Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Eddie Hughes and Mark Field

Tuesday 26th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

13. What steps his Department is taking to promote and support human rights internationally.

[The Minister for Asia and the Pacific (Mark Field)]

Mr Speaker, I assume that everyone is so happy with the smooth operation of Asian and Pacific affairs in the Foreign Office that I have had no questions until now.

Promoting human rights will remain an essential aim of the foreign policy of global Britain. Foreign and Commonwealth Office Ministers and officials relentlessly defend and champion human rights in bilateral engagements, multilateral bodies and conferences, and in funding projects, particularly through the Magna Carta Fund for Human Rights and Democracy.

[Eddie Hughes]

I thank the Minister for his answer. What representations have he and the British Government made to the Indian Government in recent months in the case of Jagtar Singh Johal?

[Mark Field]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising this issue, which I know affects a number of constituents not just in the west midlands but across the country. I recognise that this has been an incredibly difficult and distressing time for Mr Johal and his family, whom I most recently met along with their very assiduous constituency MP, the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes), on 18 June.

We continue to raise Mr Johal’s case with the Indian Government at the highest level. I raised it with the Minister for External Affairs on 7 May in New Delhi, and Baroness Williams has also done so. The Prime Minister, very unusually, brought up this consular issue with Prime Minister Modi at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting on 18 April.