200. Respect for and promotion of human rights are and must remain at the core of the United Kingdom's relations with other countries and with international organisations. The considerable effort and expertise devoted by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to this aspect of its work have been consistently welcomed by this Committee and, increasingly, by human rights organisations. Over the years since publication of the first FCO human rights annual report in 1998, Parliament has been able to engage, through this Committee, in a constructive dialogue with the FCO and thereby to improve the scope, content and presentation of these reports.

201. This dialogue, however, has been important not just in terms of achieving a useful and well-written publication, but also because it has ensured that the United Kingdom's policies in relation to human rights around the globe have achieved a higher profile than would otherwise have been the case, both in Parliament and in government. Although we believe that it is true to say that respect and concern for human rights underpin and inform much of what the FCO does, the fact that one of its Ministers appears before the Committee each year to defend and explain the Government's record must act as a powerful reminder to all concerned that that record has to be defensible and justifiable.

202. In case this should be the last Report on human rights of this Committee in the current Parliament, we wish to express the hope that our successors in the next Parliament will continue to regard scrutiny of the Government's work on human rights in foreign policy to be one of their core activities. We have no doubt that, in carrying out this work, they will be greatly assisted by future human rights annual reports. We welcome the fact that since 1998 the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has published an increasingly comprehensive, well set-out and useful Annual Report on Human Rights. We recommend that the FCO continue this practice.