Select committee: Foreign Affairs Committee
2nd Special Report - The FCO's administration and funding of its human rights work overseas: Government Response to the Committee's Fourth Report of Session 2015-16
Published 11 July 2016
Foreign Affairs Committee Human rights inquiry Report on parliament.uk ↗
At a glance
The government's response
This document responds to 4th Report - The FCO’s administration and funding of its human rights work overseas.
This is the government's response, published 11 July 2016.
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The FCO "notes" the Committee's report and responds to each recommendation, maintaining that human rights are "an integral part of our national interest and foreign policy goals" while declining some specific changes.
- On the Rainbow Flag, the FCO sets out a policy to fly the Union Flag "at all times" and does not fly other flags, saying this "has no bearing" on its commitment to LGB&T rights. It points to £900,000 of Magna Carta Fund projects in 2016/17.
- On funding unregistered organisations, the FCO says it conducts due diligence and "in most cases" would only agree with a compliant organisation, though it funds unregistered ones "in a very limited number of cases".
- On evaluation, the FCO says output targets are, "in many cases, not appropriate". It has added an annex to the Annual Report setting out its vision and goals for 2016. On the DFID Development Tracker, it "will consider" whether some presentational elements might be appropriate.
- On priority countries, the FCO states that Bahrain and Egypt "were both included" as Human Rights Priority Countries in the 2015 Annual Report. Posts in each such country have been instructed to draw up a human rights strategy "by this summer".
What the committee recommended
This is a government response document, so it has no recommendations of its own.