Burning rules and shotgun backlogs top questions as MPs return

MPs return to Westminster on Tuesday (1 September) to find shooting and moorland management all over the order paper, with at least 18 written questions tabled during recess and due for answer the following day. Six of them, from Sir Julian Smith, press Defra on the heather burning licensing regime in England, including the science behind the change in the regulated peat depth from 40cm to 30cm.

The questions were tabled on 28 August, in the final days of the summer recess, and published on the parliamentary record ahead of the return. Every one falls due on Wednesday 2 September, the second sitting day, making it the heaviest single-day cluster on shooting’s issues since the summer began.

What is Sir Julian Smith asking about heather burning?

The MP for Skipton and Ripon has tabled six questions on the regime created by the Heather and Grass etc. Burning (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2025. One asks the Environment Secretary directly “if she will review the licencing system” under the regulations. Another asks what assessment has been made of “the potential impact on land managers of the change in the peat-depth threshold used for regulating heather burning from 40 centimetres to 30 centimetres; and what scientific evidence was used to support that change”.

The remaining four probe how the regime is being policed and justified: how many enforcement visits over suspected breaches took place in the last 12 months and what each cost on average; what scientific evidence supports the case on deep peat and whether any was independently commissioned; what guidance inspecting officials receive when unauthorised burning is alleged; and whether controlled burning for wildfire prevention sits within the definition of favourable conservation status for blanket bog.

Answered fully, they would put the first hard numbers on how the 2025 regulations are actually being enforced. The peat-depth question also points at a cross-border divergence: Scotland’s incoming muirburn licensing scheme, mandatory from 15 September, defines peatland as peat deeper than 40cm, the very threshold England has abandoned.

Which forces face shotgun backlog scrutiny?

The only shotgun-specific question in the batch comes from Blake Stephenson, MP for Mid Bedfordshire, who asks the Home Secretary “what support she is providing to Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire & Hertfordshire Police to tackle backlogs in processing shotgun licences”.

It lands in a bruising fortnight for licensing. The National Police Chiefs’ Council’s latest quarterly figures, published in August, showed national performance falling for a fourth consecutive quarter, and on 28 August the police inspectorate declared the whole system not fit for purpose, recommending a single national licensing authority for England and Wales.

What else is waiting for ministers?

The batch ranges across the rest of the beat. Defra faces questions on the avian influenza assessment for releasing captive-bred pheasants and partridges, on banning trail hunting, on Hunting Act prosecutions, on the evidence threshold for lethal badger control and on second-generation rodenticides found in birds of prey.

Two MPs press separately on the long-promised hunting trophy import ban. Wildfire prevention questions go to three departments, including whether controlled burning and fire breaks should figure in planning policy and why the area burnt in the UK rose last year against the global trend.

What happens next?

Both Houses sit from Tuesday 1 September and the recess batch is due for answer on Wednesday 2 September. The Commons rises again for conference recess on 16 September, so the fortnight ahead is the window in which ministers must show their hand.

The burning answers deserve the closest reading: they arrive a fortnight before muirburn licensing becomes mandatory in Scotland, with the two regimes now drawing the peat line at different depths. The full list of questions and each answer as it is published can be read on the UK Parliament written questions database.