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 his Department has made of the adequacy of legislation for (a) deterring and (b) prosecuting people who attack (i) wildlife and (ii) livestock with catapults; and whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of bringing forward legislative proposals to help tackle this.

The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 protects all wild birds and some wild animals in England and Wales. While it does not specifically include catapults in the list of weapons that must not be used to kill wildlife, it is still illegal to deliberately attempt to kill, injure, or harm protected species. There are a range of other offences found in further legislation to protect wildlife from cruelty such as the Wild Mammals (Protection) Act 1996. Where livestock is concerned, it is an offence under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 to cause an animal any unnecessary suffering. The Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Act 2021 increased the sentences available for the most serious cases of animal cruelty by increasing the maximum penalty for this offence to 5 years’ imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine.

The Government takes crimes against animals seriously but there is already sufficient legislation in place which protects them from targeted use of catapults. Defra therefore has no current plans to take further steps to tackle the use of catapults and nor does the Home Office have plans to change the law to make a catapult a specified prohibited weapon.