Maria Eagle MP, Labour’s Shadow Environment Secretary, responding to the release of the Government’s badger eradication strategy in the House of Commons today, said:

“The Tories should be ending not extending their failed badger-cull programme.

“There is no justification for continuing with inhumane culling or for culling without independent scientific oversight.

“Labour has said consistently that the culls are bad for farmers, bad for the taxpayer and bad for our wildlife.

“Labour’s proposal for a long-term, evidence-based, cross-party approach to the problem of bovine TB is the only way out of this mess.”