Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what representations he has made to the government of Saudi Arabia on each of the executions by public beheading carried out in that country in August 2014.

The abolition of the death penalty is a human rights priority for the UK. Ministers and our Ambassador and Embassy team in Riyadh frequently raise the issue of the death penalty with the Saudi Arabian authorities, bilaterally and through the European Union. We must recognise that total abolition of the death penalty is unlikely in Saudi Arabia in the near future. For now, our focus is on the introduction of EU minimum standards for the death penalty as a first step, and supporting access to justice and the rule of law.