Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what plans she has to extend badger culling to areas outside the pilots in Somerset and Gloucestershire in the next 12 months.

The Government is committed to our strategy to make England free of bovine TB, of which culling badgers in areas where the disease is rife is a key element. Options for how to proceed in extending the policy to other areas are still being considered.