It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Randall. I want to echo his comments about the Minister, because I do understand that he cares deeply about these issues. Equally, legislation can always be improved, and I hope that he listens hard to noble Lords in this debate so that things can be improved. The noble Lord, Lord Randall, also covered some of the territory that I wanted to cover. However, I will carry on.
The noble Lord mentioned the loss of collaboration mechanisms with other scientific bodies. ClientEarth posed some questions to Defra, some of whose replies were a little glib. So I will ask two, three or four questions about that. I am curious about whether the scientific
authorities—the Joint Nature Conservation Committee for fauna and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew—will have an expanded role or some extra funding. Clearly, if they are on their own or they have to set up new networks, they will need a little more money. I hope that the Government are thinking about that.
Secondly, on the enforcement group, Defra talks about the National Wildlife Crime Unit and Border Force—the Minister mentioned that Border Force had some extra officers. The position of the National Wildlife Crime Unit, which is essentially within the police, is a bit more nebulous in that, in 2016, it was given four-year funding, securing what Defra called its long-term future—I think that most of us would not think that four years was long term. That obviously runs out this year, so can the Minister tell me whether it has had extra funding and how much that funding was? When I was a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority in London, I was well aware that the Wildlife Crime Unit did the most incredible work. It was not valued, particularly by senior officers, despite the fact that it was often a very good news story for the Met police. It was constantly under threat of being removed or suffering a loss of security and funding. So can the Minister reassure me on all these questions but also that the National Wildlife Crime Unit has enough long-term funding to do the job properly?