asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will raise in the EEC Council of Environmental Ministers the matter of bird trapping, following the decision by the Belgian Government to relax their 1972 ban.

No. The proposed EEC directive on bird conservation—on which we hope that final agreement will be reached at the next meeting of the Council of Environmental Ministers on 19th December—would require all member States to ban the trapping of birds. In the meanwhile, this is entirely a domestic matter for the Belgian Government.