Saudi Arabia

Lord Scriven Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie]

I think that the Government, particularly through the comments made by my right honourable friend Sir Alan Duncan, have made the United Kingdom’s position crystal clear. We are profoundly concerned by what has happened. We have represented and are representing these concerns. On the allegations of torture, we are aware of reports. We are deeply troubled by these allegations and we certainly unreservedly condemn torture. Again, we raise these issues with Saudi Arabia. The Foreign Secretary expects to be in a position to raise our concerns across a range of matters in the very near future.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, the UN Human Rights Council is there to promote and protect human rights around the globe. In hindsight, do the Government regret sponsoring Saudi Arabia as a member of that body? Will they lobby to have Saudi Arabia taken off the council?

[Baroness Goldie]

It is the case that the United Nations is an important forum. There is no doubt about that at all. The UK is a strong supporter of the UN General Assembly’s resolution for the moratorium on the use of the death penalty. We use our position bilaterally to lobby Governments to establish moratoriums to abolish the death penalty. We raise individual cases of British nationals and partner with world-leading NGOs to reduce use of the death penalty. It is important that there is a forum where dialogue can continue, rather than running the risk of just bringing down shutters, closing doors and cutting off any possibility of any exchange of views.