Paul Flynn – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Paul Flynn on 2015-10-13.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what recent representations he has made to his Saudi Arabian counterpart against that country’s policy of judicially-sanctioned capital punishment.

Mr Tobias Ellwood

The Government opposes the death penalty in all circumstances, especially in cases which do not meet the minimum standards defined by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. We believe it undermines human dignity and there is no evidence that it works as a deterrent. Ministers, our Ambassador in Riyadh and the Embassy team raise the issue of the death penalty with the Saudi authorities, both bilaterally and through the European Union.

We recognise that total abolition of the death penalty is unlikely in Saudi Arabia in the near future. Our focus is therefore on encouraging the introduction of EU minimum standards for the death penalty as a first step, and on supporting access to justice and rule of law.