Some of you may remember that I wrote to Ranil Jayawardena, my local MP, back on the 9th of September not long after he was appointed Secretary of State for the Environment. He resigned the post when Liz Truss stepped down as Prime Minister.
My letter asked if we could meet and discuss the plight of Hampshire’s badgers with particular reference to the Badger Trust “Give Badgers A Brake” campaign and the cull.
On Tuesday I received a handwritten House of Commons envelope enclosing a Ranil Jayawardena compliment slip and a letter to Ranil from Lord Richard Benyon, the Minister for International at DEFRA who is responsible for the cull policy. I only know Mr. Jayawardena intended this to be his response to my 9th September letter because Lord Benyon was replying to an email from him sent on 12th September and references me (name and address) in his reply.
Below is the letter I sent Mr, Jayawardena yesterday pointing out the inadequacy of his response.
Here’s the letter from Richard Benyon. Note the cut and paste nature of it and the inclusion of two almost identical sentences. My reply is below it (which was also copied to Mr. Jayawardena to keep him in the loop).
We’ll see what happens next. I tweeted about the compliment slip on Twitter and got a surprisingly prompt reply from Mr. Jayawardena’s social media team so clearly we now have his attention on a matter he’s previously been keen to ignore.
ecolelogical 