Fur: Import and Sale

Danny Chambers Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I thank the hon. Member for Newport West and Islwyn (Ruth Jones) for securing this important debate.

I think that we will rightly repeat several of the key issues and reasons why the import of fur products should be banned in the UK and those points are absolutely crucial. As we have heard, the United Kingdom banned fur farming over two decades ago because Parliament rightly recognised the extreme and unnecessary cruelty it inflicts on defenceless animals. Yet today we continue to allow the import and sale of fur products produced using precisely the same methods that we judged unacceptable within our own borders. That contradiction is simply impossible to defend. If fur farming is rightfully recognised as too cruel to permit in this country, then it also should be considered too cruel to profit from its proceeds.

Every year, tens of millions of animals across the world are confined to small wire cages or trapped in the wild solely for their fur. An estimated 85 million to 100 million animals globally are farmed or trapped for their fur. Investigations and scientific assessment have shown repeatedly that such conditions fail to meet animals’ most basic behavioural needs and cause severe and inhumane suffering; but do we really need scientific studies to prove that the way in which fur is farmed and animals are trapped is inhumane and causes suffering? Of course not; we can see it with our own eyes.

These are wild animals who should be allowed to roam free in the wild, but are instead kept locked up in tiny cages in deplorable conditions. Once their pelts are ready, they are gassed or anally electrocuted, as we have heard. Many of the animals are killed at about the age of one year, when their pelts are in their prime. That is the real nature of the system that continues to supply the global fur trade. While the UK banned fur farming domestically, we remain inextricably connected to the system through the import of furs.

As we heard from the hon. Member for Newport West and Islwyn, figures from His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs show that the UK continues to import about £30 million to £40 million-worth of fur products each year, which equates to an estimate of about 1 million animals annually. That raises an obvious ethical question.

[Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)]

Last year, I was pleased to promote a private Member’s Bill—now the Animal Welfare (Import of Dogs, Cats and Ferrets) Act 2025—to stop puppy smuggling, specifically given the issue of ear cropping. It has been illegal to crop a dog’s ears in the UK since 2006, but it was legal to import dogs with cropped ears. We thought that it was unacceptable to do that in the UK on welfare grounds, but people were getting around the loophole by acquiring dogs from abroad. This seems to be exactly the same thing. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we should not be offshoring our ethical animal welfare issues by banning something in the UK but allowing people to get those products from abroad? If we think something is unacceptable here, it should be unacceptable anywhere.

[Iqbal Mohamed]

I completely agree, and I was happy to support the hon. Gentleman’s private Member’s Bill and speak in the debate. Anything that we deem unacceptable or cruel in our country is unacceptable or cruel wherever it is done, and we should not help to perpetuate that cruelty elsewhere around the world.

The ethical question is, as the hon. Gentleman just said, why are we comfortable outsourcing animal cruelty to other countries simply because it then occurs beyond our shores? Increasingly, the general public recognise the incoherence of that perverse position. There has been a profound sea change in British public attitudes to the fur trade. A YouGov survey found that 93% of people in the UK do not wear real fur and, as we heard, 97% would never wear real fur. A 2023 poll found that 77% believe that when a type of farming is banned in the UK for being too cruel, we should also ban imports of products produced in the same way overseas. An easy win for the Government would be to implement a policy that is widely popular: such cruelty is unacceptable to the people of our country. In other words, that is not a controversial position among the public, but reflects a widely shared, common-sense position that the fur trade is outdated and unnecessary in the 21st century.

The economic case for maintaining the fur trade is increasingly weak. The UK fur market has been in steep decline over the past decade. Fur imports now represent just a tiny fraction of the UK’s overall clothing trade. Many major brands and global luxury houses have already turned away from fur entirely, and London Fashion Week banned its use in 2023. The direction of travel is clear: the industry is dying, consumer demand is collapsing and alternatives are widely available.

Environmental and public health concerns are also associated with fur production. Studies have shown that the carbon footprint of fur significantly exceeds that of many other materials used in fashion, given the intensive farming of carnivorous wild animals and the process it entails. Meanwhile, outbreaks of SARS—severe acute respiratory syndrome—and avian influenza on fur farms have highlighted the risks that such facilities can pose as potential transmission hubs for zoonotic disease, thereby increasing the likelihood of future pandemics.

Taken together, the case for a more comprehensive ban is compelling. I welcome the efforts of colleagues who have brought forward proposals to prohibit the import and sale of fur in the United Kingdom, including the Fur (Import and Sale) Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Newport West and Islwyn. Such legislation would close the obvious loophole that currently exists in our animal welfare framework.

The UK was once a global leader in banning fur farming. Many other countries followed our example. We now have an opportunity to lead again, by ending our association with a trade that is morally repugnant, environmentally harmful, economically marginal and overwhelmingly rejected by the public. There is no such thing as humane fur farming, wherever it takes place, and it must end now.