Asked by: Lord Robathan (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many reports have been made to police of illegal hare coursing since the Hunting Act 2004 came into force.
Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Hare coursing or poaching are not crimes which the police must record and notify to the Government. Where violence or intimidation are part of any hare coursing or poaching the most common crimes that could be recorded would be violence with injury, violence without injury or public order crimes where threats are used. However, there is no means of identifying if these are connected to hare coursing or poaching and for this reason the Government does not hold the information.
Asked by: Lord Robathan (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many hares they estimate are shot each year.
Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Defra holds no official statistics on the number of hares shot in England each year and therefore makes no official estimate. We are however aware of a number of estimates made by stakeholder groups which range markedly from the low tens of thousands to the low hundreds of thousands.
Asked by: Lord Robathan (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what information they have on changes in the population of hares in England and Wales over the past 30 years.
Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
There has been a historic decline of brown hares in Britain, predominantly shown through the game bag records, but there is some uncertainty about whether that decline is continuing. The British Trust for Ornithology’s Breeding Bird Survey (Heywood et al, 2025), which records mammals as well as birds, shows an increasing trend of 47% in the English population of brown hare between 1996 and 2023. However, other sources, such as the game bag records and A Review of the Population and Conservation Status of British Mammals (Mathews et al, 2018), consider the population to be stable.
Mountain hares, which became extinct in England around 6,000 years ago, were translocated from Scotland to the Peak District National Park in the 1870s. They are now showing a continuing decline in population and a recent study by Bedson et al (2025) has shown a decline of 58% over seven years from 3,562 hares to 1,038 hares (2017-2024), putting them at risk of another extinction in England.
Asked by: Lord Robathan (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Benyon on 9 January (HL4498), what consideration they have given to including swift bricks as a biodiversity net gain in the schedule of the Environment Act 2021.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Lord Chamberlain (HM Household)
The Government has consulted on the detail of implementation and secondary legislation for mandatory biodiversity net gain in the Environment Act, and the response will be published in due course. The mandatory approach will be based on a biodiversity metric which assesses biodiversity using habitats. Species-based features such as bird and bat boxes are not included within the metric; instead it focuses on the habitats such species need to forage and complete their life cycles. Planning Practice Guidance published to help implement planning policy makes clear that relatively small features can often achieve important benefits for wildlife, with incorporating ‘swift bricks’ in developments in particular highlighted as an option. Specific biodiversity features, such as swift bricks, would normally be required for developments through either the relevant local plan or through the local authority’s development control team.
Asked by: Lord Robathan (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to either (1) encourage, or (2) mandate, the installation of “swift bricks” in new build or refurbished buildings, to assist conservation by providing nesting cavities for swifts and other birds.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Lord Chamberlain (HM Household)
All local authorities have a duty to have regard to conserving biodiversity as part of their policy or decision making. As well as this duty, national planning policy states that the planning system should minimise impacts on biodiversity and provide net gains in biodiversity where possible. Planning Practice Guidance published to help implement planning policy makes clear that relatively small features can often achieve important benefits for wildlife, such as incorporating ‘swift bricks’ and bat boxes in developments and providing safe routes for hedgehogs between different areas of habitat. Specific biodiversity features, such as swift bricks, would normally be required of developments through either the relevant local plan or the local authority’s development control team.
Through the Environment Act 2021 we have introduced a mandatory duty for developers to deliver a ‘biodiversity net gain’, which will mean that habitats for wildlife must be left in a measurably better state than they were before any development.
Asked by: Lord Robathan (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether there is any legal or regulatory restriction preventing suppliers from taking back and reusing large plastic sacks that have contained animal feed or fertilizer; and, if so, whether they plan to review this restriction.
Answered by Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park
There are no specific restrictions in fertiliser legislation preventing suppliers from reusing fertiliser sacks. However, guidance around the storage and handling of certain fertilisers such as ammonium nitrate may still apply, which could impact on the feasibility of reusing fertiliser sacks. For example, the Health and Safety Executive recommends precautions to prevent the risk of contamination and spillage, including that bags should be completely sealed on filling. In practice, the reuse of large sacks used by farmers is likely to be limited as they are usually cut open to transfer the fertiliser into the spreading equipment.
There are no provisions in UK animal feed legislation preventing the reuse of plastic sacks. However, feed business operators must demonstrate through their feed safety management systems that the packaging materials used for feed are safe and do not have an adverse effect on animal health, human health, and the environment.