The government has been accused of dragging its feet on its manifesto promise to ban the import of hunting trophies.
Labour pledged at the 2024 general election to outlaw bringing the parts of animals killed by hunters for sport, such as heads or horns, into the UK.
But it has so far failed to bring a bill enacting the ban to Parliament, and in the two years since the election more than 40 import permits have been granted for hunting trophies.
Speaking during a debate on the subject, Environment Minister Jenny Riddell-Carpenter insisted the government was still committed to a ban and a bill would be delivered “when parliamentary time allows”.
Labour MP Clive Efford, who had proposed Wednesday’s Westminster Hall debate, said the minister’s promise “really is not good enough”.
“Who is the government afraid of?” he asked, arguing that only a “tiny minority of people” opposed the ban.
He continued: “This issue has been debated widely, over a great many years; there is not much more that we can learn from either side of the argument – this is the time that the government have to act and move forwards.”
A ban was first proposed by the Conservative government in 2019, and in 2022 a bill implementing a ban was passed by MPs but ran out of time in the House of Lords.
Conservative MP Henry Smith, who sponsored that bill, accused peers of using “parliamentary devices” to block its passage into law.
During Wednesday’s debate, several MPs urged the government to restart the process by introducing a fresh bill to Parliament.
Efford said: “Trophy hunting is not about conservation, it does not resolve issues of wildlife-human conflict, and it does not bring economic benefits to rural areas —certainly not in the way that tourism can.
“Local people have been attacked, their land stolen and their human rights abused. Private companies are stealing their homelands. Britain should not be accommodating this industry.”
Labour’s Rachael Maskell also called for a ban, but said the government could, in the meantime, make it illegal to advertise safari hunting and make it a criminal offence for UK residents to “celebrate their kill” by posting images on social media.
Labour MP Irene Campbell said she found it “upsetting” that hunting trophies could still be exported from the UK, pointing to an instance of a Scottish stag head being exported to Zimbabwe.
DUP MP Jim Shannon said the flow of hunting trophies coming into the country was continuing at “nearly two dozen a year while the government drag their feet”.
Addressing the minister, he said: “I ask her to give us a timescale, give us a date and tell us when [the ban] will happen.”
Conservative Roger Gale criticised those who hunted the animals, saying: “A yellow streak runs right through those people and they are revolting.”
More than one MP suggested that the government was being pressured by the US not to introduce a ban.
Earlier this year, The Telegraph reported, external that Doug Burgum, the US interior secretary, wrote to the UK government arguing: “Legal, well-regulated hunting – particularly trophy hunting – plays a vital role in supporting healthy wildlife populations, restoring habitat and supporting local economies.”
Responding to MPs, Riddell-Carpenter said the government remained committed to banning “the import of hunting trophies from species of conservation concern”.
“Our aim is clear: to introduce the bill at the earliest opportunity and within this Parliament,” she said, although she declined repeated invitations from MPs to set out a more specific timetable.
