Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Stephen Doughty and Alex Mayer

Tuesday 1st April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Alex Mayer (Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard) (Lab)]

12. What steps he is taking to increase the understanding of and respect for the right to self-determination globally.

[The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Stephen Doughty)]

The United Kingdom is committed to promoting and protecting human rights and the rule of law, and the right to self-determination is set out in the international covenant on civil and political rights.

[Alex Mayer]

Some 700,000 people in Washington DC are currently disenfranchised because their representatives in the Senate and the House of Representatives do not have voting rights or full control of local government affairs. It is the equivalent of everyone in Bedfordshire voting for MPs who have no chance of going through the voting Lobby. Does the Minister agree that that is a particularly strange anomaly?