Badger Culling

Peter Dowd Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

I will call Tracey Crouch to move the motion and then 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.

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government policy on badger culling.

As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. After many years of debate in this place, colleagues will be well aware of my views on the badger cull. My primary motivation for speaking out against the cull was and always will be the tragic and indiscriminate killing of more than 150,000 badgers since the first two operational culling zones opened in 2014. My view is often reflected in national polling, which continues to show opposition among the general public to the cull—not least in the two e-petitions that have been attached to this debate, respectively signed by 106,000 and 35,000 people, including from my constituency of Chatham and Aylesford.

Since first becoming involved in this debate through the lens of wildlife protection, I have often heard with great sadness about the immense financial and emotional pain that bovine tuberculosis causes farmers up and down the country. The devastation for a farmer when a skin test comes back positive, virtually condemning their herd of cattle, is utterly heartbreaking. The fight has therefore become just as much about protecting badgers—an iconic species in the UK—as ensuring that farmers are supported by the Government in implementing the wide array of countermeasures to prevent TB that help to target transmission within species, which has been shown to lead to far higher prevalence of the disease than transmission from one species to another—in this case, badger to cattle.

I sincerely thank Ministers at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and their officials for the work they have done over the past few years to explore other ways to tackle this devastating disease. I welcomed the Government’s response to the Godfray review and the subsequent strategy, and I welcome the more humane approach against TB in targeting vaccination for both cattle and badgers, increased testing frequency and—most welcome—the gradual phasing-out of intensive badger culls.

To that end, I am pleased that no new intensive badger culling licences will be issued after this year, although I remain concerned that culling will remain an option and continue to be licensed by Natural England. As we have seen with the Government’s authorisation of emergency applications of neonicotinoid insecticides, despite their ban via EU retained law, it seems that the announced end is not always the actual end. I am sure the Minister will therefore understand the scepticism among those of us who want culling to cease.