Raif Badawi

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Bach, goes to the heart of the problem and I am grateful to him. Saudi Arabia has signed up to the convention against torture and is therefore in breach of that. We have made our own representations on that very clear. My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary made it clear today in the House of Commons that we deplore this kind of corporal punishment being applied and we will continue to make representations at the highest levels. Later this week, my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary will make representations to the Saudi Government when their representatives are in London to discuss other matters relating to ISIL. I undertake to keep the House informed as and when any progress is made. Certainly, discussions continue and we have co-operated within the EU on matters of démarche on this issue too.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, on freedom of speech, does the Minister agree that this is not just about freedom of expression but, under Article 18 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, about the freedom to believe or not to believe, as in the case of Raif Badawi? In addition to torture, does she not agree that the reported 90 beheadings last year— 10 in this past month alone—in Saudi Arabia are one reason why groups such as Daesh have been able to take the law into their own hands in places such as Syria, emulating what has been done routinely in Saudi Arabia?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, one of the priorities of the Foreign Office is that the death penalty should be abolished throughout the world. However, it is clear that Saudi Arabia is not yet in a position where it will consider that. Sharia law is part of the very nature of its operations in the judiciary, and therefore we are not going to move to abolition. However, that does not stop us making strong representations about it. The House can be assured that at every opportunity I make the point that the death penalty does not work—quite simply, it is wrong in itself. The more we can explain that to countries around the world, the more we can improve the kind of result that we had in the United Nations vote before Christmas and the more we can persuade other countries to follow the right route, which is to abolish the death penalty.