Driven Grouse Shooting

Debate between Craig Whittaker and Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

Monday 31st October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I must immediately declare an interest as chairman of the all-party group on shooting and conservation, the sister of the group to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames) referred. In his excellent speech, he described, par excellence, the biodiversity that takes place on a well-managed moor. I will sketch for the House—my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak) got somewhere towards it—what the opposite course may entail.

I have been visiting an estate on the Caithness-Sutherland borders almost continuously for 36 years. When I started, there were a few grouse there. It was decided that the estate would gradually be stocked with more and more sheep. Tick numbers went up. Biodiversity on the moor went down. In the early days, there were raptors, skylarks, curlew, oystercatchers—the whole range of birds discussed today—but now virtually none of those birds remains. The quality of the moor has gone down considerably: the heather has got rank because it is not burnt; the number of grass species has immeasurably increased; and the amount of bracken, which is no good for any wildlife, has increased hugely. Without managed moors, I say to the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), biodiversity would definitely go down. I disabuse her of one other fact: without driven grouse shooting, and without proper management, vast tracts of our precious moorland would degrade in the way I have described—we have already heard that moorland is rarer than rain forest and that in the United Kingdom we have 75% of the world’s heather moorland.

Many others have commented on the economic benefits of grouse shooting, so I will not go over that too much, except to say that the £50 million spent on grouse moors, and the associated £15 million spent on ancillary businesses, supports 1,500 full-time equivalent jobs, according to the Moorland Association—my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) may have got the figure wrong in his excellent speech—and some 125 days of seasonal work. Those are considerable figures in some of our country’s remotest areas.

Some 2,715 miles of moorland drainage ditches have been plugged in the north Pennines alone as a result of revegetation with 120 hectares of bare peat, and there has been a reduction in flood risk. Many Members have commented on burning, but it is a fact that just 0.68% of heather moorland in Britain is burned each year. If it is burned properly under proper conditions—Members have talked about hot and cold burning and about rotation around the moor—it should not create the damage that has been mentioned.

On the hen harrier problem, the RSPB came to see me ahead of this debate and pleaded with me to be reasonable. I will be reasonable to the RSPB if it will be reasonable to the grouse landowners. The RSPB pulled out of the biodiversity action plan earlier this year, and I appeal to it to rejoin that action plan because only talking between the two sides is likely to solve the problems. I do not condone anyone who breaks the law, and it is important that we sort out the problem, but the fact that hen harriers do not breed may not in itself automatically be due to grouse shooting landowners. Many other things may cause hen harriers not to breed, including disturbance and weather.

[Craig Whittaker]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

We are getting close to the end of this debate, so I will move on.

On licensing and regulation, some wish to ban driven grouse shooting altogether, which would be extreme and would be detrimental to the biodiversity of this country. Licensing is an option, but grouse moor owners already have to comply with a panoply of legislation. Like others, I pay huge tribute to the keepers who keep our precious landscape in its current state and maintain its biodiversity. They already have to comply with the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, the heather and grass burning code of 2007 and the close season Acts for grouse. There is a panoply of legislation, and increasing regulation is rarely, if ever, a sensible answer. By using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, the Government would only harm an activity that has immense economic and environmental benefits. Any discrepancy or case of malpractice should be dealt with locally, and I repeat that I do not condone any breaking of the law.

Finally, we have a fundamental choice between thriving grouse and wider bird populations, local tourism, conservation and strong rural economies; and the devastation of some of these remote areas, job losses, the loss of endangered species, an increase in disease and the loss of habitat. It is all too easy to impose a blanket ban on shooting, and it is irresponsible to ignore the hard science and the factual benefits that driven grouse shooting provides to the UK’s countryside.