Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, how many Overseas Security and Justice Assistance assessments logged with his Department in relation to overseas requests for case-specific assistance have been (a) approved and (b) rejected by the recipient Department or agency in (i) 2015-16, (ii) 2016-17, (iii) 2017-18, (iv) 2018-19, (v) 2019-20, and (vi) 2020-21.

In accordance with the publicly available guidance on Overseas Security and Justice Assistance (OSJA), approval for activity underpinned by OSJA assessments is made at different levels of authority, in line with the level of risk. The FCDO does not hold a record centrally of the number of times Ministers were consulted on OSJA cases, or the number of times a Minister decided whether assistance should be provided.

An estimate of the number of OSJAs completed each year is published in the Annual Human Rights Report.