Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what representations Ministers of his Department have made to the Russian Government on reports of arrests of gay men in Chechnya.

​I refer the Hon. Member to my response to written question 70842, and the answers I gave when replying to an Urgent Question in the House on 20 April 2017. Since then, the FCO Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia has written to the Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom setting out our concerns and calling for the Russian authorities to undertake an investigation as a matter of urgency.