Iran

Ann Clwyd Excerpts

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I am keen to accommodate colleagues, but I am also keen to proceed to the next statement as close as possible to 6.30 pm. I am sure that colleagues will take their cue from that and will be admirably succinct.

[Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

It was not always the case that we slammed Iran in this Chamber; 25 years ago when I stood at the Dispatch Box, I in fact congratulated Iran on helping to save the Kurdish population who were fleeing across the mountains. The Turks shut the borders and the Iranians opened the borders, so at that time we were congratulating Iran on its moves. But may I say, as somebody who has campaigned for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, that we are all concerned about the deterioration of relationships and that I would like to know exactly what we are doing? It is very vague; we are all having talks here and there. Did the Prime Minister come to some agreement with the Iranian President when he met him yesterday? What is physically being done to get Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and the other dual nationals out of jail?

[Dominic Raab]

I pay tribute to the right hon. Lady for her long-standing interest in this area. I remember visiting Tehran under the former reformist regime of President Khatami when I was a Foreign Office lawyer before coming into this House, and working on behalf of the UK Government for a bilateral investment treaty. I am afraid that we have taken a significant series of steps back since those days, but it does show that there is a path for Iran to come in from the cold, to get international respectability and to prosper as a result of it.

In relation to the dual national cases and that of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, we need to be very careful. We are absolutely clear that Iran must release our dual nationals who have been detained on a whim unconditionally, and that there is no deal to be done—no linkage. As much as I would love to see all of the detainees reunited with their families, there would be acute moral hazard if we allowed ourselves to be blackmailed. All that we would find is that, shortly after the return of those detainees, a whole number more would be picked up; Iran would take the wrong lesson from our actions. We need to be very careful, and we will campaign unflinchingly and unwaveringly with our allies to secure the release of the detainees, but we must also be mindful of not creating the moral hazard to which I have referred.