Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 16th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, consider the tale of two African countries. In the late 1970s, as we have just heard, Kenya banned the hunting of elephants and the sale of tusks and saw an upsurge of poaching to such a degree that elephants were almost wiped out in that country. At almost exactly the same time, Zimbabwe—or Rhodesia, as it still was for a couple more years—made elephants the property of whoever’s land they were roaming on, with the result that there was an upsurge in numbers because, as Aristotle teaches, that which no one owns, no one will care for.

It can take an effort of will in a country like this to imagine what it is like to live next to some of these large mammals. We encounter them even before we go to school. They are presented to us in the first books that we see as toddlers, smiling, colourful and anthropomorphised. Then we come across them later as teenagers in documentaries, endangered, handsome and gracious—but of course that is not exactly how they seem when they are next door to you. A lion might carry off a child. An elephant will trample crops and possibly push over your dwelling. Rhinos and hippos are more dangerous still. Even the giraffe, which looks so graceful when we see it on television, competes for scarce water resources with local herders. So, if we want to preserve these animals and their habitats, we have to give local people an incentive to treat them as a renewable resource—in other words, to give them an incentive financially by being able, in a licensed and qualified way, to sell tusks, hides and, yes, hunting licences.

When South Africa decided to do something about the decline of white rhinos, it became almost the only place in the world where numbers stopped falling; 80% of white rhinos, which were nearly extinct in the rest of Africa, are now found in South Africa because it used trophy hunting and the revenue therefrom as a way of incentivising local people to become custodians—each to become a gamekeeper, if you like.

Last year I had the great privilege of spending some time visiting the northern parts of Pakistan, with beautiful, austere landscapes where there is an unusual mountain goat called the markhor, which has amazing screwdriver horns like a drill. It is a most magnificent animal. In the 20th century it was this close to extinction, with fewer than 500 left. The Pakistani authorities then began to auction a very small number of hunting licences, three or four a year. They now fetch immense sums: $500,000, or upwards of that in some cases. That money is reserved for the local communities. The people in those communities then make damn sure that no one comes near any of those animals, except the elderly post-reproductive ones that are marked for hunting. People who previously had no incentive to look after the numbers have, if you like, all become rangers in a way that overstretched Governments are not able to do. We made it everybody’s business.

This, it seems to me, is a question which pits aesthetics against intellect. It pits how we feel about something, our sentiment, against what we think is most in the interests of endangered species. Like my noble friend Lord Swire, I do not particularly like the image of American dentists squatting by fallen lions. Maybe it is that we all have a problem, on some deep psychological level, with dentists—I do not know. But it is not fundamentally for us in this House to consider the aesthetics; it is for us to consider the effects. Above all, surely that is why we are here: as a check on the radicalism of the popularly elected Chamber. It is exactly our job to think about the effects rather than simply about the headlines.

There is a difference between saying, “I disapprove of this thing”, or even “I find this thing unspeakably ugly”, and saying, “Therefore this thing should be banned”. That is not just a semantic difference. The difference between those two things contains the entirety of what we mean by a free society.

Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 12th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, we have been debating this amendment for some considerable time. There is a concern that we will not be able to get to the amendment with the real meat in it, so I will do my bit now.

I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, on her stamina and determination to do everything she can to protect animals from cruelty, harm and death no matter where they live. She has a reputation for being a doughty campaigner and is to be congratulated on agreeing to sponsor this Bill through the Lords. I have no interests to declare. I am not an animal expert but I have read the briefings.

This is a Bill that has government support. Originally, the measures would have been in the kept animals Bill, which was abandoned in favour of introducing various measures through Private Members’ Bills. This should have shortened the time taken to get measures on to the statute book. The glue traps Bill in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, was one such Bill; the Sharks Fin Bill in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, was another.

I apologise for not being present at Second Reading due to other commitments, but my noble friend Lord Rennard covered the ground very thoroughly at the time. Although not perfect, this Bill is short and to the point and bans the import into Great Britain of a trophy from an endangered animal that has been hunted. This trophy can be any part or derivative of an endangered animal that has been obtained by hunting.

We on the Liberal Democrat Benches fully support the aims and objectives of this Bill, as I believe do the Labour Benches. However, from the number of amendments that have been tabled, it is obvious that this Bill does not have unanimous support on the Government Benches. But it does have overall support across the whole House, as the hunting of wild game animals, while a sport that attracts those with unlimited resources to spend on their pursuits, is abhorrent to the vast majority of the Chamber and the general public.

Turning to Amendment 1, the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, gave—at length and very knowledgeably—the rationale for his amendment, which would in effect ensure that the Bill is not able to progress. The effect of this amendment is, first, to grant the Secretary of State alone the power to decide whether a legal prohibition applies that is beyond the scope of the proposed prohibition, which is intended to be a blanket ban. Secondly, the proposal is not a standard clause retained in conservation or animal welfare legislation. On that basis, we do not support this amendment.

I regret and apologise for the fact that I am not able to stay until the end of this evening’s business, which I suspect will be long-winded and repetitious. What we have before us this evening is a Minister of great integrity, knowledge and compassion alongside four female Members of the House from different political parties all attempting, on behalf of their parties, to enable the aims and objectives of this Bill to move towards ending animal trophy hunting by preventing the importation of those trophies into Great Britain.

I regret to say that, ranged on the other side, we have some of the landed gentry of the country—mostly hereditary Peers—doing their utmost to filibuster and talk the Bill out. They are entitled to express their views, of course. I generally have great regard for the contribution made to the work of this Chamber by the hereditary Peers, but I fear that, this evening, they will not do their reputation among their colleagues or the public at large any favours at all. Despite the words of the noble Lord, Lord Swire, the opposers of this Bill will take the opportunity this evening to attempt to kill it off by filibustering to ensure that there is no Report stage due to a shortage of time. They do this because they know that if the Bill got to Report, none of their amendments would be passed and they would be roundly defeated.

This tactic was used to talk out the hereditary peers by-elections Bill, despite what the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, said, and came mostly from a section of the Conservative Benches. The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, would have us believe that trophy hunting is of great benefit to all, including the animals. I take completely the point about conservation and economics but the view of the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, that the trophies themselves do not matter at all is breathtaking.

The hunting trophies Bill was in the Conservative 2019 manifesto. Although supporting the Conservative manifesto is not my main aim in life, I and my colleagues do support this Private Member’s Bill and are passionate about protecting endangered wild animals from the revolting practice of being killed for their body parts. In whatever way those opposing this Bill may argue their case, they are unlikely to get support from the Liberal Democrat Benches.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, after that speech, I should begin by declaring a few non-interests. I am not a hereditary Peer. I am not a landowner unless you count a small garden about half the size of this Chamber on the Hampshire/Berkshire border. I am not a trophy hunter, nor do I oppose the import of all trophies.

However, I speak in support of my noble friend Lord Caithness’s amendment. I go back to where he started, namely with the markhor—that is, Capra falconeri, the screw-horned goat that is the national animal of Pakistan. Last year, I was lucky enough to see the extraordinary landscapes where these animals live in Baltistan, Chitral and Hunza; there are also isolated pockets of them in Afghanistan and India. In fact, they were thought to be extinct in India as recently as the 1990s and were in the most extreme category of UN extinction watch as recently as the end of the last century—that is, until their numbers were revived through the carefully targeted sale of a very small number of hunting licences, the revenue from which is reserved to local communities. Those communities then have every incentive to preserve habitats and are in effect turned into so many gamekeepers that they ensure that no animals except the elderly, post-reproductive males marked for culling are in danger. The result of that change is that the markhor has rebounded immensely.

It is not the case that trophy hunting is always a tool of conservation. That is why I say that I am not against the whole concept, but I want to speak in favour of the distinction that this amendment makes. Let me give an obvious example from the other side. There is no evidence that the ban on whale hunting has had a detrimental effect. On the contrary, the recovery of whale numbers has been one of the unremarked miracles of the past couple of decades. We have seen an amazing bounce-back in the number of humpbacks and bowheads although, sadly, we have not yet seen the same for blue or gray whales.

Even there, there is a habitat aspect to things. A lot of whales are killed because they swallow fishing gear that has been discarded or get in clashes with vessels. However, I am not going to argue—I do not think that anyone else will—that a hunting ban there is ineffective or that a trophy ban would make a difference but, where we are talking about habitats, it is vital to give local people an incentive to conserve that habitat. I cannot put it better than my noble friend Lord Lucas just did: it is easy for us to be sentimental at a distance about lions, tigers, elephants and so on because we do not have to live next to them. Without any incentive to preserve their numbers, local people will naturally see them as, at the very least, competitors for resources but also as a danger. Without the right incentives, they will have every reason to hunt them to extinction, as I am afraid human populations have done to large mammals on every continent going back to our hunter/gatherer days.

This amendment draws a distinction, giving the Secretary of State a last-ditch power to decide where there would be an unintended consequence for conservation. By the way, I would love to have a general power to stop unintended consequences of legislation. Almost always you get the most unintended consequences from Bills that have been passed in response to some public campaign. People have not thought through all the implications and we hear exactly the arguments that we are hearing tonight, that the public demand this law. If you are presented with, as a general proposition, the idea that we should not kill magnificent animals, then of course, everyone will agree with that—I would, and I hope that everyone would. However, we are looking at ways in which to modify this legislation so as not to have a detrimental effect on conservation.

I do not want to be accused of filibustering, so I will keep this very brief and close by saying that, as I understand it, that is precisely the reason why we exist here as a second Chamber. What function do we have if not to act as a break on the necessary radicalism of the popularly elected House? Being here, we have the privilege to look beyond the headlines and to consider in full the implications and the potential unintended consequences of laws that have been drafted in a knee-jerk way. This legislation is precisely an example of such lawmaking. Therefore, it seems to me the proper role of this Chamber to approve it and to take out the parts of it that would have the most harmful impacts.

[Lord Trees (CB)]

My Lords, we have heard some very strong speeches, though many have had a rather tenuous connection with any particular amendment. I and others would like to speak to Amendment 34, which is much the most important and seeks to strengthen this Bill, if that might be allowed.