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Human Rights

I just want to respond briefly to two things mentioned during the debate. First, I assure the Minister and her officials that the Foreign Affairs Committee has already decided to write in response to a number of detailed points in the Government's response to the Committee's human rights report. We will be pursuing a number of issues in writing over the next few weeks and we look forward to receiving greater clarification on some of those issues than we have had today and in the Government's response so far. Secondly, I thank you, Mr. Key, for being so tolerant in this debate and I look forward to speaking in debates on the reports from the Committee chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore). I hope that the Chairman of those debates is as tolerant as you have been. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) for raising the question of migrant workers, which is an cross-cutting issue of human rights that is covered by a number of Committees in the House. We all have a duty to look at that in whatever way we can. Finally, a number of areas were mentioned that were not included in the Foreign Affairs Committee's human rights report. I did not have time, in my opening remarks, to mention all the things that were contained in the report, so I am grateful that my fellow Committee member, the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley), took up some of those. Other hon. Members have added to the debate in other areas. We will be revisiting these questions. We look forward to the Government's report in the spring and to either this Minister, or the Minister in the other place, as was the case last year, coming to our Committee to answer our questions. We will, no doubt, probe a number of new issues as well as the ones that we have touched on today. I thank you, Mr. Key, and wish all hon. and right hon. Members a merry Christmas.