The final report of a UK Independent Review into persecuted Christians has been published.

Commissioned by the British Foreign Office, it has recommended that the UK government should be prepared to impose sanctions against countries that persecute Christians.

The Government should also adopt a definition of anti-Christian discrimination and persecution, similar to those applied to Islamophobia and antisemitism, the report says. British diplomats and other Foreign Office staff, both in the UK and abroad, should have mandatory training in religious literacy in order to equip them to understand the scale and significance of the issue.

The report, by Philip Mounstephen, the Anglican bishop of Truro, was commissioned by the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, to examine the extent and nature of Christian persecution and assess the UK government’s response.

Hunt said he would enact all of the recommendations if he became prime minister and said he agreed with the report’s conclusion that Christians were the most persecuted religious group in the world.

Hunt said the UK must take a firmer stance on the persecution of Christians around the world. “The sense of misguided political correctness that has stopped us standing up for Christians overseas must end,” he said. “At home we all benefit from living in a tolerant, diverse society and we should not be afraid of promoting those values abroad. It is a sad fact that Christians are the most persecuted religious group in modern times. I am determined to show that we are on their side.”

An estimated one-third of the world’s population suffers from religious persecution in some form, with 80% of them being Christians, it is claimed.