Helen Hayes and Harriet Harman have both backed Tory MP Zac Goldsmith’s campaign to ban hunting trophies from endangered species from being imported to the UK.
Harriet Harman, MP for Camberwell and Peckham, said the issue was, perhaps surprisingly, the third biggest source of policy-related emails and letters she received from constituents in January 2019, second only to Brexit and Universal Credit. The proposed ban is now backed by 160 cross-party MPs.
Goldsmith, the conservative MP for Richmond Park, tabled the proposal as an early day motion for parliament to consider last November, saying that hundreds of body parts from endangered species such as elephants, lions, hippos, lions and rhinos had been brought into the UK after being hunted.
He described the so-called sport as ‘cruel, immoral, archaic and unjustifiable, and argued that even legal hunts ‘can act as a cover for illegal poaching’.