Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, what assessment he has made of the potential implications for his policies of the debate entitled A democratic future for Belarus at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on 25 January 2024.

The UK values the work of the Parliamentary Assembly to the Council of Europe in highlighting the increasingly repressive landscape in Belarus, and the continued failure to hold democratic elections that meet international standards. We share the Assembly's ambition for a future democratic, independent Belarus. We have applied wide-ranging sanctions to Belarus in response to the regime's continued human rights violations. We will continue to put pressure on Lukashenko's regime in pursuit of the free and democratic society that Belarusians deserve.