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 provide long-term protections for badger populations.

The Protection of Badgers Act 1992 prohibits the deliberate killing, injuring or capturing of a wild badger and any interfering with badger setts; and The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 prohibits certain methods of control. Additionally, badger persecution is one of the seven UK wildlife crime priorities, and a UK Badger Persecution Priority Delivery Group is in place. This is police led and comprises a range of members including Defra who meet regularly to tackle offences such as badger baiting which is rightly illegal in this country. The government’s view is that anyone found guilty of these offences should be subject to the full force of the law.

We have also started work on a comprehensive new bovine TB eradication strategy to drive down TB rates to save cattle and farmers’ livelihoods and to end the badger cull by the end of this parliament. As part of this, we have launched the first badger population survey in over a decade to estimate badger abundance and population recovery and are developing a national wildlife surveillance programme to unlock a data-driven approach to deploying TB vaccines and other eradication measures. We are also establishing a Badger Vaccinator Field Force to rapidly scale up vaccination efforts, helping to reduce TB rates and protect badgers.