HL Deb 07 February 2001 vol 621 c112WA
Lord Biffen

asked Her Majesty's Government:

Whether they will list the factors which have dissuaded them from acknowledging as genocide the Armenian massacre in 1915. [HL510]

Baroness Scotland of Asthal

The Government, in line with previous British Governments, have judged the evidence not to be sufficiently unequivocal to persuade us that these events should be categorised as genocide as defined by the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide, a convention which was drafted in response to the Holocaust and is not retrospective in application. The interpretation of events in Eastern Anatolia in 1915–16 is still the subject of genuine debate amongst historians.