Yesterday was a surprising day. In the morning lawyers for the claimant received a letter from Natural England, here, saying they had not yet decided whether to re-authorise the supplementary badger cull licenses in 2019. They claimed that “the representations made in your letter regarding the effectiveness of supplementary culling may be considered by the decision maker in the context of the re-authorisation decision.” They said that “ judicial review is therefore premature and we invite you to await our further correspondence on this issue.”
We didn’t have long to wait. Just a few hours later, we received a letter from Defra with news that the cull licenses had been authorised, coming into effect immediately with letters of authorisation from Natural England placed on the Defra web pages dated 12th June. Word from the field comes that pre-cull activities started earlier in the week so when was the decision to issue actually made?
At the bottom of their letter Natural England said “…Natural England does not accept the allegation in your letter that it acts “under dictation” from DEFRA.”
Events suggest that the first letter was written at the same time the decision to issue the licences was made. What should we make of these two letters? Does it look like two separate hands on the wheel?
This morning a response was made by the Government Legal Department to the claimant’s pre-action letter regarding a request for supplementary badger culling to be suspended. More on this later.