Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of preliminary warnings of atrocity crimes in Darfur.

Ministers in the current Government are not in a position to comment on the preparation of assessments under a previous administration, but I would note that official spokespeople for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office have rejected the reports to which the Noble Lord refers, and explained that the UK only makes formal determinations of genocide based on the judgement of a competent court, after consideration of all the evidence available, in the context of a credible judicial process.