Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether he has made representations on the issue of membership of the Equal Rights Coalition at the meeting of Commonwealth International Trade Ministers on 10 October 2019.

The Equal Rights Coalition (ERC) was created to address the limited number of mechanisms or structures through which governments could coordinate their diplomatic efforts, share information, and work together at the international level to help achieve LGBT equality. As ERC co-chair, we shall soon deliver the ERC's first Five Year Strategy that seeks to guide and shape the Coalition's work to help it realise its considerable potential. Ireland and North Macedonia joined the ERC in June 2019 and we are seeking to expand the 42-strong membership to any country seeking to work within the Coalition to promote and protect the human rights of LGBT people around the world.