I beg to move,
That this House has considered e-petition 165672 relating to badger culling.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. The petition reads:
“Since 2013, thousands of badgers have been killed in a Government cull attempting to control bovine TB. Against scientific advice & before a 4 year trial has completed, the government is now expanding the cull to new counties—tens of thousands of healthy badgers could be killed.
Experts in disease control and animal welfare agree that pilot badger culls have proven both ineffective and inhumane. Shooting badgers is also expensive, costing tax-payers some £5,000 per animal. Bovine TB is a serious problem but killing badgers is not the solution, and could actually make the situation worse. It is a costly distraction from an effective solution incorporating vaccination, increased cattle movement control measures and improved testing.”
I have no special expertise in this area, but I am grateful to the Petitions Committee for asking me to move the motion. However, I have one claim to authenticity, which I share with my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden): a predecessor of ours, Roy Hughes, who represented the areas we now represent, sponsored a private Member’s Bill in 1991 that was intended to control the abuse of badgers taking place at that time by protecting their setts and making activity against them illegal. We therefore have a good tradition in Newport.
I share with most people a great affection for these beautiful creatures. As the superior species, we have a responsibility towards them; as the intelligent and thinking species, we have a duty to ensure that all sentient, living creatures are protected from gratuitous violence or cruelty. I believe that the Government’s policy on badger culling is evidence-free and prejudice-rich. The present Government have a long record of appeasing farmers—everything farmers want, normally farmers get from this Government, however unreasonable the demands might be.
The case has been made powerfully in other parts of the world for the futility of culling, which appears to be a simple solution only to those who believe in shooting first and thinking later. We heard similar nonsense in the debate about hunting; some people thought that it was a reasonable method of pest control to take 100 riders and horses across the countryside to deal with one fox. Sadly, that rural attitude is not as respectful as it should be of all animal life.