Lord Wallace of Tankerness

The Foreign Policy and Security Council is no longer operational. Instead, as set out in its Terms of Reference, the National Security Council, will consider matters relating to trade strategy, amongst other issues including national security and foreign policy. The National Security Council (Europe) will consider matters of trade in relation to Europe.

The Cabinet Secretariat continues to support the Prime Minister and the chairs of Cabinet Committees in the conduct of government business, including international trade.

The full list of Cabinet Committees is available at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-cabinet-committees-system-and-list-of-cabinet-committees

The Government has made a commitment, in the manifesto and the Queen's Speech, to take forward work to repeal the Fixed Term Parliaments Act. Announcements about the statutory review Committee will be made in due course.

Lord Dunlop reported to the Prime Minister in the Autumn and the UK Government is carefully considering its recommendations.

The government believes that secure and growing trading relationships can enable open conversations with partners on a range of issues, including human rights and labour rights. At the same time, the Government is committed to working with international partners and businesses to ensure global supply chains are free from the use of modern slavery and other human rights abuses.

Countries - including Pakistan - that will benefit from the Developing Countries Trading Scheme may have preferences suspended if they have engaged in serious and systematic violations of human rights and labour rights contained in 16 international conventions.

The tools to monitor compliance may include reports from international convention bodies, reports produced by international organisations and reporting from the Government’s diplomatic network.

The criteria the Government may consider include the nature, scale, impact, frequency and pattern of violations.

We welcome the expert review on progress of implementing the Bishop of Truro's recommendations and, in line with the findings, accept their assessment for the need to continue to work to promote and strengthen freedom of religion or belief as a fundamental human right for all.

Our work on this important human rights issue will never be complete, and we will continue to champion global efforts on FoRB. We will continue to ensure that the changes we have made are embedded and to look for opportunities to make FoRB central to the FCDO's wider human rights work.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse publishes financial statements on a quarterly basis on its website https://www.iicsa.org.uk/. The most recent financial statement, covering the Inquiry’s 2019/20 spend as at 31 March 2020, can be found here: https://www.iicsa.org.uk/key-documents/18739/view/inquiry-financial-report-q4-2019-20-ending-31-march-2020.pdf.

The Inquiry expects its public hearings to conclude by the end of 2020. The Inquiry will then turn to writing its final report. Providing the complete information requested would exceed the word limit for responses to written parliamentary questions. However, the information requested is available through the links provided.