Work to combat violence and discrimination against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) people forms an important part of our wider international human rights work. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office works through our Embassies and High Commissions, and through international organisations, including the Commonwealth, the EU and the UN, to promote tolerance and non-discrimination against LGBT people and to address discriminatory laws, in particular those that criminalise homosexuality.

The UK has been a member of the LGBT core group in Geneva since 2011, playing a key role in passing the UN’s first ever resolution on LGBT rights and recently joined its counterpart group in New York.

Within the Commonwealth we continue to encourage the Secretariat and the Secretary-General to do more to promote the rights of its LGBT people. The former Foreign Secretary, my Rt hon friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (William Hague), wrote to the Commonwealth Secretary-General in March urging him to take concrete action to address this issue within the Commonwealth.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), like all Government departments, is required to achieve the release of its records at the 20-year mark by transferring two years’ of selected records to the National Archives (TNA) over every year of the transitional period (2013-2022).

Work on the release of colonial administration files over the 2011-2013 period has regrettably caused a backlog in the regular annual transfer of FCO departmental files to TNA. The colonial files project was completed in November 2013 and we have now deployed all of our file transfer resources onto annual release. We publish the order in which we will be transferring files to the TNA on our website at: www.gov.uk/archive-records.

FCO departmental files relating to Mauritius and the British Indian Ocean Territory form part of the FCO 31 class (Eastern Africa) at TNA. We expect 1981 and 1982 FCO 31 files to transfer to the TNA later this year following which the TNA will require a further period to prepare the files for public release. We are working closely with the TNA on the transfer of files in the FCO 31 class for later years.

We respect Mauritius’ decision not to host the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting (CHOGM) in 2015. At the 2013 CHOGM in Colombo, the UK, along with the rest of the Commonwealth, welcomed and accepted Malta’s offer to host CHOGM in 2015.