Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, how many prisoners facing the death penalty have been visited by UK diplomatic staff in China during 2015.

British consular officials routinely visit all British nationals in Chinese prisons. To date, no British national has been sentenced to the death penalty in a Chinese prison since 2009. British officials are not in a position to visit foreign nationals facing the death penalty in China. However, we monitor the human rights situation in China closely, and report on individual cases of concern, including human rights defenders facing the death penalty, through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Annual Report on Human Rights and Democracy.