Dr Coffey’s reading list (19)

Dr Therese Coffey is the junior minister at Defra. Now that Gavin Gamble’s e-petition in favour of banning driven grouse shooting has passed 10,000 signatures Dr Coffey will need to sign off a government response.

Yesterday the e-petition passed 11,000 signatures; tomorrow Dr Coffey will have kept Gavin Gamble waiting for two weeks for a response.

In order that she does not make Defra look even more foolish than they do already I am providing a reading list for the minister to inform her response.

Please sign this e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting and put Dr Coffey on the spot.

 

Dr Coffey, think on these things.  Your boss, Michael Gove, is cutting a dash in environmental policy and it’s time for you to join in.  Mr Gove clearly wants to detoxify the Conservative environment brand and he has made a very good start. His approach in Education was to take on the vested interests of teachers (as he saw it – I’m not sure he got it all right by any means). In Justice he took on the vested interests of lawyers and now in Environment he is taking on the vested and rather badly-informed vested interests of farmers. What bigger vested interest can there be, particularly as viewed by an Aberdonian who must have seen how this world works, than the grouse moor owners and managers? Your boss was once, I read, the secretary of the Aberdeen Young Conservatives – that very seat from which another Conservative MP, Lady Tweedsmuir, introduced as a private member’s bill, the Protection of Birds Act that is so flagrantly flouted on the grouse moors of the UK.

In your boss’s Guardian article today he starts ‘Two principles guide this government’s approach to the natural world. We want not just to protect but to enhance the environment. And we want our decisions to be informed at all times by rigorous scientific evidence.‘.  Well there is plenty of enhancing to be done on intensively managed grouse moors and plenty of evidence to demonstrate that. But also, as is abundantly illustrated by science (have a look back over your reading list, time spent in revision is rarely wasted) and even admitted by shooting interests, there is little protection for protected wildlife on the hotspots of wildlife crime known as driven grouse moors.

Times are clearly changing in Defra and although it is often the Secretary of State that gets to announce the juicy bits of policy change you can get with the programme and make sure that your response to Gavin Gamble’s e-petition is seen to be moving things on in a Gove-like manner.  You don’t want to be seen to be as a laggard in, or even worse an obstruction to, the detoxification of Tory environment policy. You don’t, do you?

 

 

Please sign this e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting and put Dr Coffey on the spot – the more signatures, the harder it is for Defra to do nothing.

 

The government response should:

• be published within 2 weeks of Gavin Gamble’s e-petition reaching 10,000 signatures
• announce that vicarious liability for wildlife crimes will be introduced in England because of the unacceptably high levels of wildlife crime
• announce that Defra will ask the RSPB to come forward with proposals for licensing of shooting estates within a month and that Defra will respond to them by Christmas
• acknowledge the level of concern about driven grouse shooting which led to 123,077 signatures being gained last year for an absolute ban on this hobby (I’m not expecting Dr Coffey to say anything nicer than that about a ban)
• confirm that Defra is looking at removal of farming subsidies from grouse moors in its post-Brexit agricultural strategy
• confirm that the evidence for wider environmental damage of heather burning has increased recently and that this is an issue that government will address and that this will require widespread changes to grouse moor management (burning and draining)
• mention where the government is with dealing with the RSPB complaint to the EU over unsustainable moorland management due to grouse shooting practices
• acknowledge that the plight of the Hen Harrier has not improved in two breeding seasons since the Defra Hen Harrier plan was launched and that the grouse shooting industry has not cleaned up its act and is on a last warning
• announce that the details of the 15-year Natural England Hen Harrier study will be published by Christmas 2017 in a government report with further recommendations for Hen Harrier conservation
• acknowledge that wildlife crime applies to many other protected species other than the Hen Harrier
• announce that the National Capital Committee has been asked to compile a report on ecosystem services and grouse moor management
• announce a review of the economic costs and benefits of intensive grouse moor management will be carried out by independent academics and published by Christmas 2018.

 

The government response should not:

• say that funding of the NWCU is a sufficient response to combatting bird of prey persecution in the uplands (because nobody who knows has ever suggested such a thing)
• say or suggest that grouse shooting provides a nett economic benefit to the nation (because there are no such figures)
• suggest that the current Hen Harrier Action Plan is remotely fit for purpose
• praise gamekeepers
• conflate benefits of all shooting (economic or environmental) with benefits of grouse shooting (because it makes the government department and/or its ministers look either stupid or biased)

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