Asked by: Crispin Blunt (Independent - Reigate)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what assessment he has made of is of progress towards identifying who was accountable for the violent dispersal of protestors in Cairo's Rab'a al-Adawiya Square on 13 August 2013; and when and at what levels that issue was last raised by UK officials with their Egyptian counterparts.
Answered by Alistair Burt
Our Ambassador to Cairo raised the dispersal of protestors in Raba'a Square with the Chair of the Egyptian Parliamentary Human Rights Committee in January. The British Government is not aware of any Egyptian accountability processes relating to the dispersal, though it is an issue to which we continue to attach importance.
Egypt is a Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) Human Rights Priority Country. FCO Ministers have asked the Egyptian authorities to take action to release journalists and political detainees who remain imprisoned, review mass judicial decisions and remove restrictions on civil society. I raised these concerns during my visit to Cairo in August. We are also deeply concerned about reports of torture and mistreatment in detention in Egypt and continue to raise these issues with the Egyptian authorities. We have raised these concerns in public, through the UN Human Rights Council and through the FCO's Human Rights Priority Country reports, and in private in meetings with Egyptian government representatives in London and in Cairo.
Asked by: Crispin Blunt (Independent - Reigate)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, in what form he expects the results of the renegotiation of the UK's membership of the EU to be presented (a) by the European Council and (b) by the Government to the electorate.
Answered by David Lidington
At the conclusion of any deal, the public will rightly expect Ministers to set out the results of the renegotiation, how the relationship with Europe has been changed and if – and how – those changes address their concerns. As the Chancellor of the Exchequer, my right hon. Friend the member for Tatton (Mr Osborne) said in June, the Government will publish assessments of the merits of membership and the risks of a lack of reform in the European Union, including the damage that that could do to Britain’s interests.