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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the badger culling programme.

During 2018, badger culling operations in 32 areas of England were all successful in meeting their targets. According to Natural England’s chief scientist, the results show that industry-led badger culling continues to deliver the level of effectiveness required by the policy to be confident of achieving disease control benefits.

Assessments of the effectiveness of badger culling are published annually on gov.uk at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/bovine-tb-controlling-the-risk-of-bovine-tb-from-badgers