Can I invite the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, to support our amendments tomorrow, since he clearly laid out what this House does? Some amendments tomorrow exactly cover the kinds of issues that he was talking about.
Clearly, the Bill deals with a very passionately felt issue, with strong views on both sides of the argument. That has come across today in Committee and previously. The debate was introduced by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, with his Amendment 1. However, before referring to that, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, for introducing this Private Member’s Bill and for her excellent introduction at Second Reading. We offer our strong support to this Bill. I remind noble Lords that the ban which has been debated has widespread public support and clear cross-party support in Parliament.
There are many amendments in front of us today, but our concern around Amendment 1 is that the effect of the noble Earl’s proposal would be to grant to the Secretary of State alone the power to decide whether a legal prohibition applies, where it is within scope. We do not think that is the correct way to go forward with any legislation. We have said with regard to many Bills that the strong Henry VIII powers being given specifically to Secretaries of State is not how to go forward with legislation. Also, the proposal is not a standard clause retained within conservation or animal welfare legislation, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, mentioned. That is specifically why we would not support Amendment 1.
The noble Lord, Lord Trees, tried to speak to Amendment 34. I would like to make a point about the groupings. Degrouping every amendment from the proposed government groupings to deliberately frustrate the progress of this Bill is pretty poor and undermines a manifesto commitment of the party that those noble Lords say that they support. They are part of this Government. They sit on the Government Benches. This is pretty poor behaviour on their part, and I want to put that on the record.
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Moving to the Bill, I will speak broadly as a lot of issues have been debated even though they are not directly related to the noble Earl’s amendment. We know that France and Australia have banned the import and export of lion-hunting trophies and that in 2016 the Netherlands banned trophy imports of many species.
Some of the main arguments have regarded hunting as supporting conservation and local communities. Evidence has been presented to many of us that trophy hunting can have detrimental effects on wildlife populations, especially when conducted irresponsibly or without proper regulation. Some endangered or threatened species may be targeted by trophy hunters, exacerbating their decline and hindering conservation efforts.
We also know that trophy hunting has a history of mismanagement and that quotas have been based on inadequate data. There has also often been a lack of transparency about the way it takes place. We do not believe that there is sufficient evidence that trophy hunting always contributes to conservation, in the way that a number of noble Lords have implied.
We also believe that the economic benefits generated from trophy hunting have often been overstated. Often, only a small portion of any revenue actually reaches local communities or conservation programmes. If such funds do not reach local communities, they are entirely negligible to the conservation efforts compared with the damage that can be inflicted by the industry through the irreversible loss of key natural resources. Here, I am talking about how trophy hunting can disrupt the delicate balance of ecosystems. It is common for hunters to find the largest or strongest male; removing those particular individuals can bring about social instability within animal populations. It can affect their reproductive success and overall health, and this imbalance can have cascading effects on the ecosystem as a whole. So, although it has been claimed that a small amount of controlled trophy hunting does not harm populations, we are concerned that there is evidence that shows that the opposite is true.
Hunting also directly competes with and undermines sustainable and economically important revenue generation from alternative means. This was debated at length at Second Reading: initiatives such as ecotourism and photographic safaris actually bring in revenue and are alternative ways for these communities to raise funds. They can then input those costs towards conservation and effective anti-poaching work, and they can provide jobs for local people.
I am concerned that not enough attention has been given to how trophy hunting can be used as a cover for illegal poaching. There is some regulation, but not enough to prevent this from happening. We know:
“Opening up even a limited legal trade creates a smokescreen … which is almost impossible to police”.
There have also been calls for licensing exemptions to allow the import of certain trophies, which is similar to a model that I mentioned at Second Reading that was awarded under the United States endangered species Act. Again as I said at Second Reading, it is disproportionate to include this in legislation, because it would bring in extra costs and administrative burdens, as well as creating a risk of judicial review. No Government want to go down that route.
One of the things that I want to put across is my personal view that trophy hunting is cruel. I know that not everybody in the Room agrees, but that is my personal opinion. It is not particularly helping to save our planet. If we are talking about conservation, we should be looking at it as part of the broader way that we conserve and manage our planet and all the challenges that it faces. It is our responsibility to address this, because we are looking at losing animals of great importance to our ecosystem.
Killing animals for sport is unnecessary and cruel. It makes us question our responsibilities towards other living beings on the planet and challenges the notion of whether we should conserve through killing. Society is changing, as well. There is growing pressure on Governments to evaluate their positions on practices such as trophy hunting. I genuinely do not understand why anybody wants to go to a beautiful place with fabulous animals to kill something, chop its head off, bring it home and stick it on the wall. I really do not get it and genuinely do not see why you have to do that for conservation.
As we have heard, the Government committed to banning all trophy imports: it was a manifesto commitment. While we applaud and salute the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, for the enormous amount of work that she has done on this, it is a great pity that the Government failed to bring this forward as a government Bill, as expected. They committed to banning trophy hunting and I hope they will still look to do that, because it is time that the UK banned this awful practice.