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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of creating an ivory surrender scheme.

The Ivory Act will not affect the ownership of ivory items and as such we have no plans for a Government surrender scheme at this time. We recognise that for some low value items, owners may decide it is not cost-effective to register them for sale. This will be a decision for individual owners. Such items may of course be gifted, donated or bequeathed rather than discarded. We will explain to owners the options available to them as part of our awareness-raising campaign.