The government has admitted that the former environment secretary broke the law when she issued licences to release gamebirds for shooting against expert advice.

openDemocracy revealed in November that Thérèse Coffey and her fellow environment minister Richard Benyon last year approved 15 licences to release gamebirds in or near protected wildlife sites, in direct contradiction to advice from the regulator Natural England.

Documents obtained by this website revealed that the decisions to approve the licences were all made at meetings attended by the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT), which is partly funded by shooting estates and previously listed Benyon as a trustee.

Natural England’s advice came in response to the UK’s worst outbreak of bird flu on record, which caused the death of 3.8 million birds in 2022. But it was opposed by many estates, as it threatened their plans to release thousands of pheasants and partridges and charge gun enthusiasts to kill them.

One of the cases in which the regulator’s advice was rejected involved an application in Coffey’s own constituency, Suffolk Coastal, to release 2,500 pheasants and partridges in or near the Deben Estuary Special Protection Area.

Following a legal challenge, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has now admitted the decisions breached legislation that protects rare wildlife, because it had failed to provide “cogent reasons” for ignoring Natural England’s advice.

The legal challenge was brought by Wild Justice, a campaign group co-founded by the wildlife broadcaster Chris Packham.

Documents released in the case also reveal that Coffey rejected a recommendation from her officials that she should take advice from the RSPB and the British Trust for Ornithology on the licence applications to avoid the “perception of bias” from only considering advice from the GWCT.

Benyon owns the 14,000-acre Englefield estate in Berkshire and is worth £130m, making him one of the richest parliamentarians, according to The Sunday Times Rich List. He listed shooting as an interest, alongside conservation, in his Who’s Who entry.

The former MP, who was made a lord by Boris Johnson in 2020, personally knew a number of the applicants for licences – leading civil servants to advise that an alternative minister make the licensing decisions in those cases. That advice was not followed.

Wild Justice claimed that between July and October 2023, Coffey and Benyon unlawfully granted 28 gamebird release licences in and around special protection areas in Norfolk and Suffolk.

A spokesperson from Wild Justice said: “To find out that Thérèse Coffey and Richard Benyon have licensed releases of pheasants and partridges into what are supposed to be some of our most precious places, against [Natural England’s] advice – and during a catastrophic outbreak of bird flu – it frankly reeks of both recklessness and arrogance.

“It seems to us they may have had more regard for the interests of the shooting industry than those of the environment in this matter.

Defra agreed to pay £35,000 towards Wild Justice’s legal costs.

When approached by openDemocracy, Coffey said: “As I am not at the department any more, I cannot give you the rationale of the government's decision on this point.” In November she said she had not made the decision on the application in her own constituency.

Only about a third of the 47 million pheasants and ten million red-legged partridges released annually are shot and retrieved. The remainder become food for scavengers such as foxes, crows and rats, boosting their numbers. They in turn prey on threatened species such as curlews and lapwings.

A DEFRA spokesperson said: “Given the unprecedented scale of the bird flu outbreak in 2022-23, we worked at pace to develop and implement new gamebird licensing processes.

“Our priority was always to protect England’s threatened wild bird species from the impact of the disease, while minimising disruption to a sector that makes important contributions to both nature conservation and the rural economy.”

A GWCT spokesperson said it has “undertaken decades of peer-reviewed research in this field,” saying “the advice it gives is based on research evidence and expertise”.

“The trust was pleased to have been consulted by Defra on technical matters relating to gamebird ecology and management as part of the ministerial department’s decision-making process.”

Benyon has been approached for comment.