Following on from yesterday’s blog where I wrote about DEFRA Minister Lord Richard Benyon’s wilful blindness when it comes to tackling the illegal killing of birds of prey on gamebird shooting estates (here), there was a further exchange in the House of Lords about gamebird shooting, including several Lords’ unfounded claims that lead-shot gamebirds are ‘healthy‘ and ‘about the most nutritious food that you can possibly eat‘ (!!) and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (Natalie Bennett’s) well-informed question to Lord Benyon about the environmental impact of releasing 60+ million non-native gamebirds in to the countryside every year.
There was an additional exchange between Lord Newby (Dick Newby, Leader of the Lib Dems in the House of Lords) and Benyon:
I find it totally implausible that a DEFRA Minister, with a long-term personal interest in gamebird shooting (he owns a pheasant-shooting estate in Berkshire and a grouse moor in Scotland and was a former Trustee of the GWCT) would ‘not have any evidence’ of pheasant-dumping, especially given several high profile incidents in recent years, the most recent featuring on ITV news just last week!
Benyon told Dick Newby that if evidence could be produced he’d be ‘happy to discuss it with officials and with Natural England’.
So I tweeted Dick Newby this morning and gave him a link to this blog post which documents widespread pheasant dumping incidents in Cheshire, Scottish borders (here), Norfolk (here), Perthshire (here), Berkshire (here), North York Moors National Park (here) and some more in North York Moors National Park (here) and even more in North Yorkshire (here), Co. Derry (here), West Yorkshire (here), and again in West Yorkshire (here), N Wales (here), mid-Wales (here), Leicestershire (here), Lincolnshire (here), Somerset (here), Derbyshire’s Peak District National Park (here), Suffolk (here), Leicestershire again (here), Liverpool (here), even more in North Wales (here) even more in Wales, again (here), and in Wiltshire (here).
Within just four minutes of receiving my tweet, Dick Newey responded with this:
Impressive. Let’s see how he gets on.
For those interested in the full exchange in the House of Lords yesterday, the Hansard transcript can be read here.
Raptor Persecution UK 
Well done, please keep on keeping on, thanks to your determination and persistence, these buggers have nowhere to hide.
Please never stop.
Great response. Well done Ruth! Thankyou.
Brilliant. well done.
Thank you for getting personally involved in this and providing Lord Newby with information regarding the dumping of pheasants.
What I find inexcusable, is that Lord Benyon was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on 13 May 2021.
How can someone who appears to be so ill informed, be able to perform this roll?
It is a basic principle that good decisions can not be made without having proper knowledge of the subject on which such decisions are to be made.
How many other decisions are being made in parliament by members who know nothing about the subject they are supposed to be making decisions about?
Is this a proper way to run a country?
“How can someone who appears to be so ill informed, be able to perform this roll?”
I do not believe for one second that Benyon is not fully aware of 1) the widespread dumping of carcasses by shooting estates and 2) that lead shot meat is dangerous to eat.
These are people who are prepared to lie with a straight face ‘for the cause’.
What amazes me is that this Newby chap ‘really enjoys pheasant’. I wonder why he thinks lead was taken out of petrol and paint? Perhaps he thought it made them too heavy?
Remember, these are supposed to be our ‘betters’!
Brilliant. Well done Ruth. Let’s hope Newby follows this up. As for Benyon my knitting circle say he’s a liar!
Good luck: I asked my local MP nine questions about criminal activity surrounding fox hunting. Rather than answer them he has blocked me!
Report him isn’t there a parliamentary ombudsman? He is suppoesed to answer questions from a constituent.
Who is your MP?
Positive response, let’s hope he keeps up the pressure. Well done for not taking your foot off the pedal Dr Ruth.
I think there’s a typo – Newey instead of Newby in the sentence starting “Within 4 minutes …”
You are an astounding campaigner. I’ll try and send him examples I have of animal and bird dumping.
Thanks, typos fixed!
It is true that some estates never dump pheasants……I heard about one that installed an incenerator to avoid the issue!
I wonder about lead and incinerators. Lead smelters in the Pennine ore fields built expensive stone structures to recover lead that would otherwise be lost in the flue gasses. I don’t know details.
And now its deer dumping, just talked to a n acquaintance, hes been offered £50 for each deer he can shoot, by an owner of a recently planted wood, hes shot 9 and just left them, he then said someone had shot a red deer stag, and left the body minus its head, then said his mate shoots any wild bird even a blackbird anywhere near his poultry pens, for fear of bird flu, and same man poisons foxes with anti freeze, which slowly causes them to die of kidney failure, badger digging is still going on, lampers are out all over looking for deer, his other mate up in Scotland is currently awaiting going to court for poisioning red kites he said,
seems to me the whole country is awash with criminality, and very ignorant people,
some day some of these will be dead, lets hope their crimes die with them,
theres no proof of what he said its hearsay evidence, but what he told me will be the truth.
Not just a few bad apples, the whole orchard stinks
“I find it totally implausible that a DEFRA Minister, with a long-term personal interest in gamebird shooting (he owns a pheasant-shooting estate in Berkshire and a grouse moor in Scotland and was a former Trustee of the GWCT) would ‘not have any evidence’ of pheasant-dumping”
In my opinion, he’s a Tory, therefore he’s a liar.
Then surely he should make it his business to know; he is a DEFRA minister for goodness sake.
It is unbelievable what ignorance is claimed by those who govern and run this country. And I don’t think it would be any different which political party was in power.