Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, if he will reconsider the Government’s opposition to listing in the UN business and human rights database of companies involved in settlement-related activities in the Palestinian Territories.

We have no plans to reconsider our involvement in the UN business and human rights database. We continue to believe that the database goes beyond the competence of the Human Rights Council. Human rights obligations are directed at states, and not individuals or businesses. Ultimately it is the decision of an individual or company whether to operate in settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The British Government neither encourages nor offers support to such activity.