NEWS AND OPINION: Rishi Sunak is reneging on his promise to ban the importation of sport hunting trophies, usually from Africa and often from South Africa where there’s lots of canned hunting. This is when the organisers put lions (and other animals) into a fenced compound and allow rich businessmen to shoot them dead the fun of it. They then cut off a piece of the lion’s anatomy and take it home. That is currently legal in the UK and in most other countries if not all of them.
The death of the popular and celebrated lion, Cecil, killed by the sport hunter Walter Palmer, a Minnesotan dentist, led the Conservatives and Labour to pledge a ban on trophy imports to the UK.
The UK government has pledged to introduce a bill banning trophy imports in no fewer than four Queen’s speeches but it has not happened.
The latest attempt is the Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill which was introduced as a private member’s bill tabled by Henry Smith, the MP for Crawley. That’s the legislation which should be passing through Parliament or it should be law by now.
But in the House of Lords there is a bunch of sliver-haired white elderly Anglo-Saxon trophy hunting advocates who support this cruel and barbaric practice and they filibustered the legislation into a black hole.
It needs to be resurrected. And the only way this can happen is if Parliament allocates more time to debate it. That task falls upon The Department of Environmental Food and Rural Affairs which said that they were disappointed with the outcome and are doing all they can to bring this legislation forward. Do animal advocates believe that?!
Referring to the bill which has become stuck in parliament, Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Peter Egan, Ricky Gervais and Joanna Lumley told Sunak: “You have not, we are sorry to say, lived up to your words. You have grenade on your words.”
They added that:
“This is a bill that was unanimously passed by elected MPs at every stage of the bill in the House Of Commons. On reaching the House Of Lords it was the only private member’s bill not to have been given adequate time for its progress before parliamentary prorogation, and when it did, it was filibustered into oblivion by a few unelected pro-hunting Conservative peers.”
Of the 44,000 people who responded to a government consultation on the policy to ban the importation of trophies, 86% backed it, the group of celebrities noted.
The animal loving celebrities say that Sunak is not uniting the country and is going against the will of the country. They argue that Sunak’s government lacks integrity in breaking its promise.
In their letter to Rishi Sunak, they wrote that:
“Britain’s are a nation of animal lovers, and trophy hunting is a cruel, barbaric and outdated practice.
Comment: I am very disappointed and saddened by this government’s lack of will to ensure that this bill passes and becomes law. It does indeed show a lack of integrity and desire to do the right thing. Sunak will probably argue that the government is too embroiled in dealing with more pressing matters such as inflation, the cost of living problems and servicing their massive bill of interest payments on the huge £400 billion loan they acquired during Covid-19 to pay for a misconceived furlough program another badly organised Covid projects.
This country borrowed far too much money during Covid-19 and they managed the pandemic chaotically it is now reported. Sunak was far too generous and were are now paying the price because when the loan was taken out interest rates were low but they’ve shoot up post Covid and the UK is paying £100 billion annually to service the interest only on these international loans.
This means that there is no money to improve welfare or to embark upon infrastructure projects. It’s partly why the HS2 project has been pretty well shut down. It’s a complete disaster and that’s thanks to Rishi Sunak by the way as he was the Chancellor during Covid-19.
