Changes to the law, have your say.

[DEREK CANNING LLB[HONS] 20]

Changes to the law, have your say http://lawcommission.justice.gov.uk/consultations/wildlife.htm

[DEREK CANNING LLB[HONS] 20]

a

Reforming the law

Steel House

11 Tothill Street

London

SW1H9LJ

t 02033340262 f 02033340201

Derek Canning ^{e wildlife@lawcommission.g}si.gov.uk

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14 August 2012

Derek,

First, my apologies for not having replied to you sooner, I was waiting until we had a copy of our consultation paper to send you. This, I have enclosed.

 

Second, we have considered your comments and think that you may wish to make a formal submission in response to our consultation paper. We would then be able to refer to your submissions in the report we will issue following the close of consultation - which closes on 30 November 2012. The provisional proposals in the consultation paper, which do not recommend a change to the current law concerning burdens of proof, are very much that - "provisional proposals". Therefore, our position can change in consultation.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Keith Vincent

wwwJawcom.qov.uk

[DEREK CANNING LLB[HONS] 20]

This shows how the RSPB control the laws that governs us.

Re: UK Wildlife Laws - Public participation

PROTECTION OF BIRDS (AMENDMENT) BILL

 

HL Deb 26 July 1976 vol 373 cc1139-45 1139

§ 7.49 p.m.

Lord CHELWOOD

My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. This very short amending Bill passed through all its stages on the nod in another place on 16th July. That was something which I think was most unusual and, in my experience at any rate, unique. But it showed three things: first, that this amending Bill is not controversial; secondly, that it has the Government's blessing; and, thirdly, that there is a need for it. As Parliament has had no explanation whatsoever of the need for this amendment of the Protection of Birds Act 1954, as amended in 1967, because there was no opportunity in another place, may I please say a few words, in spite of the hour being latish, because I think it is important that there should be something—even something brief—on the record?

The fines for any person guilty of an offence against the Protection of Birds Act 1954 have not been changed since that Act was put on the Statute Book. Clause 12(2)(a) of the Act laid down a maximum fine of £25 for especially serious offences. Those offences fell into two main categories: first, excessively cruel methods of killing or taking wild birds, such as the use of gin traps, or the use of blinded decoy birds, or the use of bird lime. Those are three examples which spring to mind and they were described in detail, together with other excessively cruel methods of taking wild birds, in Section 5 of the 1954 Act.

The second category of specially serious offences which are subject to a maximum fine of £25 involve the taking of rare or very rare birds which are listed in the First Schedule to the Act. Incidentally, the very first bird in that Schedule is the 1140 avocet, because the Schedule is alphabetical. This bird is the symbol of the RSPB. At the moment I am wearing the tie of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, whose President is the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, who sits opposite. For manyyears this society has done splendid work for the protection of wild birds and it is extremely anxious to see that this measure reaches the Statute Book.

Section 12(2)( of the 1954 Act laid down a maximum fine of £5 for all other offences under the Act. It is sad but true that the purchasing power of the pound since 1954 has fallen so steeply that to impose the same penalty in real terms today the fines would need to be, in round figures, £90 and £18 instead of £25 and £5. Thus this Bill introduces no more than an increase that offsets the inflation since 1954. In addition, the fines under the Protection of Birds Acts are now seriously out of line with the most recent legislation in the conservation field. The Badgers Act 1973 laid down a maximum fine of £100. The Conservation of Wild Creatures and Wild Plants Act 1975 laid down the same maximum fine of £100. The really important reason, however, for this short amending Bill must be the ever increasing demand for, and hence the pressure on, rare species of birds, in particular birds of prey, and the extraordinarily high price that these species fetch on the black market.

Below is sections taken from Hansard to show how the RSPB control the law via their members.

 

‘breeding capacity in captivity. That is because nobody has bothered to do it. Whether a blackbird is something from which one can make mules with canaries I am not absolutely certain, but bullfinch mules and goldfinch mules are certainly produced in the canary exhibiting world and produce very special song birds and rather pretty variants. I think probably the reason is that there are so many of them in the wild that nobody has actually bothered to go to the trouble of introducing a self-sustaining breeding population in captivity. That is merely an observation, but I think it bears a little on what the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, has said.

§ Baroness David

The Minister gave a list of societies which have given advice on this subject. Was the 933 Royal Society for the Protection of Birds included in that list?

§ Lord Renton

I will try not to widen the discussion too much, but I have always had an aversion to seeing birds of any kind kept in small cages. I remember annoying one of my constituency agents very much by refusing to present the prizes at an annual show of a cage birds society. Is there anything in this Bill which will ensure that if birds are bred and kept in captivity they will be kept in reasonable sized cages?

In this connection, I feel bound to invite the attention of your Lordships to the Notes on Clauses, which make it clear that birds may be shown non-competitively even if they are not listed in Part I of Schedule 3. In this respect there seems to be no limit whatever upon the number of birds which may be kept in small cages so long as they are kept non-competitively. This is a matter on which Parliament perhaps needs to lead public opinion. I should be grateful if my noble friend could let us know whether there is anything in the Bill, other than what is in subsection (3) of Clause 6 (which does not go very far), which could set at rest the kind of fears that I have mentioned.

Lord Chelwood

Now that my noble friend Lord Sandys has heard the anxieties expressed on both sides of the Committee, which I think are clearly fairly widely shared, perhaps he will be good enough to say that he will at any rate look at this again, even though he is prejudiced against the amendment at the moment. I fully realise this is a very *****ly and very complicated question. It would have been tackled in 1954 and 1967 under the Wild Birds Protection Acts had it been easier to tackle. The noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, the immediate past President of the Royal Society for the Protection for Birds, of which I was once President, is only too well aware how anxious the RSPB is that it should be tackled.

Therefore, of course, the Society, which is I believe the biggest voluntary conservation society in the world, will be glad that we are debating it, but they do have serious anxieties. They were not mentioned by my noble friend, Lord Sandys, who gave the names of three societies he had consulted, all of which, I had the impression, were perhaps to some extent prejudiced, in that they were interested in the very widespread hobby of showing caged birds, which is obviously going to go on whether we like it or not. It does seem to me extremely important, now that we

 

WILDLIFE AND COUNTRYSIDE ACT 1981: DECISIONS TO PROSECUTE

 

HL Deb 15 March 1983 vol 440 c718WA 718WA

§ Lord Melchett

asked Her Majesty's Government:

Why, in respect of the shooting of a barnacle goose on Islay on 25th October 1982, the procurator fiscal decided that no proceedings should be taken, and whether the procurator fiscal decided, as with an incident that occurred on 27th January 1983 on Islay, that no offence had been committed.

§ The Lord Advocate (Lord Mackay of Clashfern)

In deciding whether the facts as disclosed to the procurator fiscal justified the taking of proceedings under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, the procurator fiscal had to decide whether an offence had been committed, whether there was sufficient evidence to prove the alleged offence against the accused and whether there was any excuse for the accused's conduct. The decision in respect of the incident of 25th October 1982 involved the exercise of a judgment by the procurator fiscal taking all the circumstances into consideration. It would not be appropriate to give the detailed grounds upon which the decision was taken. I have examined the circumstances of the case, and am satisfied that the procurator fiscal exercised his judgment in a proper manner.

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