A Labour MP has accused Liz Truss of “misleading” Parliament by claiming she “personally” raised human rights concerns with leaders in the Gulf.
The new Prime Minister made the claim in one of her final grillings as Foreign Secretary, when she told MPs: “I have raised particular issues when I have been in the Gulf about human rights issues.”
She promised to write back to Foreign Affairs Committee member Chris Bryant with examples.
But today Mr Bryant said he had received only a slim reply from Ms Truss, saying a “wide range of issues”, including human rights, “were discussed” at a December 2021 summit.
While Ms Truss attended the summit, it was held at her Kent residence Chevening, not in the Gulf.
Mr Bryant wrote to her: “You do not cite a single instance when you ‘personally’ raised human rights with Saudi Arabia or any other Gulf Cooperation State.
“You say human rights ‘were discussed’, but not by whom.
“I can only therefore presume that you’re assertion that you have ‘personally’ raised these matters misled the committee and therefore the House.”
Mr Bryant told the PM it was “difficult not to conclude that you have deliberately misled the committee, because you did not want to own up to the fact that you knew you had never raised these issues with Gulf states.”
Demanding she correct the record, he tweeted: “The claims were untrue. She misled us.”
I comes after a backlash to initial reports that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince would attend the Queen’s funeral.
US intelligence agencies found the Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, approved the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. It later emerged the Crown Prince would not attend the Queen’s funeral.
But Saudi Arabia was still represented with only a handful of nations - including Russia, Belarus and Myanmar - left out.
A Government spokesperson said: “UK Ministers and officials regularly raise sensitive human rights issues with their Gulf counterparts, both in public and private."
Downing Street will respond to Mr Bryant's letter in due course, officials said.
