Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe

Lord Wood of Anfield Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford on her excellent maiden speech and to welcome her to this House. She brings an extraordinary array of talents, including, I am pleased to see, academic and musical distinction, and a unique set of experiences as a member of a persecuted church in Iran. We heard how she suffered huge family trauma at the time of the Iranian revolution, arrived in the UK as a refugee and then built a life of service in the Church here. As I am sure noble Lords agree, we will learn a lot from her contributions, and it is a privilege to follow her in today’s debate.

I start by paying tribute to Nazanin’s husband Richard. I have never met Richard, but I have learned a lot about tenacity, courage, honesty and devotion from watching him fight for the release of his wife—his daughter Gabriella’s mum. I send my very best wishes, as I am sure other noble Lords do, to Richard and Gabriella today.

I want to ask the Minister about one issue, which is that raised by all former speakers, of the debt of approximately £400 million. I realise this is sensitive, given the other things going on, but we know that this debt stems from a weapons deal with the Shah of Iran in the late 1970s, for which Iran paid £600 million and received only a fraction of the vehicles ordered. The culture of secrecy around this issue is extraordinary. To some extent, it is understandable but, beyond that, it is extraordinary.

We do know a number of things about this, however. First, the FCDO has been told on numerous occasions by Iran that the settlement of this debt is vital for securing the release of Nazanin. Secondly, in the course of 20 years of arbitration in the Hague, the UK lost both a claim against it by Iran for payment and its own counterclaim launched in 1996. It also lost a final appeal against these rulings in 2009. This debt is therefore clearly owed by us to Iran, and the law requires it to be paid, whatever our private views on the issue might be. Thirdly, as my noble friend Lord Collins eloquently set out, we know of many former Foreign Secretaries’ views, and we know in particular that Jeremy Hunt came to the view that this money was not an illegitimate demand or an attempt at extortion but an unpaid debt. Fourthly, we know that in September 2020, the UK Defence Minister Ben Wallace wrote to Richard Ratcliffe to say that the Government officially acknowledge that this is a debt that must be paid.

This is what we know. Beyond this, the Government tell us—and, more importantly, have told Richard Ratcliffe and his family and supporters—precious little. So, my main question for the Minister is: can he explain give us a very simple reason why this debt has not been paid? Jeremy Hunt said recently that the reason for holding back payment is now about practicalities, not principle. Can the Minister confirm that is true? If it is because of practicalities, could he explain which practicalities are most relevant? Is it because the Iranian Government were made a sanctioned entity in 2008 under EU law, for example? Though, of course, since Brexit, we have famously taken back control of our own sanctions policy. Irrespective of that, since 2008, a UK court has ruled that the debt should be paid, and Iran has asked for it to be repaid via the central bank of Iran, which is not a sanctioned entity. I understand that the UK has never formally responded to that request; can the Minister say why? Perhaps the practicality is that any UK bank involved in any financial transfer would be subject to US Treasury secondary sanctions, which would be a legitimately serious obstacle. Is that the practicality blocking resolution?

Or is it a more straightforward explanation—that UK Ministers just cannot abide the idea of handing over such a substantial sum to an Iranian Government, given their appalling domestic human rights records, their involvement in atrocities abroad and the complexity of issues around the JCPOA, for example? As my noble friends Lord Collins and Lord Dubs said, other countries have successfully negotiated release. Similarly, various imaginative ideas have been proposed for circumventing some of the practical problems in the repayment of our debt—paying the debt in kind through medicines, for example, or insisting on explicit Iranian undertaking to use the money for certain agreed purposes. The Government have not engaged—or publicly acknowledged that they are privately engaged—with these ideas. Why not?

One response to this may be that we should not discuss this at all, as it will disturb the sensitivities around negotiations and disrupt the plan. But the problem is that those closest to this issue, the family and supporters of Nazanin, no longer believe there is any plan at all. That is the most concerning thing—that after so much unjustified suffering, the family of Nazanin not only do not know what the strategy is to end her detention but do not believe that there is anything resembling one. That is why Richard Ratcliffe said during his recent hunger strike of the current Government’s approach to his wife’s release:

“The policy is one of managed waiting, waiting for Iran to do the right thing, for a diplomatic solution. There is no strategy to get Naz home, which I said very bluntly to Liz Truss last week. That’s why I’m camping on the street, because after five and a half years that’s really clear.”


For the sake of Nazanin and her husband and daughter, more than any of us, I would be grateful if the Minister could provide at least some clarity about this issue today.