Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 12th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, for bringing the Bill to the House and championing it. For the Green group, I express my strongest possible support for the Bill as it stands—and opposition to all the amendments.

I have been in your Lordships’ House for nearly four years, and I have to admit that I was rather surprised when I looked at the misnamed “grouping of amendments”. I have never seen this before: it is a list of 62 amendments in 62 groups. It is surprising that people who might perhaps regard themselves as champions of the traditions of the House have produced something that has not been seen in recent history—and I checked with someone who has been around the House for much longer. It could keep this House going for several days. Those who would champion the traditions and progress of the House appear to be heading in the opposite direction with this.

It is interesting to look at the gender balance of the names on the amendments: every single one is male. There is something to be said there. Only the other day, I had a conversation with a noble Lord about how it has often been put forward that, if we could hand over some countries in the global south to the women, and let the women run things, they would look different. That might be an interesting case study tonight.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

I understand what the noble Baroness is saying, but is she really implying that those people, such as myself, who put down amendments have no right to express an opinion on this, and that their views are valueless because they are not female?

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I would love to see a true balance of gender in contributions in your Lordships’ House, as I would love to see a balance of membership in it. Of course, we are a long way from that point here and in the other place.

Something else that joins the people expressing views here tonight in terms of moving the amendments is that these are a small number of people who appear to think that hunting is a sport. It might be something like a sport if you gave the elephants, lions and birds guns but, until you do that, it is a slaughter—and that is what is being supported by the proposers of amendments to this very modest and heavily supported Bill.

It is noticeable that the amenders and the people sitting in the Chamber tonight are all largely sitting on the Benches on one side. But this was a 2019 Conservative manifesto promise—to ban imports of hunting trophies for endangered species. The intent for such legislation was in the Queen’s Speeches in 2019 and 2022. A 2022 public opinion survey showed that 80% of the British public support a ban on the imports of hunting trophies. Again, for those champions of tradition who say that we are the unelected House and that we should not stand in the way of the will of the House of Commons, the Commons passed this Bill with only minor amendments in March 2023.

I want to pick up just one point expressed by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, who spoke about closeness to nature. We are talking about imports of these trophies into the UK. Practices of indigenous people embedded in local landscapes is one thing; a UK dentist or aristocrat bringing back a trophy from Africa is something else again. So I ask everyone proposing amendments to this Bill to search their conscience to ask themselves what they are really doing in the Committee this evening.

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Moved by

[Lord Robathan]

5: Clause 1, page 1, line 3, leave out “an animal to which this Act applies” and insert “a species classed as threatened on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List and where that list records trophy hunting as a threat to that species”

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, I beg to move the amendment standing in my name. I do not wish to repeat everything that has been said before; it is getting late, and I am sure many people, like me, would rather go home. But I will say a few general points about this. Unfortunately, because of a medical appointment, I could not speak properly at Second Reading. I also say to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, that I find it strange that men are not allowed to have an opinion on this. I note that there are six women on the Opposition Benches, against one man. Does that mean that their opinions carry more weight than that of men? I hope not; I was quite keen on equality rather than discrimination. I am just saying, as the noble Baroness has intervened from a sedentary position, that on the Opposition Benches there is just one man.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

I just intervene to say that the noble Lord is the opposition; we are the other side, as far as I can see, this evening—so I think the nomenclature is wrong.

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[Lord Robathan (Con)]

This is a Private Member’s Bill, not a government Bill, apparently, and on the Opposition Benches we have five to one—sorry, six to one; maths is not necessarily my strong point.

[Lord Mancroft (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for giving way. The noble Lord opposite makes a very interesting point. What the Government are doing today is passing socialist legislation, which is an odd thing for a Conservative Government to be doing. It is supported entirely on the Labour and Liberal Democrat Benches and clearly has very little support on our Benches. It is an odd thing for the Government to do. I dare say that if there was ever a day when the parties on the other side got into government—I think it is very unlikely—I suppose they would pass right-wing legislation, but I do not know.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

Anyway, to go back to the matter in hand, I would say that, when I and several other noble Lords here met a delegation from countries from sub-Saharan Africa, as I recall, there were two female African Ministers who came to talk to us—so it is not purely men who take a view on this.

[Lord Swire (Con)]

Just for clarification, when these Ministers and MPs took all the trouble to come from Africa to put their point over, is my noble friend aware of how many of those who support the Bill actually had the politeness to meet them?

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

Yes, I am indeed aware: none. Which was a pity, and it was especially a pity that my noble friend Lady Fookes did not come to hear what had to be said by people who actually know a great deal about the issue because they live with it.

I said I would make some general points because I was unable to speak properly on Second Reading. I have a farm in Leicestershire. I farm for conservation, in my opinion—conservation and subsidy, but the latter is not doing so well at the moment. It is covered in birds and hares. I also shoot, but I only shoot birds and animals that I can eat. I certainly do not want to shoot trophies, such as described by the proponents of the Bill; indeed, I find it rather distasteful. But that is not really the point.

My first point is that this Bill is neo-colonialist. I find it extraordinary that the left backs it, because we are trying to tell independent countries in Africa and elsewhere how wicked their policies are. The second point is that we are ignoring the wishes of these countries, especially those from sub-Saharan Africa. To suggest that we replicate the money that is made from trophy hunting with overseas development assistance is basically treating Africans—nations and others—as supplicants. It is an arrogant zeal that pushes this forward. We are treating them as people who are unable to manage their own wildlife, or indeed their economies, without us telling them what to do.

As we have just heard, this is a terrible Bill in so many ways. It is absurd. I do not think that anybody has ever hunted a mollusc as a trophy, but there it is. It is almost unenforceable and is pretty unintelligible. My noble friend the Minister, for whom I surprisingly have great respect, talked about dancing on a legal pin. Well, should the Bill come to a court—I hope that it never does—there will certainly be the possibility of dancing on legal pins here.

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

I just want to clarify one matter. I actually feel quite strongly that we need to improve this Bill. Therefore, we need to see it on Report. Earlier, the Minister said something really significant; it was the first time that I have heard the Government say that they want a compromise. He said that he does not want the Bill in its current form but wants an improvement to it. We are teasing out different possibilities. I certainly disagree with him on that point, but we want this Bill to go through Committee and on to Report—just as an improved Bill that is, as the Minister said, fit for purpose, serves the manifesto promise that we made and, crucially, answers the very real questions on the submission of those five or six African countries.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend because I will come on to a compromise in a minute.

This Bill is of course a manifesto commitment left over from 2019. It was probably put in, rather surprisingly, by a former Prime Minister to placate somebody close to him. As somebody who was a Member of the House of Commons for 23 years, I can promise those who talk about 86%—or whatever it is—of people asked about trophy hunting not approving of it that this is not something that exercises most people on the streets of London, Manchester Blaby or Leeds. Furthermore, the Bill ignores the advice of the Government’s own body, the Joint Nature Conservation Committee.

I go back to what my noble friend just raised. Let us have a compromise that promotes conservation—I am absolutely a conservationist on my farm—fulfils the manifesto commitment to ban the importation of endangered species and listens to the Africans and others who oppose this Bill. Let us not listen to the arrogant zeal of activists.

I turn to the specific amendment. It goes to the heart of the issue, which is conservation, and asks us to listen to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s red list, which concerns species that are seen as threatened by trophy hunting—if they are. The Minister just mentioned CITES. Let us stick with that, then; that would be something useful, although I do not think that you are allowed to trade in anything that is on a CITES list anyway. Let us stick conservation at the heart of this Bill, not the sort of patronising, arrogant zeal that we see from a lot of people on this. I beg to move.

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak in support of my noble friend Lord Robathan’s Amendment 5. I declare an interest, as stated in the register, as a partner in a sporting estate in Scotland.

I note my noble friend the Minister’s earlier words. However, I echo other noble friends in the Chamber: this is a critical amendment that would return the Bill closer to the original Conservative Party manifesto commitment and ban imports from the trophy hunting of endangered animals. When Henry Smith proposed this Private Member’s Bill, he stated:

“The world’s wildlife faces an extinction emergency of extraordinary proportions. We have to do everything we can to support conservation”.


We now understand that we all support that, but I am familiar with the high importance of hunting, which can involve taking trophies in financing conservation efforts and in the protection and restoration of habitats and ecologies that support the species being hunted.

In this country, it is of limited national economic benefits, but it can make a material impact at a local level in relatively disadvantaged communities. When we look overseas—to countries in Asia and Africa, for example—the impact is much greater. Revenues from hunting can be the key financial support for conservation efforts. I understand that hunting may be distasteful to many, but conservation efforts funded by that hunting are universally welcomed. What right do we in this rich country have to cut off that funding and send a signal to the rest of the world that they should do likewise? Why should we make decisions that put out of work people around the world whose interests are also best served in ensuring a surplus of these species, potentially turning hunters into poachers?

The globally accepted definitive authority on threatened species is the IUCN red list. This classifies species into nine categories according to their level of endangerment, from “not evaluated” to “extinct”. The amendment identifies “threatened”, which incorporates “critically endangered” and “vulnerable”. That is one more than the manifesto commitment. Dr Challender of Oxford University, and colleagues, showed that less than a quarter of the 73 CITES-listed mammal species that have been imported as hunting trophies since 2000 fall into the “threatened” definition and 60% are of “least concern”. The same work showed that nearly 80% of imports were from countries where populations of the hunted species were stable, increasing or abundant.

The amendment brings in the concept of trophy hunting itself as a threat to the species being hunted. Analysis of the red list by Challender, Dickman, Roe and Hart showed that

“legal hunting for trophies is not a major threat”

to any of the species imported to the UK as trophies since 2000. In fact, the analysis concludes that trophy hunting is not listed as a threat to the survival of any species. The positive impact of hunting on threatened species is well illustrated by Michael ‘t Sas-Rolfes and Dr Emslie in their article in the Conversation:

“South Africa and Namibia are the two countries with the most African rhinos. In 1970, before legal hunting was introduced, they jointly held about 1,950 white rhinos … That number had risen to about 16,600 by 2017 … the biological and socio-economic benefits generated by these hunts … can boost conservation performance through enhanced population growth and funding”.


Returning to the Challender analysis, only 10 endangered species have been imported to the UK as hunting trophies since 2000, including ranched animals, which would not have been bred without hunting as an objective. Therefore, I question why this Bill is identifying over 6,200 species. How will our Border Force cope with this burden of determining which species or subspecies an animal part may be from and whether it is a trophy, has been hunted, or where the importer lives? How much simpler and more targeted to rely on IUCN red list designations.

This is an important amendment, returning the Bill to its original intention and supporting conservation efforts globally. Further to comments on earlier groups, these amendments, and this one in particular, are carefully designed to turn a damaging, emotionally driven Bill into legislation which genuinely will support conservation.

[Lord Mancroft (Con)]

My Lords, I support this amendment. We have been told that the motivations behind this Bill are the manifesto commitment and public opinion. I am not particularly enthusiastic about either of those things, but there is no doubt that this amendment does return the Bill to the manifesto commitment that was given. If that is what the Government are hanging their hat on, as they appear increasingly to have done during the summer, then they should accept this amendment. If they say, “Well, we can’t do that because that will return the Bill to the House of Commons”, well, they have had the timetable for this Bill, as they have for any Bill, in their gift throughout, so it is their fault and not ours that we are debating it at this late hour.

A point was raised earlier about public opinion. We have had “public opinion” thrown at us—that 80% or 90% of people support this. The reality is that the people support it because they think it is a conservation measure. When it is explained to them—as it has been by the IUCN, with its rather more nuanced and in-depth research into public opinion—that actually, it does not help conservation, less than 50% support it. The number goes right down.

The polls that put it up at 80% or 90% are the usual incredibly biased animal rights polls, which we have seen for 20 or 30 years in this country. They say, “Do you want to rip a small animal to shreds and enjoy every minute of it, relishing in its blood?” You get 99% on that one; if you have these sorts of ridiculous questions, of course you do. The reality is that we should not and must not run our country by public opinion poll.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

I was in the House of Commons for 23 years. I do not know if I achieved anything useful; I did try. During those 23 years, I got an enormous amount of correspondence—letters and latterly emails. To my certain knowledge, I did not get one letter, email or even telephone call worrying about hunting trophies.

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

I got one actually, over more than 23 years.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

You got one, but you were there for longer than I was.

[Lord Mancroft (Con)]

Well, it was lovely to have that domestic entertainment, but the point I was trying to make is that we should not be basing serious legislation on rather dubious public opinion polls. In-depth research is useful, but the ballot box is the real thing that we do. I do not think we should be doing this on public opinion polls, but we have an opportunity to take the Bill back to the original manifesto commitment, if that is what everybody is so obsessed about.

I notice, however, that most manifestos have God knows how many items in them which nobody takes any notice of at all. They discard them at will when they are not interested in them, then grab them and hang their hats on them when they think they are very important. I must admit that my noble friend Lord Robathan is absolutely right, in that I do not see queues of people going around Parliament Square waving placards because of this Bill or issues like it. There are more important things on their agenda.

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[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, as I said earlier, I spoke at some length on the first amendment and covered many of these points. However, to address this precise amendment, it would narrow the scope of the ban to species considered threatened on the IUCN red list. Where this assessment identifies trophy hunting as a threat, it would remove the power for the UK Government to determine species in scope, which the Bill currently does through annexes A and B of the wildlife trade regulations. This amendment contradicts Clause 2, which clearly sets out the species in scope of the import ban and would remove the power for the UK Government to determine species in scope. With that in consideration, I respectfully ask my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, I note that almost all the speeches have been in favour of this amendment. That is because it is about conservation. I am a conservationist—I think everyone who has spoken is a conservationist—but this Bill, which my amendment aims to improve, is not about conservation. I find that very distressing—I really do.

The two noble Baronesses on the Front Bench said that they had letters from people supporting a trophy Bill when they were in the Commons. They may have done, but I remember a rather dreadful organisation called 38 Degrees, which ran campaigns the whole time. I discovered that some of my constituents who wrote to me and emailed me on standard responses that were given by 38 Degrees had not even sent them themselves; they were sent for them. We all know how campaigns can work.

I am disappointed that the proposer of the Bill and the Minister do not think that we need to highlight conservation in this Bill. I was not going to divide the House because it is time for my bed; I am getting rather old.

[A noble Lord]

You are younger than Joe Biden.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

I am younger than Joe Biden. However, my wife and my children in particular tell me how old I am.

[Noble Lords]

No!

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

They do. Because people are urging me to, I think I will test the opinion of the House.