Whilst a practising lawyer I have some key outside interests. One is that I founded Save The Asian Elephants www.stae.org At a huge event in Parliament Square on Saturday 7 October organised by Action for Elephants UK I was asked to present a letter to the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street on behalf of some 220 charities, conservationists and MPs demanding a complete ban on the ivory trade in the UK.

Dramatically, the day before the event, Environment Secretary Michael Gove announced proposals for a ban.

I was asked to take the leading position in a 30 minute silent protest by many hundreds of protesters against poaching of elephants and rhinos for Ivory, and then to make a speech describing the horrors for the Asian elephants and STAEs policies for change. The Asian elephants, the gentlest, most iconic and most revered of the world’s creatures are subject to many lethal threats at the hands of Man. They are being put to death for trinkets and tortured most hideously for human entertainment in tourism. We’re now pressing the government to build on last week’s historic announcement of an ivory ban by introducing a new law to forbid advertising of facilities abroad featuring elephants unless it can be proved they have never abused elephants there. All independent polling and petitions show that such change commands universal public support and is long overdue.