Welsh MP highlights cruelty behind King’s Guards’ caps

Stephen Price

A Welsh MP has joined a demonstration outside the Houses of Parliament, demanding that the Ministry of Defence stops using real bear fur for the Royal Guards’ ceremonial caps.

Ruth Jones, Labour MP for Newport West and Islwyn, joined fellow MPs at Parliament Square Gardens to urge the Ministry of Defence to stop using the fur from slaughtered bears for the distinctive hats and switch to a humane faux fur alternative.

MPs posed together with a banner that reads, “Bears Killed for the King’s Guards’ Caps. MoD: Go Fur Free.” Ruth Jones MP also posed with a bear sign reading ‘MoD: Go Fur-Free!’

The protest follows recently released records showing that the MoD has increased orders of bearskin caps by 336% – rising from 22 caps in 2024 to 96 in 2025.

Freedom of information requests obtained by PETA also reveal that the cost per cap has increased by nearly 8% during the same period, with each cap now costing taxpayers £2,361.

PETA Senior Campaigns Manager Kate Werner shared: “Each bearskin cap costs a bear their life, making it indefensible to use taxpayer money on purely ornamental items.

“Parliamentarians and the public alike support a switch to faux fur. The MoD must stop dragging its feet and instruct its capmakers to find a humane alternative.”

The ministry purchases finished caps from capmakers who source bear fur from Canada, where the government issues “hunting tags” allowing hunters to kill an allotted number of bears and sell their pelts.

The continued use of bear fur for caps creates a market for pelts and incentivises hunters to kill bears. A 2024 PETA video exposé revealed that hunters in Canada often bait bears with buckets of sweet food before shooting them with high-powered crossbows, a form of hunting illegal in the UK under wildlife protection laws.

Many bears are shot several times, and some escape only to die slowly from blood loss, gangrene, starvation, or dehydration.

PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear” – notes that, according to a poll carried out by Populus, 75% of the UK public considers the bearskin caps a “bad use of Government funds.”

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