Wildlife Crime

Energy Intensive Industries, such as iron and steel, chemicals and cement industries, account for 4% of Gross Value Added and employ 125,000 people in the UK. They face particular risks from initiatives to reduce carbon emissions, including the indirect costs of the EU Emissions Trading System and the Carbon Price Floor. The Government is right therefore to set out a scheme to help offset that risk. Government policy should not result in these industries and their emissions relocating abroad. However, the risk of this happening is concentrated in only a small number of sectors, and thus compensation must be tightly focused and linked to helping those industries to reduce their fossil fuel dependency.

Industry has not provided the Government with the data required to establish precisely how much compensation is needed, making any assessment of the adequacy of the compensation package incomplete. We have identified a number of areas, however, where the calculation of compensation must be tightened up to avoid over-compensating businesses, in particular to avoid compensation being paid to companies making windfall profits from accumulating surplus free Emissions Trading System carbon allowances.

The compensation scheme being proposed by the Government has been closely modelled on the calculations and eligibility criteria issued by the European Commission, to ease the State Aid approval process for the scheme. In some areas, however, the Government has applied elements of the Commission’s calculation in a potentially more stringent way than some other countries might be doing. The Government should review the operation of the compensation scheme after its first year, to ensure that it remains reasonable in view of the costs actually being incurred by energy intensive industries and does not put UK businesses at a competitive disadvantage.

Energy intensive industries, like all other sectors of the economy, must decarbonise if we are to meet our emissions targets. Barriers hampering this include the availability of innovative technologies and investment funding. The current compensation package is simply a short term measure to help offset some carbon policy costs and does nothing to address these barriers. We recommend therefore that the Government sets out a strategy for energy intensive industries, as part of the wider manufacturing strategy needed to ensure that the UK retains a robust manufacturing sector, which sets out a path for their maximum feasible decarbonisation and incorporating sector-specific roadmaps. Such a strategy should identify by how much industries should be required to decarbonise and improve their energy efficiency and how the Government will help to ensure that this is achieved, including through energy consumption reduction measures and incentives, and support for innovation, technological research, development and investment. Such an analysis would allow a clear articulation of the feasible limits of decarbonisation over the medium and longer term, and thereby provide an assessment of the scale of future compensation requirements. At the same time the Government should set out the extent of the compensation that it is willing to pay in a longer term compensation budget.

Since our predecessor Committee’s inquiry in 2004, there has been greater Government commitment to tackling wildlife crime. There has been a clear improvement on the situation in 2004, but action is still required in a number of areas and there are new developments that the Government now needs to tackle:

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Wildlife law has been amended so many times in response to new wildlife crime threats that it is too complex for non-specialist police and prosecutors to apply effectively and for the public to fully appreciate. All our witnesses thought that a consolidation of the law was long overdue.

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Defra and the Home Office have continued to fund the specialist National Wildlife Crime Unit (NWCU) through a period of constrained public finances, but they have not provided certainty about its funding on the long-term basis needed to allow the Unit to build its capabilities. The Government must maintain the current level of funding, with longer-term certainty, to allow the Unit to focus on its core duties.

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Primary legislation proscribing the possession of poisons used to kill birds of prey was enacted in 2006, but an Order listing which poisons it would be an offence to possess has not been introduced. The Government must immediately introduce such an Order to protect birds from poisoning. Given the current law’s lack of deterrent effect, it should also bring forward legislation to introduce vicarious liability for raptor persecution.

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Wildlife crime enforcement has been undermined by the lack of any sentencing guidelines on wildlife crime for judges, which has led to inconsistent outcomes in the courts. The Government must immediately address that gap by introducing sentencing guidelines for judges, and provide training on wildlife crime for magistrates and prosecutors.

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In 2004, our predecessor Committee warned that the internet would act as a wildlife crime enabler. This has inevitably come to pass. However, recent funding for this area was so short term that no suitably qualified person could be found to fill the NWCU’s internet monitoring post. The key role of monitoring wildlife crime on the internet would be more attractive to suitable applicants if it were made secure through an extended funding settlement.

If the Government were to address those points, the UK would be significantly better placed to tackle domestic wildlife crime.

In the international arena, the rhino, tiger and elephant are threatened with extinction due to poaching driven by growing demand from south-east Asia and China. Such threats can only be tackled through international co-operation. In this field, the UK Government has provided international leadership, which it must maintain and extend. The next meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species Conference of the Parties in 2013 provides an important opportunity for the Government to seek international agreement on adopting a more rigorous approach to the trafficking of endangered species.