Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what progress she has made in implementing Recommendation 5 in the final report of the Bishop of Truro's Independent review of support for persecuted Christians; and what research she plans to commission into the issues relating to that recommendation.

The FCDO continues to fund research activities which look into the intersection between Freedom of Religion and Belief (FoRB), other human rights and broader issues. This includes two large programmes: CREID (Coalition for Religious Equality and Inclusive Development - led by the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex) and the FoRB Leadership Network (through the University of Oxford). In 2021, we used the John Bunyan Fund to deepen understanding of the intersecting vulnerabilities experienced by religious minorities living in poverty in the shadows of Covid-19.