Death Penalty

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Wednesday 7th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords—

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

My Lords—

[Baroness Stern]

My Lords—

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, the courtesy of the House is that no more than one Peer is on their feet at the same time, so perhaps I may be that Peer for the moment. We have just heard from the Labour Benches; might we hear from the Liberal Democrat Benches, and then perhaps from the Cross Benches, before returning to Labour?

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

Sit down!

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I suspect that the noble Baroness is referring particularly to some of the horrific stories from Iran. We regard those with horror, and we continue to press extremely hard, in line with our general desire to see the abolition of the death penalty worldwide, where those kinds of particularly repulsive and ugly penalties are inflicted.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

My Lords, following the position on the US, when we make our welcome representations to the Chinese authorities, do they in fact say, “Well, how do you deal with the US?”. Does it in fact blunt our own representations that the US does have the death penalty in so many states?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I cannot answer precisely having not been personally involved in all these bilateral negotiations, but my impression is that it does not. My impression is that countries either say, “We listen politely to your views”—as, for instance, in the case of Japan—or, “We recognise that we must move forward”, in some other cases; or some of them give us a rather dustier answer and say, “These are internal matters for us. Please go away”.