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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will make representations to the government of Japan about the killing of wild dolphins in Taiji.

We have raised the UK’s continuing concerns over the hunting of small cetaceans in Japanese waters, including in Taiji, on several occasions this year. I wrote to my Japanese counterpart in February, and HM Ambassador to Japan wrote to the Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs in January.

Furthermore, the UK’s Commissioner to the International Whaling Commission (IWC) raised this issue at the biennial meeting of the IWC in September 2014, as well as directly with the Japanese Commissioner to the IWC in bilateral meetings and with a representative from the Japanese Embassy in early December.

The UK Government will continue to express its opposition to the Japanese small cetacean hunts at every appropriate opportunity.