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Government to make summer badger cull decision

FARMERS GUARDIAN
9 May 2011 | By Alistair Driver

FARMING Minister Jim Paice has insisted the Government is still intending to make an announcement on a badger cull in England before the July Parliamentary recess.

Mr Paice announced at the NFU in February that Ministers were delaying a decision on a proposed licensed badger cull planned for that month because of a ‘whole raft’ of practical issues that emerged during the consultation process.

These included questions about how to enforce the licence conditions, how to minimise the so-called perturbation effect, including through vaccination and law and order concerns.

Mr Paice said ‘a lot of progress’ had been made on these issues but made it clear they had not yet been fully resolved.

He stressed that the final decision had not yet been made but said the policy was ‘still going where I want it to go’. “I have my doubts about May but we are still on for an announcement in this parliamentary period,” he told Farmers Guardian in an interview to mark the coalition’s first anniversary.

He denied that the delay had anything to do with ‘political wavering’, as some conspiracy theorists have suggested. There has been speculation that Defra Secretary Caroline Spelman and other senior figures in Government have been reluctant to immediately launch into another controversial policy in the wake of the forest sell off fiasco, which generated a wave of negative publicity for the Government, particularly ahead of the May elections.

But Mr Paice said: “I can genuinely say there is no issue of politics in the delay we are facing.”

He said one of the main reasons behind the ongoing delay was the need to ensure any policy would stand up to judicial review, in the likely event it would be challenged in the courts.

“There is clear intent by Badger Trust to take us to judicial review if we go down this road - and we haven’t made that decision yet - which means we have to be absolutely sure we are copper-plated and those challenges are properly addressed,” he said.

“I keep saying to the industry that if we lose a judicial review on this, the culling of badgers is out of the door for ages.

“I am sorry it is taking longer than we expected but we have to win that judicial challenge. We need to make sure we get it right.”

He said the practical biggest barrier was finding a mechanism to address any breaches of licence conditions issued by groups of farmers issued with licences to cull badgers in specified TB hotpsot areas.

“Normally, if someone does not fulfil the terms of a licence that licence is taken away. We would want the license to be fulfilled in this case as taking it away half way through is the worst of all scenarios,” Mr Paice said.

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