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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 23 October 2014 to Question 211130, how many people monitored the badger cull in (a) Gloucestershire and (b) Somerset on each night of each such cull during the licence period.

During the second year of the culls, Natural England conducted visits, as part of its role as licensing authority, to monitor compliance and to contribute to humaneness monitoring. A total of thirteen monitors were available to carry out this monitoring, with six assigned to West Gloucestershire and five to West Somerset; the remaining two monitors alternated between each area.

The following table sets out the number of monitoring visits carried out in each area for each week of the six-week culls:

Two further monitors conducted field visits of cage trapping and dispatch as part of licence compliance monitoring.