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Badgers
Commons Committee provides robust support for Naturewatch's campaign
The Environment Audit Committee published its long-awaited report on October 7, and its conclusions and recommendations are refreshingly direct. They effectively provide a ringing endorsement of the issues raised by Naturewatch in their campaign on badger cruelty.
The committee start by saying that wildlife crime has not been adequately defined and call on the Government to re-state its commitment to it. They state:
We see this refusal to accept wildlife crime as an issue deserving of committed police resources as especially short-sighted given the many links made between wildlife crime and serious and organised crime. [Rec. 4]
Wildlife crime must be classified as recordable by the Home Office so that police forces across England and Wales know that sufficient priority needs to be given to tackling wildlife crime and so that they can allocate the necessary resources to this work. We accept that within this classification system there will probably need to be some form of grading of wildlife crimes to reflect the level of gravity of each crime. [Rec. 5]
This is almost exactly what Naturewatch is campaigning for.
The committee has much to say about the resources allocated to the police and their ability to enforce the legislation. They state,
The absence of any clear, national view of the scale of wildlife crime has a direct impact on the ability of those charged with enforcing current legislation. If the scale and nature of the problem is not known it is unlikely that the correct level of resources can ever be allocated to deal with it. [Rec. 26]
We believe that there must be at least one full-time Wildlife Crime Officer for each Police force. These officers must be fully trained in intelligence gathering. [Rec. 27]
They are also very critical of the Home Office, saying
The role of the Home Office has been shown to be absolutely crucial in the fight against wildlife crime but their commitment has been sadly lacking. The Home Office must re-engage with wildlife crime. [Rec. 34]
They conclude:
We believe that the link between wildlife crime and other serious crimes, the clear and growing involvement of organised crime, and the increased reliance on the internet for illegal trade in protected species makes the argument for spending time and resources on this area of crime compelling. [Rec. 41]
Commenting on the report, Naturewatch's director John Ruane said "This has everything we want here". He emphasised that these recommendations are strikingly similar to those contained within the Early Day Motions tabled for Naturewatch in two previous parliamentary sessions (2001-2 and 2002-3):
That this House notes that the Protection of Badgers Act 1992 provides badgers with a high level of legislative protection; is concerned that badgers continue to be persecuted; believes that this level of persecution could be reduced if all police forces were to have at least one full-time wildlife liaison officer; notes that existing wildlife liaison officers have insufficient financial or time resources allocated to their wildlife duties and so cannot always direct adequate attention to this work; and calls for the Protection of Badgers Act 1992 to be amended to make badger cruelty a recordable crime worthy of police time and money.
The committee, chaired by the Conservative MP Peter Ainsworth, has 16 members from all parties (4 Conservative, 12 Labour, and 1 each from the Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru), and included the DEFRA minister Eliot Morley. The full report is available from the House of Commons website.
