Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what plans the Government has to increase police resources to deal with crimes against animals and wildlife, including investigating reports of illegal fox hunting.

The Home Office, along with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, committed to fund the National Wildlife Crime Unit until 2019/20. This money is in addition to central government funding to police forces. Decisions on funding the National Wildlife Crime Unit beyond 2020 will be taken at the next Spending Review.

The Government does not prescribe the nature or level of resources deployed by individual police forces to tackle crimes against animals and wildlife or any other form of crime. It is for Chief Constables and Police and Crime Commissioners, as operational leaders and elected local representa-tives, to ensure that forces’ priorities locally reflect those of their communities, and it is important that forces have the flexibility to deploy their resources without Government interference.