Anti-Corruption Strategy: Illegal Wildlife Trade

Lord Coaker Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Moon. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) on securing this important debate. I do not want to speak for long, but I felt it was important to make a short contribution to the debate. To be frank, I felt somewhat guilty that I have not spoken much on this issue in my time in Parliament. Like many people, over the past year or two I have been moved by some of the things that I have seen on television and by things that I have read. I have been moved by the devastating figures that have started to emerge, thanks to the work of people such as my hon. Friend and others in the Chamber, and by organisations outside this House, some of whom are with us today.

The world—and ourselves, as a developed nation and a Parliament—is at a crossroads. It is not that the Government are not doing anything and do not care; that would clearly be ridiculous and not true. We do care, and so do a significant number of people across the world. The criminal gangs represent a very small minority, but unless we tackle them and work with other countries with a greater sense of urgency—so that the issue becomes a greater priority for our country, for the various international organisations, for the EU, for the various policing bodies, for the United Nations and for the Organisation of Africa Unity, and so on—our grandchildren will not see a wild elephant, except in a photo or perhaps in a zoo, where we really do not want to see them. They will not see a wild tiger, a wild rhinoceros or many other species of plant or tree, or whatever. Unless we wake up to this, people’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren will look back at 2018 and say, “What were you doing? You were decision makers.”

We in Parliament make the laws. We set the priorities for our Government, and our Government, through the international organisations to which we belong, can demand that priorities are set and action taken. So the question is: what did you do? Where were you? What did you say? When I found out about this debate, it made me think I had better start speaking up. It is a challenge for me, let alone the Government. We must demand that the Government make the issue a priority. It is not a case of blame; it is a case of saying, “For Christ’s sake, let’s wake up. For goodness’ sake, let’s look and see what is going on.”

The figures say billions were made here, or billions were made there. We can argue about the figures, but countless billions of pounds are made by small numbers of gangs who are ruining our planet and our future. We must tackle them. We sometimes know who they are. We sometimes fail to implement existing laws and fail to take the proceeds of crime from people who have benefited from it, but why does that happen? The Minister does not want that to happen. The Prime Minister does not want that to happen. The Prime Minister of our dreams would not want that to happen. It does not matter which party is in power; it happens, and it carries on happening. The same can be said about the international bodies we belong to.

Billions of pounds are made. The figures produced by various people are shocking. When we see the pictures it brings tears to our eyes, but crying about it does not save a single elephant, rhinoceros or tiger. That is simply the starting point—the thing that wakes each of us up, to say, “We will not stand for this any longer.” Although we cannot wave a magic wand, we want to be able to say to our grandchildren that we did everything we possibly could. At the moment, I do not think I could say that. I will let others judge whether they could, but I could not. That is why I wanted to speak in this debate.

I do not want the Government to get defensive about this, but they could do more simply by saying, “We are going to put a new shirt on, dust ourselves down, see what the laws are, bang the desk and demand that we get better action”—from ourselves, but also from the police and the international organisations that we belong to. If that happened, it would not stop these things overnight, but I bet it would start moving things along.

Can we not accelerate things a bit? Do we really want to come back here in a year, or two or three, and say, “There are still elephants being poached for their ivory”? That was the plea of my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton and the hon. Member for Stirling (Stephen Kerr). Whatever the difficulties, the consultation has finished. I accept that it will not be easy, given the exemptions that will have to be made; but for goodness’ sake, we have been talking about an ivory ban for years. Can we not just get on with it somehow?

Other people know far more than I do about the laws and the difficulties—some will have had to go and witness them. I came here to say this to the Government. I know they want to do as much as they can, and they are doing so. That is true of us all. But let us not be the Parliament, or the Members, or the legislators who had to tell their grandchildren, “We’re sorry that those great wild animals no longer exist. We wanted to do more, but it was difficult to get people to work together, and the exemptions were difficult.” Whatever the challenges and difficulties, we owe it to our children and grandchildren, ourselves and the planet, to do better. That is the task before us.