Malaysia: Diplomatic Relations

(asked on 9th July 2019) - View Source

Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what recent steps he has taken to improve diplomatic relations with Malaysia.


Answered by
Andrew Murrison Portrait
Andrew Murrison
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence)
This question was answered on 17th July 2019

The British government has long-standing diplomatic relations with Malaysia.

We have had a high number of inward and outward ministerial visits over the past year, including a visit by the Foreign Secretary in January. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, Deputy Prime Minister Wan Azizah and the Malaysian Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah have visited the UK during that period.

The UK works closely with Malaysia in a number of areas including trade and defence. We have strengthened our defence relationship with the launch of the Ministerial level Defence Strategic Dialogue in 2018. We have a growing collaboration on climate change and our education partnership continues to grow with five British university campuses in Malaysia and 19,000 Malaysian students in the UK. The UK is also supporting the Malaysian government's institutional reform agenda.

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