I apologise for not being able to attend the debate from the beginning, Mrs Main. I entirely endorse all that the hon. Lady says about the need to clamp down on the criminals who are now killing a precious species, but what she is saying is fundamentally wrong. The value
in the ivory products that came from the tomb of Tutankhamun or the royal graves at Ur, or exquisite pieces of Louis XVI furniture, is not in the ivory but in the workmanship and historic context in which they were produced. Given what she says, why, by the same token, does she not call for a ban in the trade in jewels produced from blood diamond activity—the result of the deaths of thousands of human beings, and not just elephants? How is it that we would save a single elephant by not having the 1947 cut-off?