Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to tackle the illegal wildlife trade.

Tackling the Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT) is a priority for the Foreign Secretary and for me. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) will jointly host, along with Defra and DFID, a high level International IWT Conference in London in October 2018. Ahead of this, staff ​across our diplomatic missions overseas and in London are working, both bilaterally and through multilateral fora, to engage countries, NGOs, academia and business to work with us to deliver a step change in the global fight against this threat to endangered species.