If you are running a campaign then your aim is to achieve change in the world, change on the ground, change in reality. One of the most direct, though not particularly easy, routes to achieving widespread change is through influencing the action of governments as they control laws, regulations, enforcement, taxation and government spending. Petitions provide one route to prod governments to act on subjects that they would otherwise ignore by demonstrating public concern.
And so, as I sat at home while a gang of blokes started to install new solar panels on my house, and I watched the Westminster Hall debate on Wild Justice’s petition, I was really waiting for the last few minutes when a government minister, in this case the Minister of State, Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge), spoke on behalf of the government. Check what he said – click here.
Mr Zeichner’s words can be summed up as bland affability which, certainly didn’t dramatically move anything forward. He said that it was very important that the law on wildlife protection is respected and he spoke highly of the National Wildlife Crime Unit’s Hen Harrier Taskforce and claimed that “Early signs suggest that it is having a positive impact”. That is an interesting claim and we will have to wait to see whether it is based on anything more than wishful thinking.
Mr Zeichner also was clear on the burning issue, thus: “However, 80% of England’s peatlands are degraded, as we heard so powerfully from my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Hallam. I know there are different views, but many argue that rotational burning is a contributory factor in the degradation of upland areas. It is commonplace in moorlands that are managed for grouse, where vegetation is burned to improve conditions for raising grouse.
Continual burning damages peatlands, as it affects their hydrology by drying them out. Those degraded peatlands then emit the carbon they once stored. That is why DEFRA recently held a public consultation on proposals to extend the Heather and Grass etc. Burning (England) Regulations 2021, to which the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley and others have referred. The proposed amendments would increase the area of moorland protected from the negative impacts of burning and extend the existing licensing scheme to allow burning to be used in certain limited circumstances.”.
Mr Zeichner gave an almost interesting nod in the direction of the future when he referred to eco-tourism “which may well be the way forward in the future“. Also he didn’t talk about maintaining the upland environment and wildlife but instead he specifically said “to recover our environment and wildlife“. The Conservatives opposite will have wished that the government had not used the word ‘recover’ as that means ‘make things better’ and their position is that ‘all is good’ at the moment.
Mr Zeichner’s speech pointed out that 80% of England’s peatlands are degraded and that lots of protected birds of prey are killed illegally on grouse moors. He did this in a bland affable way – but the words were said, and will never be expunged from the parliamentary record. He also robustly defended Natural England.
Bland and affable though it was, Mr Zeichner’s speech was a recovery of the Defra position from their ill-chosen words as this petition passed 10,000 signatures and a bland and affable statement of a reasonable position – ‘there are bad things happening and they must change‘. Such a speech, in response to such a petition, was an opportunity for the Labour government, if it wished, to signal that it would bring in licensing of driven grouse shooting but it didn’t. It could have been a vehicle for announcements on lead ammunition or increased testing of grouse meat for medications used on grouse moors but it wasn’t. It could have been used as a pep talk for the grouse shooting industry but it wasn’t.
We’re a year into this Labour government and things are not going well for it. It was obvious from the virtual absence of rural and wildlife policies in the Labour election manifesto (see the blogs that Wild Justice published – click here) that Defra was seen by Labour as an unimportant government department and it wasn’t envisaged that much government action would take place there. Having just passed the first birthday of this administration then it is clear that Labour is rather clueless about rural and wildlife issues and not highly competent at getting its act together in other areas. When we contrast the efficiency with which a nasty Conservative government hit the ground running after 13 years of Labour in 2010 with the confusion with which Labour returned in 2024 you have to give full marks to the Tories for being efficiently nasty. I’m not regretting leaving the Labour Party despite there being many admirable MPs in its ranks including my own, Lee Barron here in Corby and East Northants, and Olivia Blake who spoke in this debate from Sheffield Hallam.
The response to the petition was a government response and so it will stick to, but could have moved forward, government policy. It probably would not have differed much had it been given by another Defra minister. I wonder why Mr Zeichner was chosen to perform on this matter as although he is the middle-ranking Defra minister (a Minister of State, sandwiched between the Secretary of State and three Parliamentary Under-secretaries), Mary Creagh, an experienced parliamentarian with a strong environmental record would have been a more obvious choice as the responding minister as she is the Minister for Nature and her brief includes environmental targets, Environmental Improvement Plan, Natural England, the Office for Environmental Protection, the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, land use framework, domestic biodiversity and forestry. Mr Zeichner is essentially the farming and fisheries minister. Ms Creagh is not bland and is affable with an edge.
All in all, the government response was marginally better than neutral and quite a lot better than we would get under a Conservative or Reform government. That’s the best that can be said of it and so, if you want change in the hills, it was disappointing but then we are getting accustomed to being disappointed by this government.
I’m writing several more blogs about the debate but the government words are the most important part of the debate.
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The government’s response was cautious and non-committal. While it acknowledged key environmental issues like peatland degradation and illegal raptor killings, it offered little in terms of concrete policy change or enforcement.
abdessamed – yes, but those things are acknowledged which is more than would happen under a Conservative government.
And, Defra would say that the activity of the NWCU and new regulations on burning (which if you read the transcript the Tory grouse-shooting supporters loathed) were already responses that they had made to the situation. Some of us might say that the stiffer proposed burning regulations might even be a response to the petition but one never knows (except it won’t have harmed things).
And this and future governments are hemmed in with domestic and international commitments – and the subject of this debate does no harm in reminding them of that.
Bland and affable it was, without merit it wasn’t.