Isle of Wight: Island Designation Status and Landscape Protection

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Tuesday 6th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Pauline Latham (in the Chair)]

I will call Bob Seely to move the motion, and I will then call the Minister to respond. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Isle of Wight island designation status and landscape protection.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Latham.

Islands have a unique place in the identity of the British Isles. We are a collection of islands, and some are bigger than others. Our islands are marked out by their sense of history, their sense of community and the uniqueness of their geography, their wildlife and, in some cases, their geology. For my constituency of the Isle of Wight, I will make the case for a specific island designation. I do not propose to have a national park on the Island, but a new designation in UK landscape protection, which I believe should be introduced not just for the Isle of Wight. It would be of considerable benefit to other islands in the UK, and it certainly could be seen as a UK-wide designation, because many Scottish islands may wish to take part. So too might Anglesey and the Scilly Isles, so it would stretch across Scotland, Wales and England.

My plan for an island designation for the Isle of Wight is supported by the Isle of Wight Council and our area of outstanding natural beauty partnership. It would effectively put into law a landscape designation given to us by our UNESCO biosphere status, even if that was initially a shadow designation on the way to becoming something more legally binding in the UK—as we know, the UNESCO biosphere is not legally binding. I know the Minister has heard my argument very recently, and I am looking forward to seeing her on the 13th. I officially invite her to the Isle of Wight, so that she can see with her own eyes some of the points that I am trying to make about the physical unity of the Island. I would be most grateful if she did so, and I look forward to seeing her on the Island very soon.

In support of my argument, I will explain why the Island has an exceptionally rare diversity of animal life, marine habitat and geology, and why I feel it should have been much more valued over the years for its uniqueness and value to the UK than it has been by policy makers. Let me kick off my argument by saying that the Isle of Wight is pretty much geographically unique. In the words of our AONB, it is a microcosm of the whole of England. The east resembles Kent and Sussex, with its thick hedges, copses and woods. The stone walls and small sandy bays in the south, around the undercliff, feel rather like Cornwall. Where I live in the south-west, the windswept chalk downs that roll to the sea resemble parts of Dorset, and the creeks of Yarmouth, Newtown and Wootton in the north of the Island resemble those in Devon.

To pull all that into terms that geographers might recognise—I apologise for repeating what I said in a recent debate, but I want to get this on the record, because it shows the variety of habitats in the Island—we have a broad mix of new woodland; maritime cliff and slope, including our unique chines; soft sandstone, which has been moulded and shaped by waters and rivers as they flow to the sea; low calcareous grassland; our coastal and flood plain; our grazing marsh; lowland meadows; reedbeds; and lowland dry acidic grassland. We have fens on the island, as well as saline lagoons and mudflats. We have coastal sand dunes, coastal vegetative shingle and the lowland heathland. Beautiful chalk downs, with their rare flowers, insects, adders and lovely things like that, provide the Island’s spine, which runs from Bembridge in the east, past me in Mottistone and Brighstone, and all the way down to the Needles in the west.

All that is in one compact island, which is 30 miles from east to west, and 15 miles from north to south—from Cowes at the top to beautiful St Catherine’s down at the bottom. It is one of the most diverse areas of England and one of the three most diverse areas in the south-east of England, along with the New Forest and Surrey heaths, and I would respectfully argue that our variety of wildlife and habitat diversity is greater than in both of those two places—not that I wish to be critical of them, because they are unique and fantastic as well. Our English landscape in miniature, and our range of habitats, means that we continue to be home to species that are unique to the Island or, perhaps more importantly for the UK as a whole, are not flourishing on the mainland but are either less threatened or better off on the Island. We do not have grey squirrels, although one once got on a ferry and the ferry had to be stopped. We do not have escaped mink or escaped deer, but we do have red squirrels, dormice and water voles. I thank Helen Butler of the Isle of Wight Red Squirrel Trust for the important work that she does.

We have some of the UK’s rarest bats; I thank our wonderful Isle of Wight Natural History and Archaeological Society for listing all 17 bat species. We have some unique and highly rare ones, such as the greater horseshoe bat, Bechstein’s bat and the grey long-eared bat. Mammals aside, I asked Natural England for a list of rare species of insects and flora and fauna. It came back with 28 species, which include early gentian, field cow-wheat and wood calamint. On rare insects, the Island is the sole British location for the Glanville fritillary butterfly as well as the reddish buff moth. I thank Jim Baldwin for his excellent work in cataloguing the many moths that we have on the Island—not an easy job, but somebody has to do it.

For our birds, the Solent is a Ramsar-designated site, and we have wetlands of international importance of both sides of the Solent. I hope that the Minister will be interested to note that, on the Island specifically—in Brading, Newtown and Western Yar—marshes and estuaries are highly important for migrating birds. We have five that are rare or threatened, including terns, teals and a variety of plover. Brading marshes is a site of special scientific interest, a special area of conservation, a Ramsar-designated wetland and a RSPB nature reserve—it is not in the AONB. Forestry England and the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation reintroduced sea eagles in England on the Isle of Wight, and I thank Steve Egerton-Read, Forestry England’s project officer for the sea eagles, for showing me around Barding marshes, I think about a year ago, when we spotted—I think—a female sea eagle perched on a tree looking for breakfast. Buzzards, once rare, are relatively plentiful, and we have a healthy population of adders.

As regards our marine environment, the area surrounding the Isle of Wight is protected by maritime conservation zones, special protection zones and special areas of conservation. Again, I asked Natural England for a list of species that I should be aware of. It said that there are 26 species around the Island that are nationally scarce or globally vulnerable. We are a relative haven for many different types of species, whether on land or on sea. That is an important part of an island designation for me, because it would include the marine environment, human environment and landscape environment—a bit like a UNESCO biosphere but in UK law.

I shall not list all the very rare marine species, because I am respectful of people’s time, but they include native oysters, both our varieties of native seahorses—the short-snouted and the long-snouted—varieties of jellyfish, rays and other species. We also have seagrass meadows in Osborne bay, Yarmouth and Bouldnor. Indeed, those seagrass meadows are being used to transplant seagrass to the other side of the Solent—into the Beaulieu river—so the relative strength of our natural world is being used to support others. We also might be doing a project to reintroduce UK crayfish back into the Isle of Wight, because the UK population of indigenous crayfish has been decimated by the American crayfish, which, like the grey squirrel, was imported and proved to be far more aggressive and predatory.

Geologically, along the south-west of the Island, we have a near complete exposure of cretaceous coast. We have this stuff called wealden rock. It is orange and it produces dinosaur bones. In most of the UK, it flows and undulates well underneath the surface, but it sticks up in the south-west of the Island over an area of about 11 miles, and there is a little patch in Sandown in the east as well. The sea and tides gently wash away that coastline, and that is why we have the richest dinosaur finds in Europe. I mentioned a family dinosaur last time—I will not go there again, because we do not have time. The undercliff, a breathtakingly beautiful part of the Island on the south side, is the most geologically unstable part of Europe.

What does all that mean? I am not just listing this because I want island designation for my constituency—everyone could say something similar about their constituencies, although clearly the Island is unique and special. I am making the point that our variety, diversity and depth of habitats and our different types of wildlife, flora, fauna, insects, and marine and animal life are pretty much unique in the UK.

The Island should have had a special and unique role in this country’s protected landscapes, but it has not. Our landscape and natural world has been celebrated by many different types of artist over the years. J.B. Priestley, one of the great 20th century authors, who lived on the Island, said the Island should be Britain’s first national park. Sadly, we missed that boat. I am not arguing for that; I am arguing for an island designation. Even before Priestley—he wrote “An Inspector Calls” when he was living in the village next to me—our Island’s uniqueness was celebrated by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and by Keats, who wrote in Endymion:

“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever”,

allegedly about Shanklin chine—one of our wonderful geological chines. Britain’s greatest artist J.M.W. Turner sketched and painted on the Island. Algernon Swinburne, another great Victorian poet, lived in Bonchurch. Indeed, the Freshwater and Bonchurch sets of the 19th century were heavily influential in the UK. Julia Margaret Cameron pioneered early portrait photography on the Island in Freshwater. In 1850, the daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray said:

“Is there no one who is commonplace here? Is everybody either a poet, or a genius, or a painter”?

I am tempted to say, “Yes.”

The Island has one of the most painted coastlines in Britain, along with north Yorkshire and Cornwall. We have not done enough with our artistic and cultural heritage. Sadly, we have forgotten far too much of it since world war two—that is another story.

We have a single Island-wide designation: the UNESCO biosphere, which was awarded to us in 2019, and I thank everyone involved in that, including Joel Bateman, Richard Grogan and many others, but it comes with no legal standing in the UK. The problem is that instead of being treated as a single whole, we had some guy from the Ministry turn up in the mid-1960s and parcel the Island out into five blotches of AONB. I found that incredibly frustrating because people can go to considerably larger AONBs on the mainland, for example, driving through bits of the Cotswolds, and some of it is pretty flat and quite ordinary and boring, but it is part of a greater whole. It is included because it is part of a greater whole and there is a greater beauty around it.

I find it bizarre because if anywhere should be treated as a single whole in the UK, it is a relatively small island, even if it has lots of different types of habitat. It is a single whole with many habitats within it, all of which feed and function off one another. The Isle of Wight has been parcelled as 52% AONB, which is almost entirely focused on lowland heathland. The extraordinary Brading Marshes and the dryland around them were not included in the AONB, and many other parts of the west and the south were not included and are now under development pressure.

We are a relative refuge for wildlife, but we are also more vulnerable than parts of the mainland because we are finite and not that large. As Natural England notes, finite landscape is being damaged at pace. Its report says:

“Urban development is spreading, with waste disposal sites, extensive holiday and industrial developments and caravan parks blurring the edge of settlements.”

In the past 50 years, we have lost some species. The extent to which rural landscapes have been disturbed on the Island by urban development has increased by nearly 30%. That figure was applicable until 2007, and it is worse now. Some of our rivers have been badly modified and damaged.

Even when we are protected by the AONB, we have seen that sometimes that is not enough. There is something I am working on that I will mention because I want the Minister to be aware of it and I have written to the Secretary of State about it. Under section 191 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, there are time limits on the enforcement of planning conditions that prevent planning authorities from taking action on historical breaches of planning. Even if that breach is minor, immunity can then be granted from planning conditions as a whole, which then permits development that should not take place.

On the Isle of Wight, we have one pretty awful development that exemplifies this problem: Chine Farm. A minor breach of condition years ago involving camping in a field not specified by planning conditions has now been leveraged to permit the siting of static caravans all year round. That is in a site of special scientific interest on a heritage coastline in an AONB. I have written to the Secretary of State on numerous occasions about closing this damaging loophole, which affects me and others.

The purpose of the Island park designation would be to cover the entirety of the Island. It would treat the Island as a single whole. It would unite maritime and landscape protection in one designation, and common sense suggests that on an island this is the sort of unified approach that we should be taking not only to landscape management but to supporting farmers. If all my farmers on the Island could, for example, have Farming in Protected Landscapes funding, they would be able to do things like planting more hedgerows and planting copses, to join up our natural realm into a single whole. We would have these natural corridors, whether hedgerows or copses. In fact, I saw some of those being planted last weekend, at the Isle of Wight sheepdog trials. It was great to see that, and I thank Ian Wheeler very much for his work.

An island park would assume a basic standard, when it came to planning and housing, akin to that of an AONB. If the Minister is asking what an island designation should consist of, the basic building block is AONB throughout—unless there is an exception for development. That is the first point. The second point is better, more traditional standards in planning and beautifying, which is an important part of our planning and housing ideas anyway, of our towns and villages, to respect the traditional building methods, whether they involve traditional Isle of Wight stone, which is pretty much unique to the Island—we see it a little bit in west Dorset—or patterned red brick, as seen in Newport.

That means that large-scale housing development, completely inappropriate for islands, would be banned in favour of small-scale development in existing communities. Pleading an exceptional circumstance, which I hope we have negotiated with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, would allow the Island to focus overwhelmingly on finding homes for our local population and not have to fit into arbitrary targets, which take absolutely no account of the fact that the Isle of Wight is separated by sea and is an island.

An island park designation would also serve as branding. There are 56 food producers on the Island. It would help them to brand their products better, and it would help with tourism if people saw that they were going somewhere that valued nature and had an extraordinarily rich natural world.

How would this come about? The Glover review recommended

“a wider range of…systems of landscape protection”.

I hoped that that was going to mean primary legislation. Might it mean primary legislation? If not, a second option would be to amend the Isle of Wight County Council Act 1971—if I came high up in the private Member’s Bill ballot, would that be an option? A third option would be to extend the AONB, but that is incredibly time-consuming; it takes, seemingly, years—up to five to 10 years. Therefore I am wondering whether there is another way of looking at this by getting some kind of shadow designation, so that if the Government introduced further environmental Bills and Acts in future, island parks, akin to an AONB and meaning higher standards—with opt-outs for job creation, because that is really important on islands—would be something that could appeal, not only to the Isle of Wight but, potentially, to the Isles of Scilly, to the Western Isles of Scotland and to Anglesey. This is potentially a really attractive idea.

To sum up, the Isle of Wight is unique. I do not think it has been valued enough in the last 50 to 60 years. We should have been a national park—we are not—but our natural habitat is unique. The variety of our habitat is unique. The wildlife that we help to protect and that finds a refuge from the mainland of the UK is relatively unique. Our tourism could really do with the sense of the Island being an island park—that is not a national park; it is a different designation. I think that if we could work towards that, it would be of huge benefit. I do not want to see the Island becoming overdeveloped in the coming decades, because that will ruin what is unique and special about it, certainly for as long as we are separated by sea from the mainland.

I will leave the Minister with a final thought. The Government are committing to designating 30% of land as protected. I know that we have our patchwork of protections, but a single, encompassing whole would, I think, enable the Government to meet their targets. In the Island’s case, it is absolutely deserved, because of our contribution to the natural world through our different habitats and our geology. Therefore I look forward to the Minister coming down to the Island very soon to talk with me further about this and I look forward to discussing it with her when we meet on 13 June.

Trophy Hunting Imports Ban: Endangered Species

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered banning trophy hunting imports and the protection of endangered species.

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma, as I do not believe I have had the pleasure before. I also welcome the Minister to her place. Before I properly begin this important debate, I would like to take the opportunity to pay tribute to a dear friend and colleague, Sir David Amess. Sir David was incredibly passionate about the problem of trophy hunting imports, and inspired colleagues across the House with his enthusiasm and leadership on the issue.

This debate takes place in the context of COP26, a conference on protecting the future of our planet and showing British leadership on global issues. Unfortunately, the Government’s lack of action on their commitment to ban trophy hunting demonstrates a failure to show global leadership in protecting our planet, which is not just about carbon emissions but about protecting and preserving biodiversity and endangered species.

I would like to make three key points. First, trophy hunting damages conservation efforts around the world; therefore, the Government’s commitment to ban trophy hunting is extremely important and welcome. Secondly, it is a policy with overwhelming public and parliamentary support; there is no reason to delay its implementation. Thirdly, this is not just a domestic issue. It is about Britain showing leadership in conservation on a global stage.

Action is needed urgently to show that, as well as convening world leaders in Glasgow this week to talk about protecting the planet for future generations to come, we are also giving those generations the chance to live alongside magnificent animals such as African lions, polar bears and many others that are being hunted to extinction. I will conclude by asking the Minister to assure the House that legislation is imminent and that this practice, which nobody doubts is wrong, will be banned immediately, demonstrating global leadership and significantly impacting on the practice of trophy hunting by UK citizens.

Taking each of those points in turn, the impact of trophy hunting is enormous. It threatens the already tiny populations of endangered species such African lions. Even putting aside the morality of killing animals for fun, it is not a sustainable industry. Zimbabwe was forced to impose a moratorium on hunting lions in 2013 because numbers were so low. During that moratorium, the survival rate of lions in the Hwange national park, the home of Cecil the lion, almost doubled. A similar moratorium in Zambia saw lion numbers double, showing the damaging effects of hunting on endangered populations.

It is not just about extinction. Trophy hunting is damaging evolution and rendering these magnificent animals less fit for their environments. Hunters seek to kill the biggest and most magnificent animals, which in turn means that only the smaller and weaker animals breed and reproduce. Humans are interfering with Darwin’s principle of the survival of the fittest because the fittest are not surviving. This puts these animals at serious risk of changes, such as climate change, or of predators. The gene pool of the African lion has shrunk by 15% in the last century. Heads and bodies of lions today are significantly smaller than they were just 30 years ago.

In the Addo elephant national park in South Africa, 98% of adult female elephants have been reported as tuskless—without the tusks they use to find food and water as well as to defend themselves. In the nearby Kruger national park, where hunting is prohibited, just 3% of elephants are tuskless. Many of those elephants will now have died, and as climate change accelerates, the same fate may befall many others.

It is a long-held argument of hunters and hunting lobby groups that shooting animals actually preserves animal populations through the fees that the hunters pay to kill these majestic animals. This is far from the truth. A report co-authored by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation and international hunting group CIC—the International Council for Game and Wildlife Conservation—has found that hunting companies contribute only 3% of their revenue to local communities.

The fees paid by hunters for killing an animal do not even cover the cost of keeping that single animal alive up to that point. To take the example of Cecil the lion, about which we have all heard—he was killed in 2015 in the Hwange reserve in Zimbabwe—the cost to the park authorities of protection to keep Cecil alive until he was 12 years old was about $1.5 million, but the dentist who killed him paid just $50,000.

Furthermore, it is not true that allowing trophy hunting deters poaching. A US congressional study has found that rhino poaching in the last decade has soared even as the South African Government have encouraged trophy hunting. Nature tourism is much more effective as a tool to support conservation. It not only generates much greater revenues than trophy hunting, but creates more and better-paid jobs for local people. Since Kenya stopped trophy hunting and prioritised nature tourism, tourism in Kenya is generating nearly $1 billion per year. Kenya has benefited financially from stopping hunting.

Trophy hunting is a reprehensible practice that goes against nature. By killing the biggest and best of the race, it is leaving entire species doomed to suffer the evolutionary consequences. It does not bring economic benefit to the area or support conservation in anything like the way that nature tourism does. Does the Minister agree with me that trophy hunting is abhorrent and that we should do everything we can to stop it?

Turning to my second point, I know this is only a 30-minute debate, but I hope the Minister will appreciate that a great many colleagues would have wished to participate if we had had longer. This is an issue of great cross-party significance. Polls consistently show that over 80% of the British public wish to ban trophy hunting imports, and a March 2021 poll noted that 85% were in favour of this happening as soon as possible.

It was heartening to see the commitment to bring forward a ban on trophy hunting imports in the Queen’s Speech earlier this year under the animals abroad Bill, but I and other parliamentarians are dismayed at the progress—or lack of progress—it is making. Every month that passes is another month during which British hunters are killing majestic animals such as lions, leopards and polar bears, and bringing their gruesome trophies back to the UK. Over 170 Members, on a cross-party basis, have signed the early-day motion in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) calling for action on trophy hunting imports as soon as possible. Many people such as me do not sign EDMs, and there would be many more signatures if we did.

Will the Minister explain why we are yet to see the animals abroad Bill, despite the fact that the consultation on trophy hunting imports closed in February 2020, nearly two years ago? Covid is no excuse: people do not need to be together to consider the consultation document. It is rumoured that the animals abroad Bill has been indefinitely. Will the Minister please explain exactly what the reservations are? After all, the Bill commands overwhelming public and parliamentary support, which leads to my third point.

As mentioned previously, this week our Government are hosting the COP26 conference in Glasgow, where world leaders and others have gathered to discuss how we can protect the planet for generations to come. That is not just about protecting the planet for humans; we have a responsibility not to eliminate magnificent and powerful species and to conserve the work with nature. We cannot make the laws of other countries, but we can in this Parliament reduce the number of British people taking part in trophy hunting. If we ban the import of trophies, we will have a significant impact on the number of British trophy hunters killing endangered species around the world.

Furthermore, our Government talk about the importance of being a global leader in the conservation and protection of endangered species, yet it remains legal in this country to import the body parts of animals killed for entertainment. Sadly, we are not a world leader in this sphere. France and Australia have already implemented bans on trophy hunting imports of endangered species and have seen no negative consequences on their conservation efforts as a result. The Netherlands has gone further, as we would like the UK to, and has banned virtually all imports of trophies from hunting abroad. Making a commitment such as the Netherlands has will enable us to push other countries for stronger commitments on animal welfare and conservation.

I want to see Ministers pushing other Governments to end trophy hunting imports too. It is a global problem. Will the Minister confirm whether the Prime Minister or any other Government Members at COP26 this week have raised the issue of banning trophy hunting imports with the United States Government? The US is by far the largest importer of hunting trophies in the world, but we will not be able to put pressure on it to stop until we ban the practice ourselves.

I urge the Government to act now to ban in full the import of trophies from the hunting of all animals abroad. That is necessary because it is a barbaric practice. I recognise and welcome the Government’s intention to ban it, but that needs to happen now. There is no reason not to legislate. Legislation has broad and widespread support, and the Government have had plenty of time to consider the consultation.

Finally, we are at a crucial juncture and we must show global leadership on conservation and biodiversity. We cannot convince other countries to end the hunting of endangered animals if it is legal here in the UK. If at the end of this debate the Minister has only one thing to say on this matter, I would like her to tell me when the legislation will come into force. If she cannot say when, why not?

Oral Answers to Questions

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question and I am sorry to hear about that road to nowhere. I would hate my constituency to be described as the “road to nowhere”. I understand what she is getting at, but this Government are tackling litter. We have a whole policy on tackling litter and I have been meeting Keep Britain Tidy regularly to discuss what more we can do. We have had a lot of campaigns, including “Keep it, Bin it”, which has been extremely effective, and we will be working further on measures. We relaunched the countryside code and added to it during lockdown to cut down on the amount of litter that is dumped, and this has had a significant effect. Local authorities have all of their measures that they can put in place—they can take people to court and people can get hefty fines—but they need to take action with the measures at hand.

[Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

What steps he is taking to improve the domestic inspection process for flowering bulbs imported from the EU.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Victoria Prentis)]

It is important that we maintain our biosecurity. Physical inspections of high-priority plants from the EU, including flowering bulbs, have taken place at their destination since 1 January. This is a temporary arrangement designed to prevent delays at the border, but it is working effectively and has been well received by the trade.

[Mrs Latham [V]]

Sadly, the bulb organisation that I spoke to told me that a couple of people have left the trade because it is not worth their while. I know that a lot of progress has been made since January on facilitating the trade between the UK and the EU, but there is still a lot of friction in the import and export of flowering bulbs. For instance, the export of bulbs in the green, which have soil on them, is now prohibited except in very specific circumstances, and sometimes 1,000 boxes might need to be inspected, which is not easy. What plans does my hon. Friend have to discuss with her EU counterparts the prospect of simplifying the trade in flowering bulbs with the EU?

[Victoria Prentis]

It is true that the plant-health requirements for dormant bulbs are different from those for bulbs in growth. My officials and I are willing to discuss directly with my hon. Friend’s constituents the specific issues that she raises. I reassure her that we continue to have discussions with our counterparts in EU about export processes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Zac Goldsmith]

I have had letters from the constituents of a number of hon. Members raising the same issue: off-road bikers causing wildlife mayhem in sensitive and fragile parts of the countryside. I of course commit to the hon. Gentleman to talk to the police and landowners and animal welfare charities to see what the best solution is. There is no silver bullet to solve the problem. It needs to be addressed, but it is not immediately obvious what that solution would be.

[Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

Canned lion breeding in South Africa is causing terrible angst for many people because these lions, barely two years old, are shot at point-blank range. That adds to the trophy hunting imports to this country. When is the consultation my right hon. Friend has mentioned going to begin?

[Zac Goldsmith]

My hon. Friend is right: canned lion hunting is one of the grimmest of all human activities. It is hard to see any defence for it. There are concerns that, although it may not be a direct conservation issue, creating a legal trade in lion parts, particularly lion bones, provides a cover for the illegal trade, and we know that lion numbers have plummeted in the last 15 or 20 years. As she mentioned, we have committed to launching a call for evidence and, based on the results we get, we will take whatever steps are necessary to end or to regulate the import of hunting trophies.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Caroline Spelman]

I thank the hon. Lady for those very kind words, and indeed, with the full support of my staff, I did speak out about the abuse we face and that might perhaps be part of my legacy to this place; I hope sincerely that those who are returned will really do something about it, particularly by tackling the wild west of the internet where there is not sufficient regulation of what is expressed, although I commend the guidance given by the Church of England about how to navigate the internet wisely.

On the point raised, it is important to share the following information, because theft from churches, particularly of roofs, affects many colleagues. New guidance has been published by Historic England on non-lead metal roofs for churches, to deter the risk of metal theft. It is important to note that even a grade 1 listed building can be fitted with lead substitutes, which do not therefore attract the type of crime that I described at the beginning and is causing so much damage and cost.

[Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

11. What assessment the Church of England has made of the potential merits of ending marriages involving 16 and 17-year-olds.

[Dame Caroline Spelman]

The legal position is that 16 and 17-year-olds are entitled to have their banns published and to marry in church. I am sure that all Members who have been to an Anglican wedding will be familiar with the moment during the service when the priest asks whether anyone has an objection to the marriage. That is part of the marriage process. When a young couple are preparing for marriage, they are prepared by the priest for the very profound decision that they are making. However, those of such a tender age constitute only a very small percentage of the number who marry in Anglican churches.

[Mrs Latham]

May I echo the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) and reiterate that my right hon. Friend will be missed when she leaves this place?

Does my right hon. Friend agree that, given the international reach of the Anglican communion, the Church of England’s support for ending marriages between 16 and 17-year-olds in the UK would send a powerful message to other jurisdictions and faith communities around the world?

[Dame Caroline Spelman]

As I mentioned earlier, the Anglican communion covers a very large number of nations and a very large number of people whose cultural norms differ from our own, but aid agencies often handle the issue of child marriage very effectively through their health and education programmes. I particularly commend the work of the Mothers Union in this respect. Its members are active in, for instance, southern Sudan with finance and literacy programmes to ensure that families do not rely on dowry payments as a way to sustain themselves. Dioceses in Kenya work with the community to prevent child marriage, and there are similar arrangements in Ghana. The Mothers Union also has initiatives to tackle child marriage in the United States of America, because in 13 states there is no minimum age for marriage.

Trophy Hunting Imports

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered trophy hunting imports.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie, and I am delighted that the relatively new Minister from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, who has championed many different environmental issues, will respond to this important debate. I am particularly delighted to have secured this debate on banning trophy hunting imports to this country: although the Government have already announced that that is their plan, I wish to check exactly what their policy will cover. It makes a change to take part in a debate in Westminster at the moment that, I suspect, has cross-party support.

Oren Lyons, the chief of the Onondaga, was invited to address the United Nations in 1977. He made a long speech about our responsibilities. When talking about who had been invited to speak at the UN, he said:

“I do not see a delegation for the four footed. I see no seat for the eagles. We forget and we consider ourselves superior, but we are after all a mere part of the Creation. We must continue to understand where we are. We stand between the mountain and the ant, somewhere and there only, as part and parcel of the Creation. It is our responsibility, since we have been given the minds to take care of these things. The elements and the animals and the birds, they live in a state of grace. They are absolute, they can do no wrong. It is only we, the two leggeds, that can do this. And when we do this to our brothers, to our own brothers, we do the worst in the eyes of the Creator.”

We, the human race, have done wrong. Over the last few years, often through the greed of humans, we have brought to near-extinction many animals that used to exist in large numbers.

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

Is my hon. Friend aware that it is a widespread view on both sides of the House that there is something nauseating and revolting about someone who would slaughter an endangered animal to use part of its body as a trinket or trophy?

[Mrs Latham]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will touch on such things later, but they are absolutely abhorrent. As I said, this is a debate that we can all agree on.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Further to the intervention of my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight), is she aware that a recent opinion poll suggests that 86% of people across the UK support a trophy hunting ban? It is not just this House that is united on the issue, but the vast majority of this country’s population.

[Mrs Latham]

That is an interesting statistic, because I think that would not have been the case 20, 30 or 40 years ago. The extinction of many animals and the talk about that—for example, David Attenborough talking about it—have raised awareness among the general population, which can be only a good thing. I am sure the Minister is listening intently.

Local people in different countries do not benefit financially from this appalling trade, just the big greedy bosses of the operations. Elephants, tigers, rhinos, gorillas, lions and many more species are endangered—even giraffes are affected. British big game hunters have travelled to every corner of the globe, from Africa to Asia, North America to South America, and across Europe, in pursuit of often-rare hunting trophies. The most popular destination for UK hunters is South Africa.

Thanks to the determination of the Government and the previous Secretary of State, the ivory trade will be reduced, which will hopefully have an impact on the poaching of elephants for their tusks. Although other countries did that before us, we have at last caught up. With respect to trophy hunting, we might get to the forefront, although other countries have in fact banned trophy hunting imports.

During this debate, I wish to concentrate primarily on lions. Once they roamed free across many countries in Africa, but now there are far fewer truly wild lions. Although killing a lion for sport is bad enough, I can almost understand why that was done when they were plentiful, but I find the new, popular canned hunting of lions especially offensive.

Imagine being born into captivity, stolen from your mother at the age of about two weeks to three weeks and sold by merciless breeders to face death at the hands of bloodthirsty tourists. Laughing, smiling tourists pose for photos with dead lions, and I have even seen a photo of tourists kissing next to that fabulous being. That is the face of the animal that was once hailed as king of the jungle.

For 11,000 lions in South Africa, there will not have been one day of freedom. At a young age, they will be shot by a hunter who cannot miss. Lions are bred in cages for the canned hunting industry at more than 300 farms in South Africa. There will be no chase, no escape, no mercy. It beggars belief that British hunters are among those propping up this desperately cruel industry. The lions are reared in cages and forced to breed too young, and their cubs are taken away from them soon after birth so that the mothers can breed again, but too quickly.

The cubs might then be taken to petting zoos where tourists—possibly unaware of the past or future of those cubs—are able to bottle-feed them. Some tourists are even able to walk with the young lions until they are about nine months old, when they become much harder to control. From then on, these immature lions are kept in small pens until they are about two years old.

These animals have trusted humans because they know no different. They have been bred in captivity. This trust is tragically misplaced. The lions are either let out of the cages and shot at almost point-blank range by the trophy hunter or are taken by truck into the bush to make it more like the kill of a wild animal. In this instance, the lions are allowed out of the truck and shot—again at almost point-blank range—although some are never let out of the cages and are actually shot while in captivity, through the bars, by these so-called trophy hunters.

These magnificent animals have had no freedom to roam and live as nature intended, thanks to an industry that is, believe it or not, legal in South Africa. This kind of hunting is often given a licence thanks to the sometimes-corrupt authorities turning a blind eye, or because the owners of these “farms” persuade them that it is being done in the name of conservation. That is simply a lie. It is a heinous activity that lines the pockets of greedy owners. Every time a trophy hunter shoots a lion, they have paid many thousands of dollars for the privilege. These lions are farmed in great secrecy to produce cheap, quick trophies for hunters. In some cases, the breeders themselves shoot the lions so as to sell lion bones in the far east for ritual medicines. It is easy to see that it is only a matter of but a short time before the only lions we will see will be those in zoos.

Shamefully, Britain still allows so-called hunter trophies to be brought into the country. Yes, lions’ heads may be flown into our airports by hunters who glory in adorning their walls with them. We need to make it clear that the UK condemns the killing of lions, as well as other threatened species. This should start with legislation preventing hunters from bringing back the heads, tails, feet, skins and other body parts of these animals to the UK. We need a clear moral response.

The Government should impose an immediate moratorium on the importation of trophies until legislation is made. There is no reason this cannot be done immediately. People’s lives are in danger when they speak out about this terrible practice, so we need to protect those who whistleblow about it. People might not be aware that there are three times more canned lions than wild lions in South Africa today. There are fewer than 15,000 lions left in the wild across the world. Indeed, our own Prime Minister mentioned this recently at Prime Minister’s Question Time.

Over the past decade, 10,000 lion trophies have been taken. Despite the very small number of lions, trophy hunting of adult males is still allowed in Zambia, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Tanzania. There is an absolute dearth of information that such activities are in any way sustainable or contribute to the conservation of the species in any way. In fact, it has been shown in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Tanzania that trophy-hunting concessions are now so devoid of wildlife, largely due to overhunting, that they cannot garner any further interest in tenders from trophy-hunting operations. There has never been a population count of lions in any trophy-hunting concession in any African nation that permits lion trophy hunting. It is no wonder that trophy-hunting operators are increasingly reliant on illegal hunts inside national parks, luring lions such as Cecil out of national parks, along with many other such transgressions on lion populations that should be strictly protected. The UK has put in place much funding to combat the illegal wildlife trade, but hunting transgressions on protected areas should be considered as one of the important illegal activities.

It is now abundantly clear that the future of wild lion survival in Africa is dependent on not more than four populations, which still have more than 1,000 individuals. Those populations are located in Northern Botswana; perhaps in the Kruger National Park in South Africa; in the Serengeti in Tanzania; and in the Selous in Tanzania. The estimate of 15,000 lions in total depends on an accumulation of small, scattered and isolated groups of lions across this very large continent. For example, there are 16 lions left in Senegal, 34 in Nigeria, 32 in Malawi, 34 in Angola and maybe 60 in Ethiopia.

This practice should stop and should stop now. Britain should not be allowing trophy-hunted imports of any species from any country. How can we allow zebra, rhino, lions or, indeed, any single animal from an endangered species to be brought in to go on someone’s wall at home or in the office when we are supposed to be a nation of animal lovers? Other countries have banned imports, but, so far, we have not banned them all. I am told we still allow some to come into this country. Why? That does not help conservation.

Shockingly, the infamous killing of Cecil the lion has encouraged British hunters to go to South Africa and shoot dead more big cats than ever. Experts had believed that worldwide revulsion at the shooting would mark a turning point for the endangered species and the start of a decline in trophy hunting. Instead, the number of British hunters targeting farmed lions and bringing home their body parts more than doubled in the three years after Cecil’s death, compared with the three years before, according to statistics from the global wildlife trade regulator.

This is not about telling African countries how to manage their wildlife. It is not even about laying down the law on trophy hunting to them. It is simply saying that the UK does not agree with killing lions, elephants and other threatened species for sport, nor with allowing hunters to bring back the heads, tails, feet, skins and other body parts of these animals to the UK.

[Sir Greg Knight]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way again; she is being very generous. Does she agree that a ban on import should also include the body parts being traded through Britain?

[Mrs Latham]

Yes, I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend. We must put a ban on everything that makes more species endangered, and we should be regulating and being very careful about what we do or do not allow into this country. As I said earlier, we are supposed to be a nation of animal lovers.

The times we are living in and the threat facing all wildlife demand a clear moral response. Things need to change so that live animals are better for the economy than dead ones. I understand that the US had a total or near-total ban when Obama was President, but the current President has decided to release the pressure and to allow some trophy hunting. I understand that that is because two of his sons like trophy hunting. That is something that should not happen in America. It should not happen here. It should not happen in Europe. It should happen nowhere.

I am fortunate to have seen many lions and other endangered species in various African countries, but I want my grandchildren and their children to have that privilege too when they are old enough to travel. We can visit a zoo, but that is such a poor relation, compared with seeing a lion, or any animal, living in freedom in its own natural environment. David Attenborough has spoken about the animals in Africa and other places, and indeed in the oceans, and his programmes whet the appetite, but unless we stop all trophy hunting, those beautiful animals will disappear from our reach, as many very nearly have.

I have a series of questions for the Minister, following the Government’s welcome announcement at the weekend, and I know he will listen hard to them. Which animals will be covered by the trophy hunting imports ban? When will it come into effect? Every month we take to pass legislation means more endangered species getting closer to eradication and extinction. Which countries will be banned from importing trophies into Britain? If it is not all of them, greedy businesspeople will find a way around the ban by moving the dead animal to a country from which we do allow the import of trophies. Which countries do we still allow trophies to be imported from? Will animal parts, such as bones, hands, tails and so on, be covered?

What about trading through a country, which my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight) mentioned? Obviously, countries such as China value the body parts of these endangered species. I ask the Government to impose an immediate moratorium on the importation of trophies until legislation is made. Is there any reason why that cannot or should not be done immediately?

Can I be assured that the welcome announcement by the Government a few days ago will not result in just more consultation? There have been multiple consultations over a number of years, and the longer that that continues, the fewer lions there will be truly in the wild. I understand that the previous Secretary of State was holding a consultation—another one—and said that we had to listen carefully to both sides, but while we do that, more and more lions die. I thank the Minister for his passion on this and many other environmental issues, and I look forward to his positive response later.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Latham]

I thank the Minister and all hon. and right hon. Members for contributing to this debate. It must be terribly hard for the Minister to be the poacher turned gamekeeper. He has a difficult decision, having now to stick with what he is told and what he has to do, but I hope that his passion will cut through some of the civil service speak and that he will get on and do it, because we are only temporary custodians of the wildlife and the environment of this planet. We really need to act if we want our grandchildren, their children and their children after that to be able to see these magnificent animals. We can play only a small part, but we can do a lot to persuade other countries to cease their activities. A ban on wildlife trophy imports into this country sends a hugely significant message that we care and want to change things. I commend this motion to the Minister and everyone else.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered trophy hunting imports.

Oral Answers to Questions

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

12. What steps he is taking to reduce plastic pollution.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dr Thérèse Coffey)]

The Government recently published the resources and waste strategy, which sets out our plans to reduce plastic pollution. We have already consulted on banning straws, cotton buds and stirrers, and are consulting on extending the carrier bag charge. We will shortly be publishing our consultation on key reforms to existing packaging waste regulations, which will include a deposit refund scheme for drinks containers and increasing consistency in the recycling system.

[Mrs Latham]

The “Countryfile” programme on Sunday showed that farms use huge quantities of very thick plastic, which apparently can no longer be recycled and is being kept on airfields. How can the Government ensure that this product does not go into landfill?

[Dr Coffey]

It is possible to recycle plastic bales, but I am conscious that the secondary market may not be well established. With the reforms that we will shortly be consulting on, my hon. Friend will see that it will be in the interests of producers to ensure that materials are recyclable, otherwise it will cost them more.

Ivory Bill (Fifth sitting)

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Committee Debate: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 19th June 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Sue Hayman]

I know how the Minister appreciates it.

Several hon. Members, some of whom are members of the Committee and others who are not but took part in the Second Reading debate, have spoken about why they feel it is really important that we look at extending the Bill’s scope. They include my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East, who I believe is paired today, the hon. Members for Mid Derbyshire and for North Dorset, who are both here today, the right hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), and the hon. Members for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), for North East Hampshire (Mr Jayawardena), for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan), for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), for Witney, and for Southend West (Sir David Amess). They all raised the specific issue of extending the scope on Second Reading.

[Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

Although I agree that we need to look at going beyond elephant ivory at some point, we need to get this Bill through quickly, even though it is narrow. I would have preferred it to be wider, but it cannot be because we have not consulted on that. Does the hon. Lady agree that it would be better to get the Bill through and to widen the scope at a later stage, as soon as we possibly can, rather than delay its implementation as it stands?

[Sue Hayman]

I agree that we need to get the Bill through very quickly, because of its important purpose. However, on consultation, I have taken professional advice from the Consultation Institute, and I declare an interest because I am an associate. Its advice to me, as a professional organisation that works with different Departments, is that consultation will not necessarily delay the Bill and prevent it from being ready before the conference that we are all looking forward to in October.

The Consultation Institute does not believe that it is illegal to move forward without further consultation, but if consultation was necessary, the Government could easily devise a quick consultation of no more than 14 days, by going back to the organisations that have already shown an interest in this matter through responding to the initial consultation. That could be done very quickly; there is no reason to delay the Bill by extending that consultation. The institute would be happy to work with the Department and endorse that consultation formally at the end, so that there would be no challenge. The Government have apparently done short consultations in the past as top-up consultations to something that has already taken place, as a piece of legislation goes through.

Ivory Bill (Third sitting)

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 14th June 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Sue Hayman]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. She is right: the expert said that this would be a “very sensible” thing to do. I hope that the Minister recognises that the amendment is designed to support the Bill by making it generally more effective and giving owners of items a better understanding of exactly what kind of exemption certificate they should apply for, so that the process can move forward much more smoothly.

[Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

I endorse what the hon. Lady has said. It was clear in the evidence that a measurement was wanted. The whole point about the Bill is that we need clarity and absolute certainty so that everyone knows exactly where they stand. If an item were bigger than is suggested, it would not be considered a miniature, because a miniature is something small. Whether the measurements are in inches or millimetres, I do not mind, although like the hon. Lady, I do not really understand millimetres; I only understand inches. I am interested in what my hon. Friend the Minister has to say, but whether it is stated in the Bill or set out elsewhere as guidance, I would like the size to be specified if possible.

Ivory Bill (Fourth sitting)

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Committee Debate: 4th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 14th June 2018 Public Bill Committees

The hon. Member for Leeds North West made a point about plectrums and other accessories. They will need to be less than 20% ivory to qualify for the exemption. However, mammoth ivory does not fall within the scope of the Bill—I am sure that we will have a long debate about that when we debate clause 35—so a mammoth ivory plectrum would be unaffected.

[Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

Plectrums are surely independent from the musical instrument; they are something that somebody chooses to use. If they are 100% either mammoth or elephant ivory, they will not be able to be sold. It is highly unlikely that any musician will rely on selling those in order to fund his or her retirement, because they are such small parts. I would have thought that that is a bit of an irrelevance. I do not know if the Minister agrees.

[David Rutley]

In the scheme of what we are debating, it certainly is a small item. However, for those involved, it may be significant. My hon. Friend is absolutely right: if it is made of elephant ivory, it does not comply. However—we will debate mammoths at length when we debate clause 35, I am sure—mammoth ivory is not in the scope of the Bill as it stands, and therefore a plectrum will not be affected if it is made of mammoth ivory.

Ivory Bill (First sitting)

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 12th June 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Sue Hayman (Workington) (Lab)]

Q Do you all feel that the scope of the Bill, about just elephant ivory, is broad enough? If we ban just elephant ivory, could there be a shift towards ivory and horn from other animals being targeted? If it is possible, should we broaden the scope of the Bill to prevent that from happening?

Will Travers: That is an important question. Context is important; we all feel that it is important that whatever other considerations there are for non-elephant ivory-bearing species, they do not blow this legislation off course or delay it significantly. We all share the view that it would be a tragedy, to put it in informal terms, if we worked really hard to save elephants and other species were collateral damage in the process. But we need to consider a number of species.

We suggest that the Government commit to a rapid consultation after the Bill, to look at hippos, narwhal, hornbill—which are also facing extinction because their bills are a surrogate for ivory—walrus and not just CITES-listed species but non-CITES-listed species. We recognise that the trade—particularly the legal one—is entrepreneurial and will move to wherever there is an opportunity. Species such as warthog could come into the frame very rapidly as interest in ivory shifts from elephants, which are getting a huge amount of attention, to other ivory-bearing species.

In summary, we would like real attention to be paid to the issue, but we want to make sure that that does not in any way delay this process. That would be detrimental to what is under way.

Cath Lawson: We endorse that opinion. We are happy that the Bill as it stands, which allows for consideration of other ivory-bearing species at a later date, is sufficient. We would be comfortable with Will’s suggestion of expansion to non-CITES-listed species, too, but our concern would be that to include other non-ivory-bearing species at this point would cause delays to the Bill. With the illegal wildlife trade conference in October, we are keen that the Bill moves quickly through the legislative process.

David Cowdrey: Again, I endorse what WWF and Born Free just said. There should be flexibility in the Bill to include other species in future, but at this time the focus should be on delivering for elephant ivory, which the consultation was about and where a lot of the research was. That flexibility should enable the inclusion of further species should they be exploited and should there be a need to add them.

[Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

Q That is interesting because the Bill has been a long time coming and it is great that we have got this far. To knock it off course would be perverse. As we have not consulted on all the other species, would the best thing be to get the Bill through and then all of you who are experts could meet Ministers to decide which species—particulary non-CITES species—ought to be included so that we do not have other species coming on to the endangered list simply because activity has been displaced? I assume that you would all be happy to consult Ministers once the Bill is passed to get that done as soon as possible.

David Cowdrey: I totally agree with that. We have all worked so hard to get to this point to deliver one of the strongest ivory bans in the world. The initiative that has been taken by all parties and the cross-party support shown on Second Reading have been superb, and there is an opportunity to provide that protection. As we said, as long as there is that flexibility, and consideration for other species, which can be applied in future, and as long as further consultations can be held and we can have those discussions, I would agree totally with that.

Cath Lawson: Yes, WWF would be happy to engage in that consultation process, but for it to be separate to passing the Bill.

Will Travers: Just for the Committee’s interest and information, we are talking about huge volumes of trade in non-elephant ivory. I have four figures that might be helpful. From 2007 to 2016—just under a decade—78,000 hippos and hippo products were exported by CITES parties. Hong Kong imported 60 tonnes of hippo ivory between 2004 and 2014. Between 2007 and 2016—those dates again—7,000 narwhal products were exported and more than 172,000 walrus specimens were reported to have been exported on the CITES trade database. Those are not insignificant by any measure—they are enormously significant. With that kind of volume now, as we have just mentioned, the shift away from elephant ivory could put insupportable pressure on these other species, which is why we would like to see an accelerated process for that after this process has been undertaken. That is a very helpful suggestion.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

Q It has taken a long time to get to the stage of introducing this Bill and I would think it will be a long time before the Government return to this issue. The figures you have given on other species are startling, and you say you want flexibility in the Bill to be able to amend it. Is there a way in which the Bill could allow for, perhaps, delegated legislation or some other way to revisit the issue without having to have an Ivory Bill mark 2, which could be quite a significant time down the road?

Cath Lawson: From WWF’s point of view, I cannot comment on the legislative process but we would certainly want to see a consultation process around those species before inclusion in a Bill. That is why it needs to be a separate process.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anna Turley (Redcar) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q I was very struck, David, by the points you made about organised criminality and how the trade is currently undermining communities and Governments. What the Bill will do for us in the UK is great, but how can we ensure that the measures we take here get right through to communities? How can we support them in transitioning away from dependence on poaching? How can we ensure that there is no adverse impact on some of those local communities? Is there anything missing from the Bill, in terms of obligations on our Government, that would enable us to help communities through that transition, to tackle that organised criminality on the ground and to ensure that some of the most deprived communities in the world are not damaged?

David Cowdrey: Those are all excellent points. The Bill will clearly close down markets in the UK. The more markets we close down, the more we deprive people of money and income. The price of raw ivory that was publicly for sale was $2,200 per kilo. After China introduced its ban, it went down to $1,100 and then down to $600. It is now about $450. There has been a massive devaluation in the price of raw ivory, making it a less viable option. Such things are incredibly useful.

With regard to help for communities, on Second Reading there was an interesting discussion in which Members talked about how some of the Department for International Development’s budget might be used. We have to consider a holistic approach. The communities are not isolated from poaching, and the impact of poaching on communities is not isolated from the illegal wildlife trade; they are joined up and hand in hand. There are good opportunities that exist with our overseas development budget to take a more integrated approach to delivering holistic aid and support and anti-poaching measures, to help build communities and tackle corruption.

The support with efforts through the DEFRA challenge fund grant, through DFID and the FCO’s interaction with other communities is also important. It needs to go hand in glove. This is a complex situation that you cannot just wave a wand or a Bill at. It is all part of a jigsaw that really helps, but our overseas aid is another part that we could potentially re-examine and look at, to provide better integrated aid.

Cath Lawson: The WWF would very much endorse that position. I do not think we need additions to the Bill, but we are supportive of wider conversations about looking at overseas aid for ecosystem-based funding, and looking at bigger-picture landscape approaches to some of the critical habitats where the illegal wildlife trade impacts on the survival of certain species.

Will Travers: I endorse everything that has just been said, and I totally understand that when it comes to spending the £13 billion or so a year in our DFID budget, in most cases we must be risk averse. However, for this sort of issue—I used this term before when I talked about it with Justine Greening three years ago—we need a sort of adventure capital fund. We need a modest amount of money with which we try innovative, new things on the ground or with partners, and try to deliver something that will change the game on the ground and speak to all the issues that have been raised, such as secure ecosystems, secure livelihoods, alternative livelihoods and food security at landscape level. Sitting right in the middle of that can be conservation. If the brief is whether we can make conservation work for communities and people, I think the answer is yes, but it needs not insignificant—although not huge—pump-priming to really get it going. That is where DFID, which is a completely different entity from the one we are talking about right now, could have a major role.

David Cowdrey: I agree about some of the technical developments and initiatives that the UK can take. I mentioned fingerprinting earlier, and across Africa most countries do not even have an electronic fingerprinting database. When we are dealing with international criminal syndicates and gangs, countries are not capturing the information, and they do not have the capability to share it with neighbouring countries. These are transnational crimes. We must consider how we can develop these countries in a way that provides practical enforcement and really helps them to develop.

We can help to defeat these international criminal syndicates, and simple investments that can be done through development grants or a challenge fund are really important. A national fingerprinting database for a country could cost as little as £60,000. Look at that as an investment and a way to help tackle corruption and crime, including not just wildlife crime but crime and terrorism. That has a massive impact across the world. In tackling the illegal wildlife trade, we must consider some of those simple enforcement measures that can make a game-changing difference on the ground for those countries.

[Mrs Latham]

Q You mentioned Hong Kong and the fact that China is implementing this measure quite strictly. You also mentioned mammoth. I understand that in Hong Kong ivory is being passed off as mammoth tusk. Obviously the mammoth are dead—we are never going to save the life of a mammoth—but should we consult on a ban on mammoth ivory as well as on those species that might become extinct as a result of not being included in the Bill? If in Hong Kong, or anywhere else, people can say, “It’s all right; this is a mammoth tusk,” and sell it, does that not create the loophole that those who want to make money are looking for?

Cath Lawson: It is certainly something that we would be comfortable with. I mentioned an amendment earlier. At the moment the Bill includes CITES-listed species, but mammoth, as an extinct species, are not a CITES-listed species and never will be. One option would be to remove that caveat in the existing legislation, but that could be part of a later consultation process.

[Sue Hayman]

Q Let us come back to the scope of the meaning of ivory. You talked about there being a delay if anything is added in. Given that this is the Ivory Bill, not the Elephant Ivory Bill, and that the CITES list makes clear that there is concern about species beyond the elephant, why would there be a delay if you added in the species listed by CITES? The consultation allowed for discussion of other species that are badly affected by this issue, and you have the figures.

Cath Lawson: During the consultation process, we did not advocate for additional species to be added. Our advice in the consultation response was to focus on elephant ivory.

Will Travers: We did comment on other species, and we did advocate that there should be consideration, which is what I believe clause 35 refers to. The definition of ivory in the Bill is ivory from elephant species. I understand why it is important to make sure there is consideration of other species, for which there has been no full consultation. We want to understand what is going on with hippo ivory, with narwhal ivory, with walrus ivory, with warthog ivory—non-CITES listed—and with extinct, non-CITES-listed mammoth ivory. There may be—I am just trying to think of the right way of expressing this—specific exemptions that would have been considered for inclusion specific to, for example, mammoth ivory that we would be discussing now had that been part of the overall process to start with.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sue Hayman]

Q I see your point on that, but we do not want to see, as a consequence of that, the increased killing of other species.

Alexander Rhodes: Without a shadow of a doubt.

Charlie Mayhew: Absolutely. The public, in whichever part of the world, who ultimately buy ivory do not necessarily differentiate where that ivory has emanated from. We have an opportunity here, in introducing this legislation, which as people have previously said is one of the toughest bans in the world, to send a message that ivory should now be socially unacceptable. If we can try to use this legislation, particularly with the upcoming illegal wildlife trade conference and attendees coming from all over the world, the rest of the world should follow suit.

[Mrs Latham]

Q Going back to what I said to the previous panel about ivory tusk being traded as mammoth, which is quite legal and would be quite legal after this Bill came in, is that something that we should consult on? Clearly we will not save the life of a mammoth—they are all extinct—but would it continue to save the lives of elephants if we banned that? It is not on the CITES list that we have heard about, but do you think that such a measure would be helpful to prevent elephants from being targeted? If someone can legally pass a tusk off as mammoth tusk, it will not stop anything.

Alexander Rhodes: Yes. Perhaps as a bit of context around that, it is interesting to note that the crisis that was recognised just before the last London conference came about because of the professionalisation of poaching. Illegal organised crime stepped in and added elephant ivory to its inventory because there was no legal international trade and there was an opportunity. That took place in circumstances where, internationally, there was confusion, and there was no common position on whether elephant ivory should or should not be traded—that rift had been in place since 1989.

Over the four years since the London conference, strong consensus has been built internationally that the ivory market should be closed. Importantly, that has taken the form of two international resolutions, one at CITES and one at the IUCN, that domestic markets for ivory—that is what we are talking about—should close, as should some of the other leading markets for elephant ivory, such as those in China and the US, and we are looking forward, beyond there, into Europe. That certainty about the illegality of ivory has significantly changed in the price of ivory.

When we started looking at this issue at the time of the first London conference, many people said that closing markets for ivory was a stupid thing to do, because all it would do is drive up the price. They said that destroying stockpiles of ivory, or locking them up so that they could not be traded into the market, was a stupid thing to do, because it would just drive up the price, and that the more scarce you make things, the higher the price becomes. Interestingly, David mentioned prices earlier, and the change that we have seen during this period, and the effect of the measure, has been that, in China, the price of a kilo of ivory between the time of the last London conference and now has gone from $2,500 to $450. In some African countries there has been a similar collapse in the price of ivory paid to gunmen. That wider context goes to the point about clarity on the legality, or illegality, of ivory.

I tend to agree with what Charlie said, which is that if you say, “Ivory is banned”—this is called the Ivory Bill, and the basis on which it was built was a commitment to close ivory market—that is pretty clear, and it falls within the international consensus that has been built on elephant ivory. My personal view is that, yes, it would make great sense to expand the Bill to cover mammoth ivory and other types of ivory for species that are threatened as a result of this trade. Such a measure would disincentivise people from going and killing those animals, whether they are doing it cynically for their own profit or because it is the only choice they have on the table—that is possibly something else we may discuss.

The real question in my mind, however, is whether, if we start trying to expand the Bill now, we will lose the effect that we can get, and the UK’s role in that momentum, which is already making a massive change. I return to what David said, which is that this is perhaps more your area of expertise than ours, but I think that is the balance to strike.

[Mrs Latham]

Q I agree; it is important to get the Bill—albeit a very narrow one—through as quickly as we can to set an example, and then consult for further species. Are you aware of any other country that has expanded beyond elephant ivory, and included mammoth tusk and all the other CITES species as well as the ones that we have heard about today?

Alexander Rhodes: I am not.

[Mrs Latham]

So us doing something like that would set a further example to the world.

Alexander Rhodes: Without a doubt.

[Anna Turley]

Q Some of the concerns we discussed, particularly with the first panel of witnesses, were about consultation and timeframes. I appreciate your point about losing momentum. Given that the only time we took previous action on ivory was in 1989, nearly 30 years ago, who knows how long it will be before we get another ivory Bill through? These things do not come along very often, and it could be several years. Is there not an opportunity here and now to broaden the scope as the Bill goes through? If the only barrier is consultation delay, is there anything in the consultation that we undertook for the Bill that would not apply to the other species? In amendment 8 we talk about broadening the scope to elephants, killer whales, narwhals, sperm whales and walrus. Is there anything in our consultation or in its outcome that would not apply to the species referred to in the amendment, and that would result in the concept of closing the markets not being relevant?

Charlie Mayhew: I am certainly not an expert in parliamentary process and the legalities of this, but if there was a way of extending the reach of the Bill to include those species without delaying the process, and without there being a threat of judicial challenge from any area, then we would all love to see that happen. Perhaps the issue really is where that challenge would come from if you were to extend the Bill to the other species. Representatives from the antiques trade will be coming in later today, and although I am not an expert in the area of antiques, I am not sure that they would object to hippo or walrus being included, because I suspect that their interest is in antique elephant ivory. I might be wrong on that, but it would be worth investigating. The point here is that we do not want to see anything that delays the progress of the Bill. The international momentum on the issue is very real, and we do not want to do anything to slow the process down, not least because we are losing 55 elephants a day to this illegal activity.