Rodenticides – our report stimulates some movement

Our recent report Collateral Damage showed that the Rodenticide Stewardship Regime (or scheme) is failing. It was supposed to lead to a reduction in exposure of wildlife to rat poisons and instead exposure has risen. That’s a ‘fail’ however you look at it.

But the publication of Collateral Damage and many Wild Justice supporters writing to their MPs has led to a spate of parliamentary questions and answers on this subject.

Questions were asked by Satvir Kaur MP, Alex Mayer MP, Suella Braverman MP, Mark Pritchard MP, Alistair Strathern MP, and Chris Hinchcliff MP.

The questions were answered by two experienced government ministers, Mary Creagh at Defra and Stephen Timms at Department for Work and Pensions. They were singing from the same cribsheet when each responded that a review of how things were going would be completed in 2025. 2025 is a safe thing to say in late 2024 as it could mean ‘in a few weeks’ or ‘in 12 months’ time’.

Back in 2017, the report of the Government Oversight Group said that ‘The assessment report to the Government will be undertaken on an annual basis with a full review of the cumulative data in 2020 to help inform an overall assessment of the regime.‘ A promise, once nudged by Wild Justice, to do something in 2025 that should have been done in 2020 is spectacular kicking of the can down the road by Defra. This delay was mostly under the previous government and we hope that people in Natural England and the Health and Safety Executive are even now beavering away to get this done early in 2025 rather than when you are sending out your Christmas cards next year.

There are a few other eyebrow-raising passages such as the suggestion by Mary Creagh that ‘There are robust, multi-agency arrangements in place for taking enforcement against the misuse of rodenticides.‘ because we are unaware of these bearing fruit. And even the suggestion that ‘Where wild birds of prey are killed illegally the full force of the law will apply to any proven perpetrators of the crime‘ begs the question of whether enough resources are devoted to finding the perpetrators.

With your help, we have drawn attention to this area of neglect and inactivity, and we’ll be prodding away at it in future. We already are.