Member News
By Baroness Parminter - 2nd February 2011
The government must "exert diplomatic pressure" on the nations that continue to kill whales for commercial purposes, says Baroness Parminter.
In the summer of 1992 I organised a memorable weekend trip up to Glasgow to attend a rally at the 44th meeting of the whaling regulatory body, the International Whaling Commission (IWC). The sun shone on the thousands gathered, we danced at a joyous ceilidh and found hospitality at the Loch Lomond Youth Hostel. More importantly, the ban on whaling was not overturned.
There is no humane way to kill whales and since 1986 there has been a ban on commercial whaling. Despite this moratorium three countries continue to kill whales for commercial reasons – Japan, Iceland and Norway.
Japan has sought to overturn the whaling ban, with allegations of corruption in the IWC and vote-buying, as revealed last year by the Sunday Times. The coalition government has already demonstrated commitment to this issue, with statements of opposition to whaling from the prime minister in Parliament and the issue being raised by the foreign secretary in a visit to Japan.
The UK has a deserved reputation both within and outside the EU for giving leadership on the issue of whaling. What I will now be pressing my colleagues in government to do is to:
-continue to exert diplomatic pressure at the highest levels on Japan, Iceland and Norway;
-maintain sufficient staff resources in Defra to work on conservation problems facing whales; and
-support the IWC's secretariat as it seeks to improve governance within the organisation, against the background of the recent allegations of corruption.
Last year 'compromise' proposals were discussed at the IWC which would have reversed decades of conservation progress. They were dropped but may well come back in the future. The IWC meets this summer in the Channel Islands. The pressure needs to be kept up – maybe time for another coach trip?
A former chief executive of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, Baroness Parminter was raised to the peerage in 2010.
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