Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, for adding his name to our amendment and especially for spotting the rather attractive typo in an earlier Marshalled List whereby “animal rustling” had become “animal hustling”. The only animal hustling I am aware of is when my small dog hustles me out of bed in the morning. I have tabled this amendment to probe the Government’s thinking about rural crime prevention. I appreciate that a recent rural crime strategy from the National Police Chiefs’ Council covered the years 2025 to 2028. It is very helpful to have that document and to see the priorities there. However, I do not believe it replaces a government-wide prevention strategy. Many issues would benefit from the Government having a complementary strategy, for example from the Department for Education and Defra, both of which have a huge role to play in educating the public with regard to the countryside and its wildlife on questions such as when lighting a fire in the countryside becomes a crime—something that is increasingly serious with climate change. What is criminal behaviour when you are in your boat and you spot a dolphin? I will not weary the Committee with too many examples. Society as a whole and the Government need to take a role in ensuring that our rural areas do not become crime hotspots. Organised crime, sadly, sees rural areas as a soft touch. A big example of this was recently highlighted by your Lordships’ House’s Environment and Climate Change Committee: fly-tipping on an industrial scale. It has become almost a full-time job for my noble friend Lady Sheehan to go around the country looking at these huge fly-tips. She has done a terrific job, raising awareness of the scale of the problem and eliciting some response for the Environment Agency and the Government. It is a question of public awareness, because it is important to report very early on where something is going to become a fly-tip. It illustrates how rural crime has become big criminal business, as has wildlife crime. In hare coursing, for example, there is big money to be made through the bets placed. That is disastrous for farmers, driving straight through their fences and hedges. It is hard to stand in the way when you are alone and facing a gang. It is also hard to police in remote rural areas. I hope the Government are paying attention to that sort of crime. They should be praised for pledging to introduce a closed season for hares, which is an excellent thing to do, but it will be a shame if hares continue to suffer from hare coursing. Peregrine falcon chicks—not something you would normally associate with commanding high prices and being the subject of organised crime—have become such a luxury item in the Middle East that there is now a need to police peregrine falcons’ nests. Eel poaching—not one or two eels for supper but glass eels, which are the babies, all illegally fished—is a trade worth £53 million at the last annual count and is wiping out the eel.