Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill

Debate between Bob Stewart and Bill Wiggin

Report stage
Friday 17th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Bill Wiggin]

It is good to see you in the Chair, Mr Speaker.

New clause 1 concerns duration and would cause the Bill’s provisions to cease to have effect five years after it is passed. In 2019, we stood on a manifesto commitment to ban imports from the trophy hunting of endangered animals. I therefore propose that the sunset clause be added for the simple purpose of ensuring that the Act, should it prove unsuccessful in protecting endangered species, can be withdrawn. If, on the other hand, after five years, the Act does in fact prove successful in achieving the stated aims of our manifesto commitment, the Secretary of State would have the power to extend the expiration date by up to five years.

I have been concerned throughout the progress of the Bill that it is not motivated by a desire to see African wildlife flourish and prosper. If it were, it would have paid heed to the scientific evidence provided by experts in conservation. British conservationists Professor Amy Dickman and Adam Hart have argued that 90% of protected areas with lions are severely underfunded. Removing trophy hunting without providing suitable alternative revenue will expose those underfunded protected areas to further risks, such as poaching. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature red list, trophy hunting is not considered to be a threat driving any species to extinction. Instead, trophy hunting generates revenue for anti-poaching and habitat conservation. It has been recognised as a positive tool for conservation in multiple species—including black rhino, white rhino, argali, macaw, some populations of lion, and white-tailed deer—and maintains extensive areas of wildlife habitat.

High commissioners from Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania and Zimbabwe argued in a letter to the Minister of State in the Foreign Office:

“Well-managed trophy hunting—the prevailing model in all our countries—contributes to reductions in habitat loss and poaching. It has proved a demonstrable conservation tool for multiple species, including endangered ones such as black rhinos.”

Maxi Louis, the director of NASCO, the Namibian Association of Community Based Natural Resource Management Support Organisations, wrote in a letter to my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Henry Smith):

“Take away those employed to protect wildlife in the reserves and poachers move into the vacuum. This quickly leads to huge losses of endangered animals. Yet what really angers us is how these animals die. Snaring leads to appalling injuries and pitifully slow deaths. Poisoning is traumatic, lions vomiting for hours, as they pass away.”

She wrote that

“when Botswana had a temporary ban on paid hunting there was a 593% increase in fresh elephant carcasses being found.”

Professor Amy Dickman, a conservation biologist and director of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at the University of Oxford, has also argued that the Bill will facilitate an increase in poaching. She has described her distress while carrying out fieldwork in Africa, where she witnessed the horrendous aftermath of a lioness trapped in a poacher’s snare, a decapitated hyena and a leopard with its paw mangled in a trap, all of which had suffered more painful and prolonged deaths from poachers than from a hunter’s bullet.

The concern held by both conservationists and African community leaders is that, by enforcing the removal of the vital source of revenue supplied by trophy hunters to these communities, we open the floodgates to poachers, who will cause far more cruelty and pain to the animals and pose a far greater threat to endangered species. The opinions and evidence from these experts do not fill me with a lot of confidence that the Bill will achieve its stated aim, nor does the misinformation that is being touted by the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting.

I have tabled new clause 1 to ensure that the Bill is not a classic case of virtue signalling at the expense of African wildlife and the conservation efforts of African people. If, five years down the line, the Act proves to be ineffective, as I suspect it will, at conserving endangered species and has led to an increase in poaching, it seems right that provision should be made for the Act to be withdrawn. If the supporters of the Bill are so confident that it will achieve the desired result of protecting endangered species and not encouraging poachers, who I believe are a greater threat to these endangered species than well-regulated hunting, why not include this sunset clause in it?

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

How much, in percentage terms, of the budget to protect wildlife comes from trophy hunting?

[Sir Bill Wiggin]

All of it. One of the problems I will come to in a moment is that, where we are asking people to stop trophy hunting, we are not necessarily replacing that with funding. In one area, which I look looking forward to telling the House about in a moment, we do provide funding, and we are encouraging local people to protect their wildlife and build businesses, particularly for the women, but they are arguing that, by withdrawing trophy hunting, we are cutting the legs off that effort. There are real contradictions here, which is why it is such a difficult subject.

Deregulation Bill

Debate between Bob Stewart and Bill Wiggin

Monday 23rd June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Bill Wiggin]

My hon. Friend is right, and I am sure he will seek to catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, and share his expertise with the House. The key thing for Opposition Members to remember is that we are talking about not rights of way, but people killing themselves, or being seriously hurt or injured. That is what we are trying to avoid. We are trying to make sure that every person who walks or works in the countryside is safe.

No one should feel besieged in their own home. Rights of way should not affect someone’s right to safety. I am therefore asking again for flexibility, as I fear that if privacy is not considered as reasonable grounds for safely altering a footpath, more people’s lives will be plagued by intrusion. Common sense must again prevail.

I read with interest the 2010 “Stepping Forward” report by Natural England’s stakeholder working group on unrecorded rights of way. Although the group did not address the safety and privacy of routes, I believe that my new clause is in the spirit of its recommendations. The report praised surveyors for taking use of land into account in footpath diversions. In its evidence to the Bill Committee in February, the group indicated that it has discussed diversions in greater depth since 2010. In her evidence, Sarah Slade of the Country Land and Business Association emphasised her support for making people’s lives easier through diversions. My new clause is a natural progression from the group’s recommendations. I strongly believe that all interested parties would regret missing this opportunity to ease the risks and conflicts created by footpaths.

The stakeholder group’s guidance, which I suspect the Government hope to make statutory, will not overrule the tests that determine changes to footpath routes, so it is not equal to the task in hand. Nor will it deal with the standard objection of—please forgive the wording—“not substantially less convenient”, which is the excuse given when a footpath may be a few metres longer than it was previously. New statutory guidance may therefore help, but it will not solve the problem.

[Bob Stewart]

Obviously, I am no expert, and I am listening very carefully to what my hon. Friend says, but is there no way in which a public right of way could be changed as things stand, or do we have to legislate for that?

[Bill Wiggin]

There is a way in which a change can be made at minimal cost, but if there is a single objection, the balance of favour, as it were, goes against the owner of the property. Additionally, the process can cost a vast amount. What makes me sad is that this should be not a fight between the landowner and the person objecting—the walker or whoever it might be—but about safety. If people think that a route can be better, we should make it as straightforward as possible to achieve that.

Badger Cull

Debate between Bob Stewart and Bill Wiggin

Thursday 13th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Bill Wiggin]

I am delighted that the hon. Lady is so completely and utterly wrong. The joy of that is that the evidence is before us all. We have seen the disease spread by the policies of people like her. She does not have cattle, she has never done a pre-movement test and she does not know what she is talking about. Unfortunately, this is too serious a subject for her to pontificate on. If she was right, the disease would not have spread in the way that it has.

I would like to see far better skin tests. The old skin test is extremely iffy. It gave my bull, Jackeroo, a false Johne’s disease result. Happily, he subsequently proved to be free of the disease. I would like to see gamma interferon more readily available to any farmer who gets a skin test reactor. It would also be helpful if the Government were to publish the facts and figures proving that when a gamma interferon test is used, more TB reactors are detected earlier and the chance of getting a future clear test is significantly increased. If that is not possible, DEFRA needs to get us a better test.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Very briefly, what does the chief veterinary officer for the Government suggest should happen?

[Bill Wiggin]

We would love to know. We would love to know what the Government think of the report, but we have not seen it yet.

I have always preferred vaccination, and I believe that it should be targeted at healthy badger populations where the chance of a badger being infected is low but likely to increase due to their proximity to infected populations. This means vaccinating healthy badgers working inwards, geographically, towards the centre of infection. Professor Woodruff gives an excellent speech on the benefits of an immune population and how we can achieve that. This should also apply to cattle, and I am more than willing to do everything possible to help the Government achieve cattle vaccination.

There are endless arguments to suggest that vaccination is better than culling. I am more than willing to accept those arguments, but they cannot apply unless they apply to both species. We need to redouble our efforts to prevent damage to our export markets from vaccinating cattle. It is not widely known that meat from infected cows showing less than one lesion already makes its way into the food chain. It is also the case that milk from an infected cow is safe to drink after it has been pasteurised. Therefore, there is no reason why pasteurised milk and vet-inspected meat should not be available for export from vaccinated cattle. I think the House may find that it already is.

After the pathetic European response to the horsemeat scandal, I do not believe that the European Union has a strong case to ban our exports. The response from the European Commission is unhelpful and is another reason why, if for no other, we should leave the EU. I hope the Secretary of State will join me in campaigning to leave the European Union and one of the benefits will be that we can vaccinate our cattle.

If we are going to base our decisions on science, we should ensure that the scientists have been heard.