Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe

Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

First, I thank the noble Baroness for her comments and I very much share the sentiments she expressed. She raised the important issue of the return of Gabriella. I am sure that she will understand that I am not going to go into specific details, but I assure her that we are working directly with the family to ensure that Gabriella can come back to the UK at the earliest opportunity. We will continue to work directly in support of that. On her other questions, of course we are working with other countries. The recent release of the dual British-Australian national was very welcome and we will continue to ensure that we share information in this respect.

The noble Baroness rightly raised the issue of the JCPOA. We are also making it very clear to the Iranians that the British Government, along with our colleagues in Europe, are absolutely committed to keeping the JCPOA alive. I assure her that, in our bilateral exchanges with the Iranian Government, this point is reiterated time and again. The continuing taking of hostages, as we have seen, and the holding of detainees in Iran is not helpful to the situation; it works against Iran and against the Iranian people. I assure the noble Baroness that we will continue to ensure that in every case, not all of which receive the publicity that this case has, we will continue to work directly with the families to ensure that when we can agree consular access, we gain that, and, where we do not, we continue to raise the issues of those detainees directly, bilaterally and internationally.

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

My Lords, did I understand the Minister to say that within this there is some sort of technical disagreement about the concept of dual nationals? In the UN system, the world’s system, the Vienna Convention or whatever, is it possible for a country to say, “We do not recognise the concept of a dual national”? Or is it the position that people recognise that there is such a concept but think it does not apply to them? In the case of Iran, does it not recognise that someone is Anglo-American, or something like that? At the bottom of all this, is there some disagreement about the fact that there is an obligation to accept that there is such a thing as a dual national in international conventions? I am not clear what the answer to that is.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

Perhaps I can help. It is very much down to the countries themselves. We in the United Kingdom recognise the basis of dual nationals and react accordingly. However, the Iranians do not recognise it. If someone is Iranian and British, as in the case of Nazanin, they do not recognise her British nationality; they regard her as Iranian and that is why they do not provide us consular access. There is a difference, quite clearly, in how we view dual nationals in this country and how Iran views dual nationals in Iran.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

And that is okay?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I am sorry—I did not quite catch that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

Is it perfectly legitimate for a country to say that it does not recognise the same concept of a dual national that we and many other countries do? Is it perfectly legitimate to say that it does not recognise that?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

That is Iran’s position but not ours.