Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, if his Department will renew its strategy for the abolition of the death penalty.

This Government has decided to pursue human rights in their universality – a more ambitious and coherent approach than focusing on a small number of single issues. Our commitment to the Rules Based International Order underpins this work, including through bilateral and multilateral support to global efforts to abolish the death penalty. Because of our wider focus, we do not intend to publish a new strategy specific to the death penalty. However, on the 18 January we published a strategy for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) which shows how work to abolish the death penalty is important under all three of the strategy’s new themes. The FCO’s death penalty-related work will also be covered in future instalments of the FCO’s Annual Human Rights Report.