Iran

Baroness Foster of Oxton Excerpts

Thursday 5th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I appreciate the frustration that my noble friend feels and I would never seek to make him feel that way—I have known him for a long time and I know how he can get. All I can do is restate the position. We commissioned the review by Jonathan Hall, and we accept fully his recommendations, which are that we need a change to our legal framework in order to do that which the noble Lord wants to see happen. We are committed to doing that, because we need to do that first, and we have made that commitment. If he wishes to continue to push with urgency on that, it would not be an unhelpful role for him to play and I know that it is one that he will do well.

[Baroness Foster of Oxton (Con)]

My Lords, I echo and support the comments made by my noble friend on the Front Bench. For clarification, approximately 35,000 unarmed civilians have been slaughtered already in the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the figures for injuries run at about 350,000, so we are not talking about 3,000 victims here; we are talking about very many indeed. The last Government proscribed Hizb ut-Tahrir. I therefore say to the noble Baroness that that, clearly, was a difficult thing to do as well, so I cannot for the life of me see what additional complications there could be to proscribing the IRGC.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

In that case, the noble Baroness could do a lot worse than read Jonathan Hall’s work, which explains this fully. We do need a legislative change. Clearly, this could have been done many years previously and was not considered at that point. Hizb ut-Tahrir was proscribed eventually and, obviously, we welcomed that. I would hope that we would get a welcome for the steps that we are taking regarding the IRGC as well.