Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, for what reason the UK no longer has a strategy on opposing the death penalty; and whether the Government plans to publish a new strategy.

This Government is continuing its work to oppose the death penalty as part of its broader efforts to promote human rights. Our commitment to the Rules Based International Order underpins this work, including through bilateral and multilateral support to global efforts to abolish the death penalty. We do not intend to publish a new strategy specific to the death penalty; but we will be publishing a strategy for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO)’s Human Rights and Democracy Programme Fund shortly, which will show how work to abolish the death penalty is important under all three of the strategy’s new themes. The FCO’s death penalty-related work will also be covered in future instalments of the FCO’s Annual Human Rights Report.