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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment his Department has made of the potential implications for its policies of the introduction of bans on enriched cages for laying hens in European countries.

The Government is committed to upholding our high animal welfare standards as part of wider trade policy.

We remain firmly committed to maintaining and improving animal welfare and want to work closely with the farming sector to deliver high standards. The use of cages for laying hens is an issue which we are currently considering very carefully.

This Government was elected on a mandate to introduce the most ambitious plans to improve animal welfare in a generation. The Prime Minister announced that we will be publishing an animal welfare strategy later this year.