Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Lord Cormack
Main Page: Lord Cormack (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Cormack's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(3 years ago)
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Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
The Prime Minister continues to engage on this issue with his counterpart, as does the entire FCDO. The Government continue to prioritise this case, as I have relayed to the House, and will continue to do so.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, will my noble friend the Minister not accept that the answers that he is giving this afternoon—stonewalling answers—are doing no good to the Government and, most of all, no good to Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe? Can we please accept that this country does owe this money? Can it not be paid immediately to the United Nations? That would be a good way of having it transferred. Can we not have a positive move to get back this poor woman, who has been tortured and incarcerated as an innocent being?
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
My Lords, at the risk of being repetitive, it would be a grave error for this Government to behave as though that historic debt is in any way connected to the incarceration of Nazanin, in the manner in which the noble Lord suggests. It would be disastrous foreign policy.