Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what recent discussions he has had with the Burmese government about (a) human rights and (b) conduct of the election in November 2015 in that country.

I have consistently raised both human rights and elections in bilateral meetings I have held with the Burmese government in 2015. I raised both issues with the Burmese authorities during my most recent visit to the country in July, and reiterated these points when I met the Burmese Foreign Minister, Wunna Maung Lwin, in September in New York. I also regularly raise these issues in public, as I did during the adjournment debate on Burma on 22 October, and in multilateral fora, such as at the UN Secretary General’s Burma Partnership Group on 29 September.