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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether before Natural England’s announcement of the end of its general licences in April 2019, it offered the group Wild Justice a review of those licences as an alternative to their immediate removal.

Natural England wrote to Wild Justice on 13 March 2019 confirming its intention to undertake a planned review of its general licences during 2019, and that Wild Justice and other stakeholders would be able to participate in that review. Natural England argued that, in this context, it would be premature for Wild Justice to commence legal proceedings.