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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to tackle hare poaching.

The Government takes wildlife crime seriously and is committed to ensuring the protection wildlife legislation offers is effectively enforced. We recognise the problems and distress which poaching and hare coursing causes for local communities.

We recognise the importance of preserving our iconic brown and mountain hare populations – and we are exploring a range of options to help drive their recovery across England.

Poaching (including hare coursing) is already one of the UK's six wildlife crime priorities. Each wildlife crime priority has a delivery group to consider what action should be taken and develop a plan to prevent crime, gather intelligence on offences and enforce against it.

The National Wildlife Crime Unit, funded partly by Defra and the Home Office, continues to support efforts to tackle poaching and hare coursing, assisting regional police forces in tackling these crimes by gathering and analysing intelligence, sharing this with the police and assisting police investigations.

Hare poaching is illegal under the Game Acts (the Game Act 1832 and the Night Poaching Act 1828). Enforcement is an operational matter for the police, and it is for individual Chief Constables to determine how their resources are deployed.