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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent discussions she has had with Natural England on the level of resources needed for the roll-out of trial badger culls.

In order to be able to achieve a successful cull over a full 4 year period, a cull company needs to have funds in place for the equipment and consumables needed, and other related expenses incurred. Natural England, as the licensing authority, works closely with each cull company to help it estimate how much it is likely to need, based on the population estimates and numbers of badgers to be removed, and the size of the cull area. Previous experience is applied to ensure that cull companies are assisted in making accurate estimates, using known actual costs of equipment, consumables and other expenses. Experience shows that a contingency is required in case a cull company starts to run out of money in scenarios where they need to deploy more resources than originally planned, or there are more badgers to remove than originally estimated. Natural England reviews its approach in estimating costs each year.