Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill

Lord Swire Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 16th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Swire (Con)]

My Lords, it is a very great pleasure to follow on from some of the speeches we have had so far in this debate today, not least the noble Lord, Lord St John—I second him in his praise for Tusk, an organisation for which I have raised money in the past and of which I know he continues to be a trustee—and the noble Lord, Lord Selkirk, about his cousin Iain Douglas-Hamilton, who I met in Kenya some years ago. I am aware of his work; he was, of course, one of the founders of Save the Elephants. I listened closely to what they said.

I was going to say that I have no dog in this fight, but I thought that might set a hare running. What I will say is that I have absolutely no desire to kill any of these particular animals myself, nor do I particularly like seeing photographs of pot-bellied Texan dentists with sets of improbable teeth kneeling next door to their fallen prey like Cecil the lion. We must all agree that the optics of that sort of behaviour are atrocious. But good legislation looks at unintended consequences not at headlines.

I was taken by the fact that paragraph 37 of the Explanatory Notes to the Bill talks about the financial implications of the Bill. Well, here is the problem: it only alludes to the financial implications of the Bill so far as it affects the United Kingdom. Of course, the financial implications of this Bill are surely about the negative consequences to the finances of those countries which would be affected were this Bill to become law. I note that my noble friend Lady Fookes quoted a letter, which I have just read online, from a whole raft of people across Africa and wider afield. But she did not refer to the letter in the Times—yesterday, I think it was—from the high commissioners and ambassadors from Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Tanzania, which makes a very different argument.

I gently ask my noble friend whether she has had any discussions with these high commissions and ambassadors, and if not, why not? Frankly, it is condescending to tell these countries how to run their internal affairs and to second-guess them as they struggle to keep poaching under control, very often risking the lives of their game rangers in so doing. What nobody has said so far today is what happens if these animals are not in some sense controlled. If there is no economic interest in preserving them, they run amok, running down crops, endangering lives and villages and becoming prey to even more poaching. That is the reality, so anyone who genuinely cares about animal welfare and the survival of species rather than favourable headlines must, by definition, oppose this Bill.

The British public will be rather amazed that we are debating this with the cost of living crisis, Ukraine and so forth, and I suspect a lot of them are, like me, made uneasy by the somewhat high-handed and neocolonial tone of this Bill. I think they expect better of us, as do those countries that will be affected by it, to which we should say, “We stand with you, we support you, we hear you and we will learn from you. We will work with you, not against you, to help put in place the best possible protocols which enhance conservation.” That should be our aim. I rather regret to say that this no doubt well-intentioned Bill does not achieve that. Regrettably, it suggests that if it were to become law, it would ensure the precise opposite.