Asked by: Matt Bishop (Labour - Forest of Dean)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Solicitor General, what recent steps she has taken to help ensure the effective prosecution of (a) environment, (b) heritage, and (c) wildlife crime in the Forest of Dean constituency.
Answered by Lucy Rigby - Solicitor General (Attorney General's Office)
This Government is committed to working with the police and other partners to protect the environment, including our wildlife and our heritage sites across the country. This includes the constituency of the Forest of Dean which is covered by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) Area South West.
Local CPS teams work alongside partner organisations in the three police force areas in the South West: Avon and Somerset, Devon and Cornwall, and Gloucestershire to tackle environment, heritage, and wildlife crime, including in the Forest of Dean constituency.
More broadly, this Government is introducing tougher measures to clamp down on anti-social behaviour, stronger neighbourhood policing, and robust laws to prevent farm theft and fly-tippers.
We have announced that the CPS will receive an additional £49m to support victims of crime and transform the services they provide to the public, and we are recruiting 13,000 more neighbourhood police and police community support officers across England and Wales.
The National Police Chiefs’ Council Wildlife and Rural Crime Strategy 2022-2025 provides a framework through which policing, and its partners, can work together to tackle the most prevalent threats and emerging issues which predominantly affect rural communities.
CPS prosecutors work closely with local police officers and officers from the National Wildlife Crime Unit to tackle all types of rural crime.
The CPS also provides legal guidance on wildlife, rural, and heritage crime, which is available to all its prosecutors to assist them in dealing with these cases. It also provides specialist training to ensure that its prosecutors have the expert knowledge needed to prosecute these crimes.