Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, how many times ministers in his Department (a) met and (b) held discussions with representatives of the government of the Maldives in each of the last five years; and when each of those (i) meetings and (ii) discussions took place.

Ministers from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office regularly engage with their counterparts in the Government of Maldives. The most recent discussions between the Minister for South Asia, Lord (Tariq) Ahmad of Wimbledon, and the Maldivian Foreign Minister, Abdulla Shahid, took place on 4 February 2021, 18 November 2020 and 23 July 2020. Lord (Tariq) Ahmad of Wimbledon also regularly engages with the Maldivian High Commissioner to the UK.