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Terrorism Bill

My Lords, that is a very fair question from my noble friend. We were fellow Ministers in the same Administration and I am sure that in his responsibilities for trade he took human rights as seriously as many of us at the Foreign Office did. We did indeed have many searching discussions about human rights in the Foreign Office at the time I was Minister. Under the urging of the Under-Secretary of State at the time, the late Evan Luard, we went through a period where—very much in keeping with many aspects of government policy these days—we required our ambassadors to assess regimes and governments abroad based on a points system. In our policies towards those countries, we could then take into account the human rights situation in the country concerned.