Speaking in the House of Lords this week and posing a question to Lord Tariq Ahmad, Lord Naseby requested the UK government to “release to any commission the unredacted dispatches from the UK’s respected and experienced military attaché, Colonel Gash, who was on the battlefield every day from 1 January to 18 May 2009, proving beyond doubt in his dispatches that there was no genocide,”.

He said while he would personally support and work for a truth and reconciliation commission, established in Sri Lanka, he also said the UK should persuade the United Nations to remove the 20-year restriction on the source of the evidence in the Darusman report of 2011, which stated that up to 40,000 people were killed. Naseby has maintained for years that the Darusman reports contain a misleading figure that 40,000 Tamil civilians were killed whereas the truth is about 6,500.

However, in response, Lord Tariq Ahmad, the Minister of State for the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia and the United Nations at the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office said he was unable to agree with Lord Naseby.

“I cannot agree with all aspects of my noble friend’s questions because it is very clear that the whole point of standing up a truth and reconciliation commission in 2015 was that there was a real recognition, even by the Sri Lankan Government of that time, of the importance of bringing communities together to ensure that atrocities could be fully investigated and, more importantly, perpetrators could be held to account. That is why we have pursued the issue at the UN Human Rights Council, which is the right approach. Of course, in time, there is a need for domestic mechanisms, but the sad truth is that, since 2015, despite successive changes of Government, we have seen little progress with the truth and justice commission in Sri Lanka.” he said.