Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what his assessment is of the effectiveness of the UK-China Human Rights Dialogue.

The latest round of the UK/China Human Rights Dialogue took place on 27/28 October. I attended the opening of the Dialogue. The UK is one of only a few countries with such a platform, which enables us to discuss the full range of our human rights concerns. During the dialogue we covered freedom of expression, religion and belief, minority rights and the death penalty. We were also able to share a number of human rights cases of particular concern. The dialogue is one way to discuss with China our shared international human rights commitments.