Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what legislative proposals her Department plans to bring forward to implement a total ban on ivory sales in the UK.

The UK has played a leading role in galvanising international action to combat the illegal wildlife trade, and in pressing for a total ban on ivory sales we will work with our international partners and interested parties at home to seek their views about how we best achieve this and over what timeframe.

The Government is committed to maintaining the current global ban on any new international trade in raw ivory. In addition, the UK does not permit trade in raw ivory tusks of any age and we are pressing for this approach to be taken across the whole of the European Union.

We also warmly welcome the recent indications from the Government of China that it intends in due course to close its legal domestic market for ivory. This will remove a key driver of the demand which in turn fuels the continued poaching that is currently resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of elephants every year.