Grouse Shooting

Richard Holden Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Kerry McCarthy]

I do not accept that. If we look at the way the moors are managed, we see that it is to create the largest possible number of grouse, it is to avoid anything that might be a threat to the grouse, including natural predators, and it is destroying a lot of other wildlife at the same time. All that is not so that people can stalk through the undergrowth with their gun, in the way that we might think of the country sport of shooting. It is so that busloads of people can come in, stand there and just shoot, shoot, shoot—it is very much a numbers game. I would not say that has anything to do with conservation.

The birds would not be there in those numbers if they were not being artificially managed, in the same way that we get the imported pheasants and partridges when it comes to that form of shooting; they are there to be shot. As I have said, the way that is managed is related to that intensity and the sheer number of birds that people want to produce, rather than it being about any concern for conserving the natural habitat. As I said, we just do not have the numbers. I do not know whether the Minister will come up with numbers to tell us who is benefiting from this and what contribution it makes.

[Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)]

The hon. Lady asks who is benefiting, but that is quite clear. There are gamekeepers in my constituency and hundreds of people are employed in the broader hospitality sector supported by shooting. Those people are benefiting. If the hon. Lady would like to meet some of the people who benefit economically from this activity, I would be delighted to host her in my constituency, where she could actually meet some of the people involved in the industry.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I suspect they are not benefiting to anything like the same extent as the people who own the land, many of whom are extremely wealthy. They are raking in money from this: I have seen the amount charged for some of the packages for people to come to these areas and take part in shooting days, and I suspect that not an awful lot of that trickles down to the local economy.

We need to see more action from this Government. It is very disappointing that they refused to accept Labour’s amendment to the Environment Bill on the burning of heather and peatlands—again, I think we will hear more about that from the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam. I do not believe the measures introduced by the Government on 1 May go far enough. I note the comments of the Climate Change Committee in its latest report, which was released last Wednesday: that there is an increasingly urgent need to restore degraded upland peatland and manage it more sustainably. I would be interested to hear what the Minister thinks can be done, because obviously, that comment from the Climate Change Committee came after any action that has been taken by the Government to date. I hope that in light of what the Committee has said, the Minister will consider talking to her colleagues in the Lords and strengthening the Environment Bill to address that concern.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McDonagh. I will try to be a little briefer than I planned, because lots of Members have made great contributions already, and I do not want to reiterate what they have said.

I am very concerned about the petition and the circle of destruction it would cause for the rural communities in my constituency, both economic and environmental. I am afraid I could not disagree more with the petitioners, mainly because of the huge economic value that grouse shooting has to my constituency. It is not just about the shooting itself and the gamekeepers; it is the huge amount of part-time jobs in the season and the huge amount of trade that comes with the industry, particularly for my hospitality sector. That sector has been absolutely hammered by covid over the past couple of years, and we are trying to push domestic tourism, especially in places such as the north Pennines and County Durham. We are not quite as well known as where my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill) is, down on the North Yorkshire moors, but we should be. This is a real area of growth for us, and something we want to capitalise on, so it is important that we do not start to cut the legs off from under the sector, just as we are recovering from covid.

Another point to make is that almost all our landscapes in the UK are managed to a greater or lesser degree. As hon. Members have said, the danger of non-management is that huge increase we have seen in wildfires. That is the real danger, which comes from the release of carbon into our atmosphere. Heather burning is an issue. When a wildfire catches in deep peat, that really is an issue, and something with which proper management by gamekeepers and the communities in my upland areas is really helpful.

Another issue that is a major concern is over-management, as we have seen in the past. The hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) wondered whether there might be more productive things we could do with the uplands. Well, we tried that back in the 1950s, when we put grips into the peat moorland to drain it for sheep grazing. We saw an ecological catastrophe, with millions of tonnes of peat washed down the rivers and off the moors over the succeeding decades. Peat is one of the biggest carbon capturers and stores in the country. In January last year, I was lucky enough to have the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs up in my constituency, seeing some of those grips being filled in, so now we have peat returning as a massive natural carbon capture and storage facility.

Recently, I visited the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison) to see some well managed moorlands, and the lapwings and the oystercatchers there. It shows a degree of ignorance of the facts when, clearly, so many communities are involved and so many gamekeepers work on these estates. One of the secondary things that states are increasingly looking to do is to support birding—people doing birdwatching and that sort of thing. That is a major driver locally for a lot of people to come to the north Pennine moors.

I will pick up on something that a couple of my hon. Friends mentioned, which is the game itself. Obviously, we need to make more positive moves—steel shot is part of that—to increase the reusable meat. However, we also need to sell it properly, and that is something that we as parliamentarians could definitely be involved in, including here in Parliament.

From Muggleswick to Wearhead in my constituency, I support those in my villages who work on the moors, whether full time or during the season, and I support my local hospitality sector in North West Durham, which benefits from that. I ask the petitioners and those who support them to think again about the actual economic and environmental impacts of what they propose on communities such as those I represent in the north of England.