Tom Brake – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Tom Brake on 2016-04-11.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, whether his Department conducts ongoing appraisals of the effectiveness of the Bahrain Office of the Ombudsman of the Ministry of Interior, the Prisoners’ and Detainees’ Rights Commission and other bodies in Bahrain receiving UK technical assistance; and whether those assessments are taken into account when making funding decisions.

Mr Tobias Ellwood

All Foreign and Commonwealth Office programmes are regularly reviewed, and the effectiveness of projects is taken into account when making future funding decisions. This includes the technical assistance the UK has been providing to the Government of Bahrain since 2012. This assistance supports the Government of Bahrain’s reform programme including implementation of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry and UN Universal Periodic Review recommendations.