Wild Justice fail again - parliamentary grouse shooting debate

On Monday 21st June the Westminster Petitions Committee debated the petition that glories in the catchy title "Ban Driven Grouse Shooting: Wilful blindness is no longer an option". The petition was started by - you guessed it - Wild Justice, the anti-shooting campaign group headed by Mark Avery, Ruth Tingay and Chris Packham. The debate follows a similar - unsuccessful - petition that was debated back in 2016.  Back then 30 MPs, including the now-Chancellor Rishi Sunak, made speeches in favour of grouse shooting, while none spoke in favour of the ban, and the petition was rejected. The Wild Justice trio must be experiencing a certain amount of déjà vú, as the 2021 debate followed a fairly similar pattern to the one from five years ago, with MPs lining up to support grouse shooting and to refute the claims of the petition.

Watch the full grouse shooting debate

No support in parliament for a ban on driven grouse shooting

In case you don't have time to watch the full debate, here's the most important part - Tom Hunt MP for Ipswich summed up by saying: 

Well, there we have it: with respect to the petitioners, there is clearly not support in this House for the petition. In fact, there is probably less support than there was four years ago. What is not clear is that banning driven grouse shooting would be good for the environment: in fact, I think that, on balance, it would be harmful. What is very clear is that banning it would seem to provide very little gain for a great deal of pain, and from what I can see the pain would be in those isolated rural communities. The people paying the greatest cost would not be the richest; they would be the very people who, right now, we should be thinking about helping.

 Don't feel too sorry for Wild Justice though, by now they must be used to defeat.