§ Mr. McNamaraTo ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will set out a three-year timetable for fulfilling United Kingdom reporting obligations under United Nations treaties for the protection of human rights, indicating target completion dates for periodic reports and expected dates for public hearings of the relevant committees. [9924]
§ Mr. Tony LloydThe timetable for reporting is determined by the treaty itself or by the respective treaty monitoring committee. The UK's next reports are due on the following dates: International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights—ICCPR—June 1999; International 705W Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights—ICESCR—June 1999; International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination—ICERD—April 1998; Convention Against Torture—CAT—January 1998; Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women—CEDAW—January 1999; Convention on the Rights of the Child— January 1999. We aim to submit these reports as closely as possible to the due dates except in the case of ICERD where it is proposed to hold submission back until April 1999 so that the report can take account of possible developments in this field that are currently under consideration: the secretariat of the committee is being informed.
The relevant monitoring committees have not yet given dates for public examinations of these reports, except for the CEDAW committee which has set January 1999 as the date for the examination of the previous and next reports. The ICESCR committee will examine the UK in November 1997, in respect of its latest report submitted in 1996.
The UK also submits reports in respect of those dependent territories to which particular treaties apply. The due dates are not the same in all cases, but we aim to submit reports under ICERD and CAT together with those of the UK itself. The initial dependent territories' reports under CRC and the latest dependent territories' reports under ICCPR, ICESCR and CEDAW are now overdue but steps are being taken to ensure that these are completed and submitted as soon as possible.