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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when her Department will respond formally to the recommendations in the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report Wildlife and Forest Crime Analytic Toolkit Report: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, published in August 2021.

We welcome this report and the fact that it recognises the UK's global leadership in fighting wildlife and forestry crime. We invited the UN to undertake this analysis and we are proud to be the first G7 country to request this assessment.

We are carefully considering all the recommendations to help us build on the positive progress we have already made in tackling wildlife crime. This will include strategic engagement with our partners that have responsibilities where individual recommendations are concerned such as the devolved administrations, the Crown Prosecution Service, and the National Wildlife Crime Unit.

Progress has already been made in response to the report. For example, this year Defra has more than doubled its funding of the National Wildlife Crime Unit (NWCU) from £165,000 per year to over £1.2 million over the next three years. Additionally, Border Force has increased numbers in their team specialising in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Defra is not under any obligation to formally respond to the UNODC's assessment, but we will identify where we can act, including with stakeholders, to strengthen the UK's approach to tackling wildlife and forestry crime.