Kashmir: Increasing Tension

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 29th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Falconer]

Both the Foreign Office and other UK Government Departments engage regularly with the British Kashmiri community—who are an important part of so many communities across the United Kingdom—and will continue to do so.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I am sure the Government recognise that the strategic aim of this sort of terrorist atrocity is to provoke indiscriminate retaliation and undermine peaceful relations between neighbouring countries between which there may be some history of hostility. Will the Minister impress on the Indian Government the necessity of focusing on the actual perpetrators and not on the wider community, and will he impress on the Pakistani Government the importance, in good faith, of tracking down those responsible?

[Mr Falconer]

Too often in the region for which I am responsible, and indeed in this country, we have seen terrorist attacks designed to have exactly the effect that the right hon. Gentleman has described, namely to provoke tension, intercommunal hostility and a breakdown of law and order. As he says, a proper, law-enforcement-led response based on a focus on the actual perpetrators is important in this area, as it is throughout the world.