Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will make an assessment of the implications for her policy on the timing of the badger cull in Hampshire of the report by the Animal and Plant Health Agency entitled Year End Descriptive Epidemiology Report: Bovine TB in the Edge Area of England 2021 County: Hampshire; and if she will take steps to end the badger cull in Hampshire before 2024.

We are committed to achieving official freedom from Bovine TB for England by 2038 and intensive badger culling in areas where badgers are an important factor in spreading disease to cattle has been an important part of this

We licenced the intensive cull areas this year, and plan to gradually build government-supported badger vaccination and surveillance. Badger culling would remain an option where epidemiological assessment indicates that it is needed.

The descriptive epidemiology report for each county in the Edge Area is published annually, and available on GOV.UK.