Domestic Ivory Market
Oliver Dowden Excerpts(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Luke Hall
I will talk later about the action that countries around the world are currently taking and looking to take in the years ahead.
As I was saying, it is unclear how all ivory could be age tested. Radiocarbon dating every piece of ivory would be hugely expensive and significantly increase the cost of the licensing regime. International momentum for action is also building. In December last year, China announced a timetable for closing its domestic ivory trade.
Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)
As my hon. Friend knows, I am a fellow member of the Petitions Committee and welcome the opportunity to debate this subject. We spend an awful lot of time discussing as an international community how we can deal with the challenge of climate change, which seems somewhat intractable. Does he agree that this is a much simpler problem, and that we could get on and save great species such as the elephant and the tiger?