It is a pleasure to take part in the debate under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I thank all the people who signed the petition.
From the emails that I received from constituents about the debate, I was deeply worried to learn of the disastrous decline in hedgehog numbers. Both my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) and the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) have referred to the numbers: we have lost half of all hedgehogs in rural areas, and a third in urban ones. As we have heard, this much-loved animal has recently been added to the IUCN red list and designated as vulnerable, with an appreciable risk of extinction within 10 years. There is a need for urgent action, and I want to press the Minister to enhance protection for hedgehogs, as called for in the petition.
Planning rules need to be changed to require the presence of hedgehogs to be taken into consideration when deciding whether to grant permission for development. Will the Minister also provide reassurance that the quinquennial review of schedules 5 and 8 to the Wildlife and Countryside Act will not lead to any weakening of protections? Most important of all, I urge the Government to include hedgehog habitats in their extensive programme of nature recovery. There can be no doubt that decline in habitats is a key driver in the loss of hedgehogs. We need the biodiversity net gain provisions of the Environment Bill to be implemented so that a new income stream is created for protecting wildlife habitats, and I want to see councils also encouraged to include hedgehog recovery strategies in their local nature recovery strategies, which the Bill will require them to establish.
Of course, I note the efforts by Natural England and DEFRA to create a national nature recovery network, which is a further, crucial opportunity to alleviate the pressure on the vulnerable creatures that we are debating today. Connected wildlife corridors can make a huge difference to the recovery of the species. I hope the voice of today’s petitioners will be heard by Ministers, particularly as they design and implement this country’s new system of farm support. There can be little doubt that some modern farming practices have made survival more difficult for this country’s favourite prickly mammal. The environmental land management schemes, which will replace the European Union’s common agricultural policy, should aim to secure and restore hedgerows and habitats to give our hedgehogs a bit of a Brexit dividend.
As we have heard, in 1566 this Parliament put a bounty on hedgehogs, which apparently led to the death of as many as 2 million in the period up to 1800. I really hope that today’s debate has a much more positive outcome. The Government have a stronger commitment to nature recovery than any of their predecessors ever before. When they set what I hope will be a really ambitious 2030 target for species conservation, I urge them to ensure that a thriving hedgehog population is included in that as a very important goal.
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