Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, on how many occasions and in which countries his Department has declined to offer police, justice and security assistance to countries which retain the death penalty as part of their judicial system in each of the last five years.

Before any UK Government assistance in the security and justice sectors is given overseas, Ministers and officials must satisfy themselves that any risks of inadvertently contributing to the imposition of death sentences (and other serious human rights violations) are identified and mitigated. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office publishes guidance as to how this should be done: http://bit.ly/1ilxhmG. Ministers also review requests for mutual legal assistance with specific prosecutions from overseas jurisdictions to ensure that unacceptable risks of contributing to a death sentence are not taken. We do not collect statistics as to how often these policies are applied and with what results. However, many proposals to offer assistance are modified or rejected after full consideration of the risks.