Asked by: Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Scottish National Party - Ochil and South Perthshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent steps the Government has taken to tackle extremism in schools.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The Government continues to work with the education sector, community organisations and operational partners to safeguard our young people from extremism and radicalisation.
The Department for Education has issued practical guidance for schools and childcare providers to help them understand how to implement the Prevent duty, which requires them to have due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism. In September 2016, the Keeping Children Safe in Education statutory guidance was updated to cover online safety, including the requirement for schools and colleges to ensure appropriate monitoring systems are in place.
We are also ensuring that schools are equipped to build children’s resilience against extremist ideology and prepare them for life in a modern, diverse Britain. Since 2011, more than 550,000 people, including teachers, have been trained to recognise the signs of radicalisation and to know what steps to take. New advice and resources continue to be uploaded to our Educate Against Hate website, which aims to help parents, teachers and school leaders protect young people from extremism and radicalisation.
The Department has established the counter-extremism helpline; anyone who has concerns relating to extremism affecting young people or the education sector can contact the helpline.
We have also worked with Ofsted to strengthen their inspection frameworks so that inspectors are required to assess how well schools protect pupils from the risks of extremism and radicalisation, and promote fundamental British values (democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs).
Asked by: Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Scottish National Party - Ochil and South Perthshire)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what recent progress has been made on securing a peace settlement in Yemen.
Answered by Tobias Ellwood
Securing a peace settlement to end the conflict is the Government’s top priority in Yemen. We continue to provide financial and diplomatic support to the UN Special Envoy’s efforts to agree a negotiated solution. The UK has played a leading role in working with the US, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Oman to find a peaceful solution. We will continue to seek regional consensus on the way forward, and to encourage the Yemeni parties to the conflict to engage constructively and in good faith find a political solution.
Asked by: Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Scottish National Party - Ochil and South Perthshire)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what discussions his Department has had with the Government of China on the use of the death penalty in that country.
Answered by Lord Sharma - COP26 President (Cabinet Office)
The UK opposes the death penalty in all circumstances and we continue to urge the Chinese authorities to reduce their use of the death penalty and provide details of the numbers of executions in China. We last raised these concerns at the UK-China Human Rights Dialogue in October 2016, which I attended.
Through our network of diplomatic posts, the UK is working with Chinese legal experts and the Chinese judiciary to support legislative and judicial reforms to limit the use of the death penalty. We have welcomed reductions in the number of crimes that attract the death penalty, and the Supreme People's Court mandatory review of all death sentences.
Asked by: Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Scottish National Party - Ochil and South Perthshire)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what discussions his Department has had with the Government of Iran on the use of the death penalty in that country.
Answered by Tobias Ellwood
The UK opposes the use of the death penalty in all circumstances and regularly raise our objections at senior levels with the Iranian government, both bilaterally and through the EU. The Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary have both set out our concerns with their counterparts, as has our Ambassador in Tehran. I have also discussed concerns over Iran’s human rights record with Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister and Iran’s Ambassador to the UK.
Asked by: Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Scottish National Party - Ochil and South Perthshire)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what recent discussions his Department has had with the Government of Saudi Arabia on the use of the death penalty in that country.
Answered by Tobias Ellwood
The Government regularly raises the death penalty with the Saudi authorities.
The Government opposes the death penalty in all circumstances and in every country, including Saudi Arabia, especially for crimes other than the most serious and for juveniles, in line Article Six of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Arab Charter on Human Rights.
Asked by: Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Scottish National Party - Ochil and South Perthshire)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what recent discussions his Department has had with the Government of Pakistan on the use of the death penalty in that country.
Answered by Lord Sharma - COP26 President (Cabinet Office)
The UK remains firmly opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances. Abolitionist work is high on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) agenda and is part of the day-to-day work of all diplomatic missions to countries that retain the death penalty. The FCO Human Rights and Democracy Report 2015 makes clear our views on the death penalty and the resumption of executions in Pakistan.
We have repeatedly called upon the Government of Pakistan to end capital punishment and, at a minimum, commit to publicly renewing the previously imposed moratorium on the death penalty. During my visit to Pakistan in January, I raised Pakistan's use of the death penalty with Kamran Michael, Pakistani Minister for Human Rights, and Barrister Zafarullah Khan, the Prime Minister's Special Assistant for Human Rights. The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) discussed our human rights concerns and the importance we attach to upholding the rule of law during his visit to Pakistan in November 2016.
Asked by: Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Scottish National Party - Ochil and South Perthshire)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what recent discussions his Department has had with the US Administration on the use of the death penalty in that country.
Answered by Alan Duncan
The Government regularly makes its views on the death penalty known to the US authorities. Our network of posts lobbies actively at state level because responsibility for the death penalty rests with State Governments. We also raise our concerns over executions, doing so most recently in Arkansas.
Asked by: Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Scottish National Party - Ochil and South Perthshire)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what recent discussions his Department has had with the Government of Belarus on the use of the death penalty in that country.
Answered by Alan Duncan
We use every opportunity to call on Belarus to establish an immediate moratorium on the use of the death penalty, as a first step towards abolition. A landmark conference on the abolition of the death penalty, funded by the UK and organised by the Council of Europe in co-operation with the Belarus Ministry of Foreign Affairs, took place in Minsk on 13 December 2016. FCO officials also reinforced our message to the Chairman of the Death Penalty Working Group of the Parliament of Belarus when he visited the UK on 20-21 March 2017. Most recently I raised it with the Belarusian Ambassador during our meeting on 2 February.
Asked by: Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Scottish National Party - Ochil and South Perthshire)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent steps the Government has taken to tackle extremism in the UK.
Answered by Sarah Newton
We are taking a comprehensive approach to tackling terrorism and violent extremism at source, but also, through our counter-extremism strategy, we are looking at extremism more widely. We want to defeat not just terrorism and violent extremism but extremism wherever it occurs.
Asked by: Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Scottish National Party - Ochil and South Perthshire)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, how many Yemeni local and national non-governmental organisations received humanitarian aid from her Department in each of the last five years; and what proportion of her Department's overall aid for Yemen that represented in each of those years.
Answered by Rory Stewart
DFID has provided £85.5 million to the Yemen Humanitarian Pooled Fund (YHPF) over the last five years from the total DFID bilateral funding listed in the table below. In 2016, the YHPF provided £94.5 million of support to 7.8 million people, including food security, water and sanitation and health interventions. Approximately £13 million of this funding was delivered by local and national NGOs.
In addition, in 2017/18 we will provide £24 million to our Multi-Sector Humanitarian Response programme, approximately £1.5m of which will directly support local and national NGOs.
Financial Year | DFID bilateral programme outturn (in £s) |
2015/16 | 89.6 million |
2014/15 | 65.9 million |
2013/14 | 81.4 million |
2012/13 | 59.1 million |