asked Her Majesty's Government:

Whether they will seek to secure an amendment to the 1995 Rome statute of the International Criminal Court in order to make the killing of journalists in war zones a crime under international law.

My Lords, the Government are strongly committed to ensuring that journalists are afforded the necessary protection under domestic and international law. Under relevant existing provisions of the Rome statute and the additional protocol 1 to the Geneva conventions, journalists are regarded as civilians. To direct intentionally an attack against civilians not taking direct part in hostilities is currently a war crime. Therefore, it is our view that no amendment to international law is necessary in this respect.

My Lords, my noble friend will know that it is now more than four years since ITN's Terry Lloyd, Fred Nerac and Hussein Osman were killed in Iraq. Terry Lloyd was shot by a US marine while in the back of an ambulance moving away from the battle zone. Despite a verdict of unlawful killing by the Oxfordshire coroner, there has still been no indication that the United States is prepared to make the person responsible available to stand trial.

Does my noble friend agree that journalists in war zones perform a very special role on behalf of all of us and that that should be recognised in the way that my Question and the campaign by ITN proposes? Surely they are our eyes and ears and to regard them just as civilians does not take into account the public interest that they serve.

My Lords, those three journalists and many others have played an heroic role reporting in most dangerous circumstances. I think that everybody will pay them full tribute. By specifically highlighting journalists as being different, there is a risk, which the International Committee of the Red Cross has drawn to the attention of all of us, of marginalising the role of others. Humanitarian and NGO workers do desperately vital work in war zones. There is no reason why they should not be afforded the full protection of international law as well. Happily, international law is capable of doing that. I want to see all of them treated properly and with full respect to international law.

My Lords, does the Minister accept that the changing nature of conflict—we no longer have war between states but usually conflict between terrorist groups and resurgencies of one sort or another—makes the role of a journalist, who operates to some extent autonomously from the formal military forces of western countries, much more difficult and in many ways ambiguous? Is he confident that the instructions to the British, American and other militaries take this unavoidable ambiguity and necessary autonomy into account?

My Lords, I do not think that our forces, those of the United States or others should be in any doubt or sense any ambiguity. UN Security Council Resolution 1738 specifically calls on all forces of all countries involved in any kind of conflict to stop deliberate attacks on journalists and to meet their obligations in international law to protect them and other citizens, including those I mentioned who do humanitarian work in the middle of these asymmetric—or however one wants to describe them—conflicts,.

My Lords, does the Minister accept that we should be concerned today, on World Press Freedom Day, and every day, with the need not merely to protect the freedom of journalists to report—I say "freedom" as opposed to the abuse of that freedom by the press which, alas, is very widespread—but to condemn those who kill them in war zones, sometimes accidentally and sometimes through deliberately targeting them, which is particularly vicious? I refer also to journalists who are murdered by certain regimes and others in the course of their work, of which there have been in the past few months some particularly unfortunate examples in Russia and elsewhere. In reinforcing what he has already said, will the Minister remember that we should be particularly concerned about journalists and their families who are deliberately murdered for holding and promoting views on press freedom?

My Lords, I greatly welcome what the noble Lord said. To have a good civil society you must have a free press and people must be able to do the job that is involved in having a free press. For those reasons I welcome the campaigns around the world by journalists' organisations, their unions and International PEN. We should always support them most solidly.

My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of the National Union of Journalists. Given the immense peril in which Alan Johnston, the BBC correspondent in Gaza, is currently placed—our prayers are that he is still alive—can the Minister tell the House what further pressure we are putting on the Palestinian authorities to try to secure his release?

My Lords, we are in constant contact with the Palestinian authorities. We try to co-ordinate this with the BBC and its director-general, Mark Thompson. We desire to get Alan Johnston's secure release. A few days ago, I said in the House—I hope that the House will bear with me—that if I were to go into further detail I would probably assist those holding him rather than him.

My Lords, has the Minister noted that at an inquest in Australia it was found that certain journalists were cold-bloodedly murdered by the Indonesian invading troops in East Timor in 1975? Notwithstanding the fact that this occurred many years before the coming into force of the Rome statute, does the Minister consider it profoundly unsatisfactory that the relatives of the victims, who included British citizens, have no remedy for the loss of their loved ones?

My Lords, of course I do. The idea that people have no remedy or cannot achieve—forgive the rather clichéd word—"closure", as it is described in those cases, is bound to be very unsatisfactory. I also feel that about, for example, the nearest and dearest relatives of the aid workers being murdered in Darfur. Those people are all doing heroic jobs, and I want all of them to be covered by the same international standards of law. If we can stand behind that, we are standing behind a good value.