Driven Grouse Shooting

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Rishi Sunak (Richmond (Yorks)) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to be called to speak in this debate, Mr Davies.

Whenever a ban is proposed, it is incumbent on us all to be certain about who that decision would impact on. To many, the image of the losers of a ban on grouse shooting seems clear: old men of a bygone age, sporting tweed jackets, expensive hobbies and outdated views. Nothing could be further from the truth. The real victims of a ban are not caricatures; they are ordinary working people in constituencies such as mine in North Yorkshire—the farmer’s wife who goes beating at the weekend so that her family can make ends meet through difficult times; the young man able to earn a living, in the community he loves, as an apprentice to a gamekeeper; the local publican welcoming shooting parties with cold ales and hot pies. Let us be absolutely clear: those who support a ban on grouse shooting should do so only if they are prepared to look those people in the eye and explain to them why their livelihoods are worth sacrificing.

There are some who question shooting’s contribution to the rural economy. People suggest that the 2,500 direct jobs, and the tens of millions of pounds paid out in wages, is somehow misleading. I agree: the truth is that the benefits created by grouse shooting go far beyond the direct employment it creates. From the Yorkshire bed and breakfast welcoming ramblers drawn to our area by the moor’s summer blossom to the workshops of Westley Richards in Birmingham or Purdey in London, whose handmade shotguns are the finest in the world, the ripples of employment that grouse shooting creates reach every corner of our country.

However, it is not only to the rural economy that grouse shooting makes an invaluable contribution; it is to our rural landscape as well. There is a tendency among some conservationists to act as though farmers and gamekeepers are somehow trespassing upon Britain’s landscape, yet without their hands repairing our dry stone walls or their dairy cows keeping the fields lush, the rural beauty of our countryside would soon fade. Heather moorland, as we have heard, is rarer than rainforest and 75% of it is found here in Britain. It is a national treasure. From Heathcliff to Holmes, the moors have become a proud part of our cultural heritage.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as I am the chairman of the Countryside Alliance. I will not repeat absolutely everything that has been said this afternoon, but I will compare two moorlands, and build on the excellent story that we heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames).

I, too, spent a pleasant day on a moorland—not actually shooting—not that long ago. Many species have been mentioned, and I think I counted 44 in total that day, including mammals and birds. There were blackcock, golden plover, woodcock, snipe, jack snipe, greylag geese, teal, widgeon, mallard, gadwall, pintail and even, right out in the middle of the moor, miles from anywhere, a wild chicken. I am not sure whether there are wild chicken, but there was a chicken that was probably not born and brought up there. There were also a collection of corvids and a few raptors. Probably as important, to pick up on the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams), was the thriving school, the busy shop and a pub that did business not just during the tourist season, but throughout the winter. In other words, the place was a proper community built around the agriculture and shooting activity of the area.

Compare and contrast that with my other experience of a moorland in mid-Wales, where I used to live and where, something like 20 years ago, grouse shooting of any sort came to an end. Now, as we heard from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), lapwing have become extinct on those moors. The numbers of golden plover are down by 90% and curlew by 79%. The moors are dominated by crows and other corvids, as well as ground predators. Biodiversity has been damaged by a lack of investment and overgrazing. A new phenomenon —at this stage being reported anecdotally—is the uninterrupted rock climbing in some of the few cliff areas, which is deterring peregrine falcons from nesting. No malice is intended, but the pretty unlimited and unregulated disturbance each and every weekend is contributing to difficulties elsewhere.

[Stephen Timms]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Simon Hart]

If it is a quick one. I always regret giving way, but I will do so for the right hon. Gentleman.

[Stephen Timms]

The hon. Gentleman has not yet mentioned hen harriers. A lot of my constituents are deeply concerned about the decline of the hen harrier population in England. Does he accept that there is a real concern that grouse shooting is making things worse?

[Simon Hart]

If the right hon. Gentleman—and this is not an insult—had been around earlier, he would have heard quite a lot about that. I suspect we will also hear from the Minister on that point. We have all acknowledged that the problem exists, but hen harriers are susceptible to a number of different things; persecution is but one. I will pass that ball to the Minister to deal with when she sums up.

We are told that there are good alternatives to driven grouse shooting. As far as I can make out, those include forestry, wind generation, rewilding—whatever the definition of that is—ecotourism, farming and rough shooting or walked-up shooting, as some people call it. The point is that the alternative already exists across a lot of the UK, including across a lot of Wales. Therefore, arguments that suggest that somehow there will be a booming rural economy in areas where driven grouse shooting does not take place can be contested, because we have the example already. It is not a case of speculating about what the alternatives may be. We know what the alternatives are because they are out there for anybody who wishes to go and see them, and they do not reflect in any way the suggestions made by those who wish to criminalise the activity.

In the joint evidence session last week between the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee and the Petitions Committee, it was pretty obvious to us that the people promoting a ban on driven grouse shooting had made no assessment of the economic or ecological costs, or the social consequences. The Committee felt, I think—I certainly did—that if people are going to make a case that would essentially add to the criminal sanctions of the country, put people out of work and alter the management of the uplands, the very least they could do is come up with a reason that their alternative is better than the existing model that has been tried and tested over some time. Until opponents of driven grouse shooting actually bother to make that case, their argument deserves to fail.

I finish by turning to a slightly more political argument. Earlier this year, the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) produced a document entitled, “Labour’s rural problem”, which was an analysis of why Labour was not succeeding in its electoral ambitions in rural areas. On page 33, she confesses that

“much of the party treats the countryside with a polite indifference.”

The report goes on to state:

“An activist from Labour South West, said...‘in the future we need to ensure that we focus on rural issues that most people worry about. Rural issues shouldn’t be confused with animal welfare issues.’”

And so it goes on.

The report compares interestingly with another document, produced by a former Labour MP, called the comprehensive animal protection review, which apparently has the warm endorsement of the shadow Minister. The author of the report says:

“As part of our wider environmental priorities, we will no longer allow drainage of land to facilitate grouse shooting and landowners will have obligations to restore land to its natural environment... We will introduce a licensing requirement for shooting estates”,

without defining what a shooting estate is. There are various other comments about further restrictions on shotgun ownership and increased licensing costs and so on.

There seems to be a problem. There is recognition that, in order to re-engage with rural communities, all political parties need to do things for them, rather than to them. Sadly, some of the comments today reveal that there is still an ambition to pursue a political agenda under the cover of some kind of ecological argument. Because of that and because of the lack of the proponents of the motion coming up with any more positive alternatives whatever, the proposal to ban driven grouse shooting deserves to fail, and I hope that it does.