Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment she has made of the potential merits of making wildlife crimes notifiable offences; and if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of doing so on (a) data collection and (b) the monitoring of wildlife crime trends.

Wildlife crime can have devastating consequences for our natural environments and countryside communities. This Government is committed to reducing crime in rural areas and anyone exploiting or deliberately harming British wildlife should face the full force of the law.

There are no plans currently to make all wildlife crimes notifiable. Any non-notifiable wildlife crime reported to police can be investigated as Chief Constables have operational independence to tackle the crimes that matter most to their communities.

The National Wildlife Crime Unit provides intelligence, analysis and investigative assistance to forces and other law enforcement agencies across the UK to support them in investigating wildlife crime including gathering intelligence from a number of organisations to determine the wildlife crime priorities.