Badgers

Lord Rotherwick Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley]

I do not think that it should. Our policy is evidence-based and we have taken every opportunity to acquire the latest and most up-to-date information from the pilot areas to refine the estimate of the badger population. All wildlife population estimates have uncertainty around them. Appropriate steps were taken to audit the process, including data checks and independent audits of these figures.

[Lord Rotherwick (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend recognise the vulnerability of deer in deer parks? Does he agree that they have to be looked at separately from the way that you look at cattle that succumb to TB? You cannot lock up deer from a deer park in a shed and humanely shoot them; they have to be slaughtered by high-powered rifles. What is my noble friend doing about the situation regarding the vulnerability to TB of deer in deer parks?

[Lord De Mauley]

My noble friend asks a specific question and I will, if I may, take it away to consider the point about deer in parks. As regards the suggestion that deer may be a reservoir of TB in wildlife as well, we have established that badgers are a particularly good—if I may use that word—host for TB. They are the part of wildlife on which we really have to focus.