Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill

Debate between Earl of Caithness and Baroness Fookes

Committee stage
Tuesday 12th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate, and I thank the many noble Lords for their support for my amendment.

I was particularly interested in the speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Weir of Ballyholme, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, because I do not think that either of them actually listened to what I said. They came with pre-prepared speeches—the usual claptrap they produce when it comes to trophy hunting. I mentioned all the disadvantages of trophy hunting and said that I was trying to improve the conservation of animals. If the noble Lord does not like my examples, well, I am sorry, but at least he has not challenged the efficacy of them. I think that would have been a more helpful and constructive approach than just spieling out the usual generalisations, which we have become use to accepting from the proponents of the Bill.

My noble friend Lady Fookes gave one of the most remarkable replies from a sponsor of a Bill that I have ever heard in over 50 years in this House. She did not comment at all on any of the information that I gave, which contradicted a lot of what she said at Second Reading in generalisations. I gave specific examples which she has not contradicted—so I presume that she accepts them but does not like them.

[Baroness Fookes (Con)]

May I intervene? I did not deal with any of those issues because I regarded them as a Second Reading speech. I am not going to answer that kind of thing. I hope the noble Earl will not take it that I agree with everything he said, because I do not. I was trying to keep to what I believe is the purpose of a Committee stage.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

I think we all fully accept that my noble friend will not meet anybody to discuss this Bill and will not discuss it. That is very clear.

I respect the position of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, who said that it is cruel to kill any animal. I do not agree with her, but I respect her position. I wonder whether she might just consider the very fine deer herds in this country, such as in Richmond Park. They are only fine deer herds because of culling and because beasts are shot and taken out in order to continue and improve the herd. If we did not have that, we would not have the very fine deer herds we are privileged to have in this country.

My noble friend Lord Benyon said he was disappointed that no compromise had yet been found. There is a compromise. The Government have ignored the compromise and the advice of the JNCC, which is the specialist advisory body. There is no need for an advisory board. If the Government would look again at my noble friend Lord Mancroft’s amendment as a suitable vehicle to get the benefits for conservation and for local people that can be achieved, there would be a sensible way forward. Given the support I have had, I would like to test the opinion of the Committee.

Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill

Debate between Earl of Caithness and Baroness Fookes

2nd reading
Friday 16th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fookes (Con)]

My Lords, I have been called many things in my time, but to be referred to as a neocolonialist is a new one for me. I would have thought it would be applied more appropriately those who wish to perpetuate the trophy hunting culture, but I will leave that aside because we have had a long debate. There have been wind-up speeches from the Front Benches and, of course, from the Minister, who was almost doing my work for me, so I will not detain the House too long.

However, I want very firmly to challenge the view that the revenue gained from trophy hunting contributes greatly to local communities. My understanding is that very little percolates down to them, and that is something I stand by.

I was also challenged on why I was not meeting the high commissioners whose letter appeared in the Times yesterday. They are joint signatories to a letter. One of them is the high commissioner for Tanzania. Tanzania is engaged in a bitter dispute with its own people, a Maasai tribe who are being forcibly evicted from their lands. They have even sought help by coming to Europe as a delegation and going to various European countries and the European Parliament. So if trophy hunting is of such benefit to local communities, I wonder why the Maasai are taking that action. I suggest that there are far better ways of dealing with the problems of cohabiting with animals, crops and so on. There is no time now, but there are plenty of opportunities and plenty of examples whereby careful, thoughtful management of land can get animals and people to cohabit.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

I was told on the question of the Maasai that it also involved ecotourism.

[Baroness Fookes]

I have no knowledge of ecotourism. My concern was that they were being forcibly evicted from their land in a way they did not wish. Beyond that I cannot comment.

I can see that there will be no great meeting of minds on this one, so let us be quite frank about it. I believe that the Bill has a modest and useful part to play, and I am encouraged in this by a letter I received this morning from the former President of Botswana, Lieutenant-General Dr Seretse Khama Ian Khama. He writes: “My experience based on facts over 23 years as head of the Defence Force, as Vice-President and then as President, are that hunting contributes to the decline in wildlife populations as hunters in several cases also poached. They corrupted the system to obtain higher quotas of animals to shoot. They seriously undermined the gene pool of male lions, elephants and other species by only shooting the most magnificent species in each category”. He adds that he believes that photographic safaris contribute far more in the creation of employment, revenue streams and so forth. I accept that is not possible everywhere in Africa, but I think we should be looking far more to schemes which allow animals and people to cohabit.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Environment Bill

Debate between Earl of Caithness and Baroness Fookes

Committee stage
Wednesday 7th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Fookes) (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, has requested to speak after the Minister.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the reply my noble friend the Minister gave, but I am slightly perturbed by his answer to the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, to which I put my name. He said we need a lot more Knepps. Yes, but where will they go?

He went on to say that the Government have a strategic approach. I do not think they have. My noble friend is battling with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government on many issues at the moment, and he will be battling with the Treasury and the Department for Transport. This goes across government. The Government might think they have a strategy but, without a strategy that we can all look at, it will be dependent on the budget and annual spending plans of each department. It will be a horrible annual battle.

I hope my noble friend will reconsider this between now and another stage, because the more I have listened to on the Bill and the more I have talked to farmers, the more I am absolutely convinced that the only sensible way forward is for us to have a strategy to which we can have our input and support the Government. That will make life clearer and better for everybody in future. Not only will it protect our environment much better but it will help produce the food that we want. The way we are going, we will have to import a whole lot more food than we do at the moment; that will be the downside of the Bill.

Trade Bill

Debate between Earl of Caithness and Baroness Fookes

Committee stage & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 6th October 2020 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Fookes) (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, has withdrawn, so I now call the noble Earl, Lord Caithness.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, first, I thank my noble friend the Minister for the correspondence that we have had since our last discussion. I found his letter, which I got yesterday, very helpful. I also thank him for his continued efforts to assuage my concerns with regard to ISDS. He is getting there but he has not won yet. In his letter, he mentioned the Vattenfall case, because I brought that up with him and he kindly agreed to fill in some more detail for me. But surely the Vattenfall case merely confirmed that an ISDS was not necessary. It was actually the German Constitutional Court that sorted out the problem there. The courts, in an open and transparent way, must surely be the right way for trade disputes to be settled, rather than in the murky waters of an ISDS.

My noble friend also said that the UK had never faced an ISDS claim that had reached arbitration. That is absolutely right, and I think that the public reaction would have been a lot noisier and more visible to us all if a claim had reached arbitration. Surely the reason for the current situation is that our ISDS agreements tend to be with developing countries in which we are investing. Looking ahead, the situation will be very different if and when we sign a trade deal with the US, which has very big investments in this country.

It is interesting to note—and I would be interested in what the Minister thinks on this—that Canada, having had rather bad experiences with ISDS when it was part of NAFTA, withdrew from the ISDS in the new USMCA trade deal in order to get away from that difficulty. Unless we follow a somewhat similar pattern, I fear that the UK will get severely punished in the future.

I will pick up a theme started by the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, when he introduced this amendment and to which other noble Lords referred: the chilling effect of ISDS. In particular, my concern is the chilling effect on environmental regulations and environmental law in the future. ISDS has been used to challenge important regulations, such as those on fracking in Canada and, as I mentioned on Thursday, plain packaging for cigarettes in Australia. This has cost Governments in the countries involved a considerable amount of money. Governments have been reluctant to regulate in these areas because of the mere threat of an ISDS. If we are to fulfil the aim of the Prime Minister, which he stated to the party conference this morning, to have a green revolution to bring us back to economic prosperity, the one thing that we cannot afford is to have ISDS threats on environmental regulation hanging over us in the future.

What has not been raised so far in our debates is the report, Costs and Benefits of an EU-USA Investment Protection Treaty, which the former BIS department commissioned from the London School of Economics. Can my noble friend comment on it? It warned of going beyond

“the traditional core of favourable standards of treatment backed up by access to ISDS”,

containing

“provisions concerning the host state’s right to implement treaty-consistent measures to protect the environment”.

The report found that the UK would necessarily incur costs in defending itself against investor lawsuits, even if the UK wins, and that is something that has not happened to date. It goes on to say that it is

“virtually certain that such costs under an EU-US investment chapter will be higher than under the status quo”.

To quote from the report again,

“we suggest that an EU-US investment treaty would impose costs on the UK to the extent that it prevents the UK government from regulating in the public interest.”

That is exactly the point I have just been making: it is the chilling effect of ISDS. The report concludes that a treaty without ISDS would be a less costly option for the UK. As a minimum outcome, therefore, we should surely ditch ISDS as a matter of urgency, and I find it quite interesting that at least two of the countries with which we have rolled over continuity agreements, Morocco and South Africa, are ditching ISDS in other trade deals that they are doing.