Driven Grouse Shooting

Lord Bellingham Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petitions 125003 and 164851 relating to driven grouse shooting.

It is a joy and great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Davies. I thank those who initiated the two e-petitions and all those who signed them, because they have provided us with the opportunity to debate driven grouse shooting today. As with all issues regarding animals, this one is highly emotive and draws out a lot of feeling. One of the things I have been surprised about since being elected is that I get far more emails about animals—be they bees, badgers, foxes, dogs, cats or now grouse—than I do about any issues relating to the welfare of people. Something in our national make-up certainly seems to be drawn out when it comes to animals.

The e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting has received more than 120,000 signatures. The petition states:

“Grouse shooting for ‘sport’ depends on intensive habitat management which increases flood risk and greenhouse gas emissions,”

and kills many mammals, such as

“Foxes, Stoats, Mountain Hares…and…protected birds…including Hen Harriers.”

The petition goes on to describe driven grouse shooting as “canned hunting”, which is

“economically, ecologically and socially unnecessary.”

The other e-petition is in favour of protecting grouse moors and grouse shooting. It states:

“Grouse moors…are an integral part of moorland management both for the grouse and other…wildlife such as lapwing and curlew”.

According to the petition, grouse shooting helps to support local businesses, jobs and rural areas.

I have a keen interest in and concern for our traditional rural way of life, but I have never participated in grouse shooting and, as far as I am aware, I have no links or connections to anyone who has, although I will admit to eating a few grouse on occasion—I found them very tasty. I am opening this debate as a member of the Petitions Committee. I do not claim to be an expert on the subject, but since the petition was brought before the Committee it has been interesting to learn about the issues and listen to views from both sides. The Committee has received numerous written submissions and held an oral evidence session with representatives of those who wish to ban or control grouse shooting and those who support it.

Grouse shooting has existed in the UK for more than 160 years. It is governed by parliamentary legislation and European Union directives, and it is a devolved matter for the devolved regions of the UK. Red grouse are wild game birds that live in the uplands of the UK. In 2009, there were an estimated 230,000 pairs in the UK.

[Sir Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

I am hesitant to interrupt such a superb speech, but my hon. Friend mentioned that one of the petitions used the word “canned”, which is surely extremely ignorant and misleading, because the birds are completely wild. Does he agree that there is no logic whatever in saying that driven grouse shooting should be somehow controlled, but that other forms of grouse shooting should not be? There is no logic there, because we are talking about a wild bird, not one that can be reared.

[Steve Double]

I agree very much with both my hon. Friend’s points.

Red grouse are not found anywhere in the UK but uplands. They live in heather moorland and heather forms the staple part of their diet. Seventy-five per cent of global heather moorland is located in the UK, so in global terms heather moorland is rarer than the rain forest. Heather moorland comprises about 7% of the UK’s land mass, or some 6,500 square miles.

Grouse shooting comes in two forms: walked-up shooting, which involves groups of shooters who walk around a predetermined area and drive the grouse from the ground, and driven grouse shooting, which involves a group of beaters who scare the grouse from the ground towards a line of shooters. One of the petitions calls for a ban on driven grouse shooting, but as my hon. Friend said, it seems slightly illogical to wish to ban only one form of grouse shooting.

Clearly there are informed and strongly held views that grouse shooting is detrimental to our environment and wildlife. Concerns have been expressed about how the way in which the moors are managed contributes to flooding and is responsible for the destruction of other wildlife, including some of our national birds of prey in particular. I am aware that many other hon. Members wish to participate in the debate, so I will be unable to go into all the detail of the issues raised in the time available to me in opening, but I hope others will pick up on the other points. I will deal with what I see as the main issues.

One of the biggest questions, as I see it, is whether the management of grouse moors is good or bad for our environment. First, we have to look at moorland management and whether the moors must necessarily be managed. Moorland looks wild, but in fact it is a carefully managed environment. It is thanks to grouse shooting that over the past 30 years grouse moor managers in England have been responsible for the regeneration of more than 217,000 acres of heather moorland. The petition to ban mentions that such moorland is an important part of the ecosystem and local habitats, so one of the big questions to be asked is, if we were to ban grouse shooting, how would that important habitat otherwise be managed?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)]

It is a great privilege to be called to speak in this debate about a matter that touches on issues of great importance to this House: biodiversity; the uplands, their fragile economy and the people who live there and make their way of life there; and questions surrounding some of the most magnificent, special wild places in the whole of this beautiful country. May I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) on the measured and careful way in which he introduced the debate?

I should declare an interest in that I am chairman of the all-party parliamentary game and wildlife conservation group and I am a keen game shot. I have had the great joy of spending a good deal of my time in the uplands ever since I was a child. The heather moorland of the sort maintained by grouse shooting is one of the rarest habitat types and enjoys some of the very highest conservation designations. These moors were not designated sites of special scientific interest in spite of being grouse moors but precisely because they were grouse moors. These wonderful places exist only because generations of owners have refused endless blandishments and huge grants from successive Governments to drain them, fence them, plant them with conifers, carpet them with sheep and cover them with roads and tracks.

[Sir Henry Bellingham]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Sir Nicholas Soames]

I will press on—I am afraid I have not got any time.

The owners did that because they love these wild places and the occasional chance to shoot grouse. Driven grouse shooting touches the livelihoods of thousands of people in the uplands: hoteliers, publicans, agricultural workers, shopkeepers, retired folk, children in the holidays and, of course, gamekeepers and their families. What I particularly want to ask today is: what would happen if driven grouse shooting were to be banned and grouse moor management were to cease?

If anyone wants to see in real life what that would look like, go to Wales, which in many places is an ornithological desert. Indeed, on one 5,000-acre estate in north Yorkshire, there are more golden plover than in the whole of Wales. This May, I walked on a well keepered and managed grouse moor that practises enlightened standards of stewardship. I heard curlew, grouse, golden plover, oystercatchers, skylarks, lapwings and the wonderful grey hill partridge. It was truly a miraculous and unforgettable cacophony of sound; people can see and hear for themselves the beneficial effect of legal predator control.

I pay tribute to the work of the gamekeepers in the uplands, whose contribution to the environment and to natural biodiversity in the hills we ignore at our peril. They are responsible for the control of foxes, crows, magpies and stoats, all of which eat the eggs of ground nesting birds. They are the unsung heroes of conservation, and those who take an interest in the matter without knowing much about it need to remember that man has been dealing with predators for centuries. Other colleagues will deal at length with the question of burning, but it is true that if you cease burning, you get long, degenerate, rank heather, which is unsightly and seriously inhibits the habitat for the very species that we want to encourage. Substantial sums of private and public money have gone into the eradication of bracken and thousands of acres have been controlled. Stop driven grouse shooting and all that work will halt; we will be left with old, rank heather, acres of bracken and, inevitably, an ornithological desert.

Driven grouse shooting plays a major part in sustaining communities on the edge of and in the middle of the moors—something that cannot lightly be dismissed. I am very taken with the views of Mr Avery when he was director of conservation at the RSPB; I understand that he started the e-petition to ban grouse shooting:

“The RSPB and other moorland owners and managers agree about many things—we care deeply about the countryside and are angered by the declines in blackgrouse and wader populations; we agree that grouse moors have prevented even greater losses of heather to intensive grazing and conifers”.

He continued:

“Grouse moors undoubtedly provide good habitat for species in addition to grouse. Some birds, particularly breeding waders, do well on grouse moors. The package of management, which includes the killing, legally, of certain predator species, benefits a range of other bird species. On the subject of predators the RSPB does not oppose legal predator control and recognises that it is necessary if the objective is to produce a shootable surplus of gamebirds.”

And so say all of us.

Properly conducted grouse shooting is a force for good in the uplands. It would be a disaster for the landscape, biodiversity and many small but locally important rural economies were driven grouse shooting to be banned.

--- Later in debate ---

[Danny Kinahan]

I certainly take that point on board, but I go back to what I said at the beginning: we all need to listen to one another and find the right way of doing this. In Ireland, we have much more peat than many other areas, but we have to find the right way forward.

The RSPB has been instrumental in this, as has the Irish Grouse Conservation Trust. My feeling today is that we should not all fall out with one another. Let us work together as a team to find the right way of doing this. Burning is well regulated. We have had awful fires on some of the moors in Northern Ireland in the past few years that have had absolutely nothing to do with those looking after the land. We have to find a proper way of protecting it. I believe the proper way of protecting it is those who own the land and shoot on it carrying on as they are at the moment. The same can be said when it comes to looking after birds of prey. It is better if we all work together, pull together and learn from one another.

[Sir Henry Bellingham]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned working together. Does he agree that a good start would be for the RSPB to come back into the flagship hen harrier joint action plan, which it pulled out of after six months?

[Danny Kinahan]

I certainly agree. I would like to see the RSPB perhaps being less political and getting more involved in working with all of us.

I think I have made my point. We should work together. We have the skills and we have the regulations. Let us make them work and listen to one another.