My Lords, is it not about time that we put badgers more on the basis of deer—permissible culling throughout the country? People see deer old and diseased, and everybody realises what the problem is. With badgers, they have no idea of the cruelty going on underground with sick badgers, old badgers, badgers without teeth and badgers with broken legs. That is where that love of badgers leads. If we culled them generally, we would know where TB really was in the badger population, instead of just taking it out in these super-big culls.
My Lords, as I explained earlier, we are moving to the next phase, a targeted approach to badger culling.