On Thursday Penny Mordaunt who is the Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons was responding to Business of the House questions. One of the MPs who raised a question was the MP of Conservative Crawley, Henry Smith who spoke to her here and the text is published here. As it happens about 15 years I met Henry Smith at the Queens Gardens event before he became an MP when he was the leader of West Sussex Council. He was very positive towards the Queen at that time and no doubt he supports the publication of the King last weekend which involved Penny Mordaunt as shown in the photograph. Here is his call and her response.

Henry Smith: I add my congratulations to the Lord President of the Council for her role at the coronation. I have had messages from many friends around the world who were impressed with her performance. She has won friends not only across my constituency but around the globe.

The Government have delivered fantastic policies and new legislation on animal welfare, but it is now 18 months since the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill was in Committee in this House. May we have an update on when the Bill might come back to us and pass on to the other place, so that we can continue this Government’s remarkable animal welfare achievements?

Penny Mordaunt: I thank my hon. Friend not only for his remarks about me, but for his commitment to this agenda. We in the Government are grateful to him for his work on the Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill, a private Member’s Bill that we were pleased to support. We, too, are committed to this agenda, as is clear from the many other measures that we have taken to improve animal welfare, including the banning of conventional battery cages for laying hens, the introduction of CCTV in slaughterhouses, the mandatory microchipping of dogs, Finn’s law and Lucy’s law. I can reassure the House that we are still very much hoping to implement our manifesto commitments and the measures in the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill.