Public bodies are not above the law

Chief executive Ian Bell explains why BASC embarked on a legal challenge against Natural England, and why the judgment handed down by the High Court matters so much to the countryside.

Following a High Court ruling that Natural England acted unlawfully in its approach to the licensing of gamebird releases, I want to explain why BASC took this case, because the answer matters well beyond shooting.

Nobody wants to take their regulator to court. Judicial review is slow, expensive and adversarial, and it is always the last resort. Before we issued proceedings we went to Natural England directly. We met its leadership, we set out precisely where we believed it had gone beyond the law, and we asked it to put things right. We were ignored.

That left us with a choice: accept that a public body could disregard the legal limits Parliament placed on it, or hold it to account. For an organisation whose members are asked – rightly – to comply with every letter of the law, there was only one answer.

Mr Justice Ritchie’s judgment confirms that public bodies must exercise their powers within the limits set by Parliament. That judgement reaches further than the licensing of gamebird release. The people who live and work in the countryside – who manage habitats, run shoots, farm land and deliver sustainable, lawful conservation every day – are entitled to a regulator that acts lawfully, engages honestly and treats them as partners rather than problems.

That has not been their recent experience of Natural England, and this case did not arise in isolation.

This disconnect was not always so, and it does not have to be so. The countryside needs a regulator that functions and that it can trust. Our door remains open, as it was before we issued proceedings. With significant change likely on the horizon at the top levels of government, BASC hopes that this time our offer to be part of the conversation is taken up.

Public bodies are not above the law. Where that principle needs defending, BASC has proven today that we will defend it.

Images by Sarah Farnsworth.