Law Commission to look at wildlife law

31 August 2011

What’s it all about?

The Law Commission published a briefing on its eleventh programme of law reform.  Each area of law being examined has been identified as being flawed and at risk of creating confusion and injustice.  The Commission has included wildlife law in England and Wales as an area that needs to be looked at and it will review the Wildlife and Countryside Act and many of the other statutes which predate it.

BASC, as a major stakeholder in wildlife law, will be making recommendations to the Law Commission during its scoping process.  In doing so, BASC will be able to call on its experience of representing shooting interests in the lead up to the recent changes to wildlife law in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

What’s in the briefing?

The Law Commission has published a 42-page briefing on all the areas of law being examined. Wildlife law is covered on pages 21-22 and a summary of that is as follows:

• Law reform in the area of wildlife law would seek to provide a modernised and simplified framework, with an appropriate balance between primary and secondary legislation, and guidance.  The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 in particular has become so amended as to be difficult for the non-lawyer to use.
   
• Wildlife law touches on considerable economic interests, and therefore inefficiency in its operation can have widespread economic impacts. Sporting shooting contributed about £1.6 billion to the UK economy and supported the equivalent of 70,000 full time jobs in 2006.
   
• If there are significant inefficiencies in the means by which some animals are protected, they would have important impacts. A better system of licensing in relation to wildlife would be likely to result in administrative savings for Natural England. The annual budget for these services is currently £3 million. Filling in applications for licences is expensively time consuming for farmers and members of the public.

Click here to download the Law Commission briefing

What happens next?

After an initial internal scoping process the Law Commission will produce a consultation paper in the second half of 2012. BASC, as a major stakeholder in wildlife law, will be making recommendations to the Law Commission during this process

After analysing the results and coming to conclusions on the way forward, the Commission will share the results with Defra with a view to reviewing the future development of the project in March or April 2013.

If both Commission and Government agree at that point that the project should continue, the Law Commission will aim to produce a final report, with a draft bill, by mid-2014. However, if, at the review, either party decides that the project should not continue, the Law Commission will produce a narrative report of their conclusions in about May 2013.

FIND OUT MORE

What is the Law Commission?

The Law Commission is the statutory independent body created by the Law Commissions Act 1965 to keep the law under review and to recommend reform where it is needed.  The aim of the Commission is to ensure that the law is:

• fair
• modern 
• simple, and
• as cost-effective as possible.

Click here to find out more about the Law Commission

Go to Key Issues