asked Her Majesty's Government:

Further to the Written Answer by the Minister of State for Local Environment, Marine and Animal Welfare, Mr Ben Bradshaw, on 6 November (HC Deb, 715W), why it is not currently possible to obtain reliable information from the European Union-wide system for export certification; when the system will be fully operational; and whether, when it is fully operational, it will be possible to make retrospective enquiries; and [HL653]

Further to the Written Answer by the Minister of State for Local Environment, Marine and Animal Welfare, Mr Ben Bradshaw, on 6 November (HC Deb, 715W), whether the failure of the European Union-wide system for export certification predates the Written Answer by the Minister on 7 November 2005 (HC Deb, 13W); and, if so, whether the figures quoted in that answer showing that over 90 per cent of the captive birds imported into Europe come to the United Kingdom is correct. [HL654]

TRACES is operating effectively with regard to notifying member states of trade activity, providing certification for trade where health certification is required and allowing traders to apply electronically for the documentation that must physically accompany consignments being traded. The Commission's expectations for the system are much farther reaching than this and TRACES is continually being developed and enhanced. We expect this to be the case for some time.

Extracting reliable statistics from TRACES remains problematic and especially so for cattle exports. However, two fairly recent developments should improve the situation in the future. First, TRACES now distinguishes between breeding cattle and production cattle. This was not possible with the previous versions of the system. Secondly, the Commission has this year delivered an enhancement to TRACES called the Data Warehouse. This allows us to extract more detailed trade activity data from TRACES.

The system of codes for recording the import of wild birds is now fully operational. The information provided in the Written Answer on 7 November 2005 highlighted there were discrepancies between the TRACES and CITES data and that officials were investigating the discrepancies. A ministerial colleague in the other place is writing to the Member in that place who asked the original Question, to provide him with recently published data on the bird trade. A copy of the letter will be placed in the Library of the other place. The recently published European Food Safety Authority report has the most reliable figures for 2005: 521,906 captive birds were imported to the EU, of which 61,450 were to the UK.

The EFSA report does not have figures for 2004, but CITES figures are available and indicate that around 695,000 birds were imported into all member states with 18,897 birds imported into the UK.