Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the remarks by the Prime Minister on 4 May (HC Deb, col 168) that "there is a very strong case here for saying that it is genocide, and I hope that it will be portrayed and spoken of as such" with reference to the actions of ISIS against the Christian and other minorities in Iraq and Syria, whether the Foreign and Commonwealth Office intends to speak publicly of those actions as genocide.

As the Prime Minister, my Rt Hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr Cameron), has said, the Government’s position remains that although there is a very strong case to answer, ultimately it should be a matter for judicial authorities. The Government continues to believe that recognition of genocide should be a matter for international courts, not political bodies. It should be a legal, rather than political determination, decided by international judges after consideration of all the evidence available in the context of a credible international judicial process.