Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what recent steps his Department has taken to help promote (a) good governance and (b) press freedom in the Indo-Pacific region.

As set out in the Integrated Review (March 2021), the UK is committed to and strategically focused on the Indo-Pacific region. The UK's close partnership with the US, Australia, New Zealand and other like-minded partners, such as Japan, across the region is an important part of our Indo-Pacific focus and ambitions to build a partnership through values that champion freedom, sovereignty and democracy across the region and globally. The UK remains fully committed to media freedom in the Indo-Pacific region. A free and independent media is an essential component of a functioning democratic society, in the Pacific as elsewhere.