Thank you to all those who contacted me about fur imports.

Fur belongs on the backs of animals, not humans. We must implement a ban on the import and sale of fur in the UK. This outdated and unnecessary trade should have no place in the UK’s fashion industry.

The global trade in fur costs millions of animals their lives every year. The Humane Society International shows that animals are treated terribly in the fur trade, with farmed animals kept in small cages for their entire lives and wild animals caught using cruel leg-hold traps.

I am proud the UK was the first country to ban fur farming two decades ago. Since then, the EU banned the importation of dog, cat and seal fur and this has been retained in UK law so far after Brexit. However, although many retailers now refuse to stock real fur, fur from other species can still legally be imported and sold in the UK. Consumers may also be misled into buying real fur, believing it to be fake.

In my view, the reliance upon the suffering of animals abroad for the fur trade is abhorrent. We cannot go on being complicit in this cruel and inhumane practice.

The UK Government previously said that once our future relationship with the EU had been established, there would be an opportunity to consider further steps it could take in relation to fur sales. In 2021, it launched a Call for Evidence on the fur trade in conjunction with the Welsh and Scottish Governments which closed on 28 June 2021. Since then, there has been no word on when a ban on the import and sale of fur will be brought forward, and my frontbench colleagues have been pressing the Government on this.

In my view, it is long past time for the UK to legislate to ban these imports and sales.