and compliance, and will be working with the police and others to enable them to carry out any enforcement and monitoring action necessary. This is a key and very necessary part of the regulations, so it should be carried out by skilled members of staff trained to identify ivory. Has the Minister’s department carried out a budget and manpower review of the Bill’s implications for the APHA?

Finally, the Minister has advised that the regulator—the Office for Product Safety and Standards—will also play a role in enforcement. There was very little scrutiny in the other place of why this BEIS agency has been selected to oversee most of the enforcement of the Act under civil penalty provisions. Will the Minister explain why the OPSS has been chosen, given that the Ivory Act will form part of the global wildlife protection legislation that is administered by Defra? The OPSS has no expertise in wildlife regulation and there is concern that it will be preoccupied by its other work. Will the Minister assure the House that there will be sufficient funding for specially trained and dedicated staff at the OPSS to work on enforcing the ban on dealing with ivory?

Will the Minister also spell out how the OPSS will operate alongside the police, the CITES border force and the National Wildlife Crime Unit? How will the responsible areas be defined and split between the agencies when the regulator will be in another department? Will the Minister explain how the enforcement will be structured? I trust that the Government will commit to ensuring sufficient manpower and resources, otherwise the Bill will be toothless and treated merely as non-binding guidance, and the public will interpret from this that the Government are not committed to taking the measure seriously.

Amendments 59 and 60 call for a report on the impact of the Act on the ivory market. I may respond later to the remarks from the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, and the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan. At this stage, I will comment only that Amendment 59 seems to focus more widely on the international market, whereas Amendment 60 in the name of my noble friend Lady Jones is focused on the domestic market—albeit that both call also for a report from DfID to be included explaining how the work of the department has contributed to the aims of the Bill.

In Committee in the House on Monday, the Government were conducive towards Amendment 35 on producing a report on exemptions to the ivory ban. They intended to share publicly information on how the ivory ban was working in practice. It seems logical to press the Government to go further and report more widely on the domestic ivory market as well and, by extension, include how the Department for International Development has worked with communities overseas that are on the front line in the battle against ivory poaching.

The proposed new clause in Amendment 60 provides for a practical analysis of the impact of the Bill in its ultimate purpose to reduce the illegal trade in ivory and to save the elephant from further slaughter. Importantly, the report should consider the impact on nations and communities that generate income from the trade, given that the Bill responds to calls from African nations that stand as one to demand an end to the market for ivory across the globe that fuels the drive for poaching. As we have argued throughout the passage of the Bill, reducing demand is the key tenet of a wider strategy. It will place the Bill alongside the activities of other nations to provide leadership on an international scale, which the Secretary of State can underline when he hosts the illegal wildlife conference in London in October. I beg to move.

[The Earl of Sandwich (CB)]

My Lords, I follow the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, in speaking to Amendment 59. No one who listened to the Second Reading debate in another place can be in doubt of the Government’s determination to eliminate the criminal trade in ivory. This concerns at least three government departments. We have not yet heard from the international development side of the story and I have not so far spoken, but I will not delay the Bill by repeating what was said at Second Reading.

My primary interest is not in the ivory trade, although I sympathise with many of the concerns expressed, but in the communities where elephants and people live and how they will be affected—or assisted—by the Bill. Several MPs have tried to amend the Bill on their behalf and to widen it to include the protection of other endangered species, listed in CITES, such as rhinos and even tigers and snow leopards. I am not, however, going quite that far today. That is the subject of a later amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones.

People are saying different things on the Bill. In Committee, I have been struck by the occasional polarisation of opinion. For example, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said on Monday that she was protecting elephants, while the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and others were protecting inanimate objects. My noble friend Lord Berkeley said that some of the resources required in monitoring the ivory trade would surely be much better directed towards the problem itself—towards protecting elephants and prosecuting the criminals who try to make money out of ivory. I sympathise with him.

Ivory may not be seen with quite the same reverence at a local level in Africa or Asia. Elephants, on the other hand, especially those that still have their tusks and their teeth intact, are highly respected. There are some robust programmes targeting poachers and dealers, many of whom, as in any crime, are inevitably seeking a way out of poverty. When it comes to the need for human survival, desperation can easily lure people into crime, so poverty alleviation and sustainable development must always be partners of human and animal rights.

One must not be too pious about this. We have to be aware that corruption goes a lot higher than poachers and dealers. In some communities, the elephant is quite unromantic and can become the enemy of development. I have witnessed a dangerous bull elephant in South Africa—I expect a lot of people have. Anyone in Assam will remind you that elephants never forget and wreak terrible and regular vengeance.

DfID already focuses on alternative livelihoods as part of the UK campaign to end the ivory trade. I warmly welcome that. All too often, criminal activity is seen as an easy alternative to low pay and lack of opportunity. There are many organisations tackling this, such as the African Wildlife Foundation, which combines preventing trade in ivory with development projects in local communities. The AWF, for example, has a programme to bring wildlife criminals to justice through the training of rangers and prosecutors. It has had much success with sniffer dogs at Nairobi and Entebbe airports. In the same region, the charity Save the Elephants has recruited Turkana and Samburu women to help to track elephants in its campaign to stop poaching.

The World Wide Fund for Nature has a worldwide scheme to support rangers who carry out essential protection of endangered species, directly benefiting local families as well as elephants. It is monitoring herds, training community rangers and protecting habitats. In safeguarding elephants, it is also helping to support local communities through measures to reduce human-elephant conflict and initiatives to support local livelihoods.

I recognise that the Government have made extensive preparations for the IWT conference next month, but DfID, since it works overseas, always appears to be a junior ministry in these joined-up initiatives. I have looked at its website in relation to elephants. Inevitably, there will be a lot of variety in different countries’ responses to the illegal trade and the conference will doubtless show that there is no simple development formula. This affects how you assess the effect of these programmes. There is no simple development formula beyond the rule of law but, knowing DfID’s investment in the programme, it would be reasonable to ask for some impact assessment.

All that I am seeking with this amendment is a recognition of the work of DfID and its in-country partners through an annual report that makes some assessment of success in both protection and development alongside trade bans. The Government have given huge sums to this and launched impressive targets, but it is important for us to judge how effective these targets are going to be and how they will benefit local people.

There was a degree of euphoria in another place during discussion of the Bill. The ivory campaign inevitably has widespread support on all sides. Nevertheless, we must be aware that, while we can and must reduce the international trade in ivory, the real problems are not taking place on this island and we need a formal assessment of the impact on the people most directly affected. I thank the Opposition Front Bench for presenting a comparable amendment and I hope that we can carry this through to later stages of the Bill.