Britains new cabinet on Tamils and Sri Lanka

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham took office this week and announced a series of ministerial changes, with several figures associated with the previous administration leaving government.

Downing Street confirmed the appointments, with a large number of the new cabinets members have addressed Tamil audiences, tabled parliamentary questions or spoken in the House of Commons on Sri Lanka over the past seventeen years.

We look back on their record below.

Ed Miliband, Foreign Secretary

 

Miliband led the Labour Party from 2010 to 2015. During that period he issued statements marking Mullivaikkal Remembrance Day and Black July, sent Tamil New Year messages, met Tamil representatives ahead of UN Human Rights Council sessions, addressed the All Party Parliamentary Group for Tamils, and wrote an opinion piece for the Tamil Guardian.

In November 2013, ahead of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Colombo, he wrote for this publication, arguing that David Cameron should not attend and that Sri Lanka should not chair the Commonwealth.

"An estimated 40,000 civilians died in that brutal conflict and yet there has still been no investigation into allegations of war crimes because the Sri Lankan government has so far refused to carry one out," he wrote.

Days later, responding to Camerons statement to the Commons, he said that what happened in Sri Lanka "particularly towards the end of the conflict in 2009, when tens of thousands of innocent civilians were murdered, totally fails the test of those values".

"Britain must do what it can to ensure that the truth emerges about the crimes that were committed, so that there can be justice for those who have suffered so much," he told MPs.

His final Tamil New Year message as Labour leader, delivered as a video address in April 2015, was his most explicit.

"The Labour Party has always been a friend of the Tamil community and will continue to be so, and we will continue to push for the full and independent, international investigation into alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka. Its something I raised with President Sirisena when I met him and we will continue to push this forward, we will continue to advocate for your cause," he said.

On taking office this week, Miliband said he would fight for Britains interests and "our values of democracy, freedom and the rule of law on the world stage".

Read more in our feature: From Mullivaikkal to the Foreign Office: Ed Milibands record on Tamils and Sri Lanka

 

John Healey, Chancellor of the Exchequer

In January 2021, while serving as shadow defence secretary, Healey tabled three written questions on British military assistance to Sri Lanka and the human rights assessments accompanying it.

He asked whether Sri Lankas lifting of its moratorium on executions for drug offenders had been considered in Overseas Security and Justice Assistance assessments, what mitigating steps had been taken to ensure British assistance did not enable death sentences for drug offences, and whether an assessment had been completed before HMS Montrose provided assistance to the Sri Lankan Navy in April 2019.

The Ministry of Defence replied that counter-terrorism assistance had been delivered to the Sri Lankan armed forces since April 2019, focused on countering improvised explosive devices, and that successive assessments had considered the moratorium on executions.

 

Yvette Cooper, Health and Social Care Secretary

Cooper served as Foreign Secretary until this weeks changes. Her record on Sri Lanka dates to December 2010, when she responded in the Commons to Channel 4 footage showing Sri Lankan soldiers executing Tamils.

"Recent additional footage from Channel 4 has shown Sri Lankan forces executing civilians at the end of the conflict," she told the Alistair Burt, who served as a minister in the Foreign Office.

"He described the ICRC as an independent international monitor, but, as he will also know, there is serious concern about the continued lack of independent and transparent investigation of alleged war crimes in the country. Have Ministers urged the Sri Lankan Government to support a properly independent inquiry with international involvement," she asked.

She intervened a second time in the same exchange.

"I welcome and agree with what the Minister has said, but I urge him to go further in pressing the Sri Lankan Government to accept international involvement in order to increase the credibility of the report," she said, going on to ask "whether all Ministers are taking every opportunity to press for a credible investigation of war crimes".

As Foreign Secretary, Cooper was questioned by the Foreign Affairs Committee in December 2025 by the Labour MP Uma Kumaran, who noted that no special court or criminal investigation had followed the OHCHR findings on war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

"We continue to encourage the Sri Lankan Government to recognise the legitimate concerns about the need for truth and reconciliation, and to properly recognise and address some of the long-standing and serious problems and grievances. We will continue to raise the issue," Cooper said.

She added: "We have also pressed the Sri Lankan Government to take transformational and sustained action on improving human rights. As you will probably know, we sanctioned four individuals on those grounds back in March."

 

Wes Streeting, Defence Secretary

Streeting now heads a department that has provided assistance to the Sri Lankan armed forces.

A former vice-chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Tamils, he has travelled repeatedly to Geneva during UN Human Rights Council sessions on Sri Lanka and has attended Mullivaikkal commemorations, Maaveerar Naal events and Thai Pongal celebrations over more than a decade.

At a Mullivaikkal remembrance gathering outside Downing Street in May 2016, he said there could "be no hiding place for crimes that can only be perceived as genocide".

In a 2018 statement published after a Mullivaikkal event in Parliament, he wrote: "It is to the eternal shame of the international community that we looked the other way while innocent people were subjected to unimaginable acts of violence and terror. We owe it to you and to all the Tamil people never to look away again."

During a parliamentary debate in March 2021 he pressed for sanctions.

"We can take bilateral action to apply Magnitsky sanctions against the rogues and criminals who perpetrated human rights abuses," he said. "At this point, after many years of campaigning for justice, my Tamil constituents are looking not just for warm words but for action and leadership, which has been missing from the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister."

At an event marking the fifteenth anniversary of the Tamil genocide in 2024, he said: "It is so important if international law and human rights are to mean anything it is really important that individuals are held to account through the International Criminal Court."

Read more in our feature: Who is Wes Streeting? A look through his record on Tamil rights and justice for the genocide

 

Pat McFadden, Work and Pensions Secretary

McFadden, who has retained his post, questioned Cameron during the November 2013 Commons statement on the Colombo summit.

"Given what happened at the end of the war in Sri Lanka and what has happened since, why does the Prime Minister think that the Sri Lankan Government can be trusted to set up a proper independent inquiry? Why is it not right for us to press now for what he said he might press for in March, which is an international inquiry in which the world can have trust?" he asked.

In November 2023 he raised Camerons commercial interests in Sri Lanka after the latters appointment as Foreign Secretary, asking who the ultimate client had been when Cameron received payment for promoting the Port City Colombo project, "the Sri Lankan Government or the China Harbour Engineering Company, which is owned by the Chinese state".

 

Lisa Nandy, Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Secretary

Nandy, who has retained her post, spoke at the Tamils for Labour conference in September 2021, at which the party set out support for referring Sri Lanka to the International Criminal Court and for an international investigative mechanism.

In a Commons debate in July 2023 on restrictions to ethical economic action by public bodies, she said:

"For the Rohingya in Myanmar, for the Tamils in Sri Lanka and for countless others, the concern is that this bad law prevents not just economic action to uphold human rights everywhere, but solidarity with some of the most persecuted people in the world."

 

Heidi Alexander, Transport Secretary

Alexander, who has retained her post, has repeatedly raised the treatment of Tamils deported from Britain. In October 2013 she told the Commons:

"I recently met a young Tamil man who had previously been deported back to Sri Lanka by the Home Secretary. He showed me his torture scars resulting from the Sri Lankan terrorist investigation department having tortured him."

The following month she put the issue directly to Cameron during the statement on the Colombo summit, asking whether he accepted that Tamil asylum seekers had been forcibly returned "only for them to be bundled into white vans at Colombo airport and subjected to horrific torture".

"Is he proud of his asylum policies?" she asked.

In February 2012 she had asked whether it would be useful for the Sri Lankan government to produce a list of all prisoners held in its custody "so that the matter can be cleared up once and for all".

That same month, whilst attending an exhibition on the Tamil genocide in Wsstminster, Alexander said, "he need for international independent investigation into the crimes and atrocities that have taken place in Sri Lanka is clear from your exhibition and the UK has a responsibility to act to make this happen".

She was also among the 84 Labour candidates who endorsed the common response to the Tamil Guardians 2015 election survey, answering yes to questions on an investigation into genocide and on the Tamil nations right to self-determination.

 

Douglas Alexander, Secretary of State for Scotland

Alexander, who has retained his post, built his record as shadow foreign secretary. At a Tamils for Labour event in October 2011 he said Labours front bench had concluded that Sri Lankas Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission was not capable of conducting an independent inquiry, and that it was impossible to judge the panel as a genuinely neutral body.

"I feel it is right, and after discussions with my shadow frontbench team, to say we are not convinced that this Commission can do its work even with international participation and there does need to be an international commission that looks into the evidence," he said.

He pledged that Labour MPs would continue to raise Sri Lanka in parliament, citing a "real and genuine concern and a continued determination to give voice to this concern".

In October 2013 he argued in a newspaper article that Cameron should reverse his decision to attend the Colombo summit, describing the decision to confirm attendance six months in advance as one that "represented a misjudgment and a missed opportunity".

"First, he should reverse his decision to attend the summit. In doing so he would make clear to the Sri Lankan authorities the extent of Britains concern about human rights. If he does this then, as the opposition, Labour will support him," he wrote, concluding that Cameron should signal "that the Commonwealth is no hiding place for countries that are unwilling to uphold the human rights of their citizens".

Alexander also called for CHOGM attendance to be kept under review in March 2013, met Tamil organisations in December 2013 to discuss war crimes and genocide, questioned Rajapaksas role as Commonwealth Chairperson-in-office, raised his possible attendance at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games, and accompanied Miliband to the meeting with Sirisena.

 

Stephen Kinnock, Secretary of State for Wales

Kinnock, who joins the cabinet for the first time, built one of the most detailed records on Sri Lanka of any Labour parliamentarian while serving as shadow minister for Asia.

In December 2020 he wrote to the Foreign Office saying Britain must show international leadership on Sri Lanka, and expressing "deep concern about alarming threats to democratic governance, the rule of law and human rights" on the island.

"To date, we have seen very little accountability for these crimes," he wrote. "Individuals who are credibly accused of involvement in these crimes hold key positions in the Sri Lankan government today."

He asked whether the Foreign Office was considering Magnitsky sanctions against human rights violators in Sri Lanka, and questioned how the British Defence Advisors meetings with senior Sri Lankan commanders "credibly accused of gross human rights violations" would lead to greater accountability.

In March 2021 he wrote again, calling for a comprehensive rewrite of the proposed UN resolution, which he criticised as "too vague and insufficiently robust".

"The UK government has a particular responsibility to demonstrate moral and political leadership on this matter, but unfortunately it is clear judging by this drafting resolution that you are failing to rise to the challenge," he wrote.

Kinnock set out five concerns, calling for the application of universal jurisdiction, the establishment of an International Independent Investigative Mechanism, and the reduction of the resolutions eighteen month timescale, which he described as "unacceptably long", to six months. On an ICC referral, he wrote that Britains position "should not be determined simply by the veto-wielding intentions of two of its permanent members".

He also noted that Britains sanctions regime did not include "a single senior Sri Lankan government minister, official or military officer", and concluded that the United Kingdom "owes it to the victims and survivors of the atrocities that have taken place in Sri Lanka to ensure that it rises to the occasion and shows the moral courage and leadership that is so urgently needed".

He took part in a parliamentary debate on Sri Lanka that month and marked Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day in May 2021.

At the Labour Party conference in September 2021, Kinnock criticised the British governments record and described the situation in Sri Lanka as "a scar on the conscience of the world".

He said there was a clear case for senior Sri Lankan military and government officials to be referred to the International Criminal Court, and that British foreign policy should not be "dictated by two authoritarian regimes". Even if such a move were vetoed, he said, "it would still be a very important statement".

On the resolutions timeline, he asked:

"We know atrocities were perpetrated. Why are we giving the Sri Lankan government such a long period?"

Kinnock also called for the withdrawal of the British defence attaché in Colombo, for sanctions on Sri Lankas army commander Shavendra Silva, and for an ethical trade policy placing human rights above economic interest.

 

Sir Chris Bryant, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland

Bryant raised Sri Lankas GSP+ trading privileges and conditions in the camps as a Foreign Office minister in December 2009, telling the Commons there was "a serious humanitarian issue in Sri Lanka that needs to be addressed" and that a robust European Union position was important.

In the November 2013 statement on the Colombo summit, he asked Cameron to look again at how asylum claims from Sri Lanka were handled.

"There are still many Sri Lankans here in this country, particularly Tamils, who are seeking asylum and are being given first decisions that are so dubious that they have been overturned at appeal," he said.

 

Dame Angela Eagle, Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Secretary

Eagle has addressed Tamil issues as a minister rather than as a campaigner. As a Home Office minister in July 2001 she answered questions on the deportation and detention of Sri Lankan Tamils.

In November 2024 she was asked whether the government had assessed the impact of granting the Sri Lankan Tamils on Diego Garcia the right to come to Britain. Her reply stated: "No such right exists, and no such right will be considered."

 

Ministers attending cabinet

Hamish Falconer, appointed Minister of State for Intergovernmental Relations and European Relations jointly in the Cabinet Office and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, will attend cabinet. He set out the governments position on Tamil justice during topical questions in January 2026.

"The UK is active in seeking justice and accountability for Sri Lankas Tamil community. Indeed, we lead in the UN Human Rights Council on the resolution on Sri Lanka. Last year, we sanctioned Sri Lankans for human rights violations in the civil war, and we have made clear to the Sri Lankan Government the importance of improved human rights for all in Sri Lanka, as well as reconciliation," he said, before wishing the Tamil community a happy Thai Pongal.

Matthew Pennycook, who remains Minister of State in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and attends cabinet, was among the 84 Labour candidates who endorsed the common response to the Tamil Guardians 2015 election survey, answering yes to questions on an investigation into genocide against the Tamil nation and on the Tamil nations right to self-determination.