Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what assessment he has made of the potential implications for his policies of (a) the parliamentary election, (b) the inauguration of a new president and (c) other recent events in Georgia.

In response to recent events in Georgia, the Foreign Secretary announced on 9 December that the UK would suspend all programme support to the Georgian government, restricted defence cooperation, and limited engagement with representatives of Georgian Dream. On 16 December I spoke to Georgian Dream representative, Foreign Minister Bochorishvili, and on 23 December the Foreign Secretary spoke to the Georgian President, Zourabichvili. Both the Foreign Secretary and I expressed our concerns at the instability we were seeing in Georgia. I was clear that Georgia's negative democratic trajectory, including violence targeting peaceful demonstrators, opposition figures and journalists was unacceptable. On 19 December, the UK implemented sanctions against the Minister and Deputy Minister of Internal affairs and three police officials responsible for these violent actions. We will continue to keep our policies under close review.