Iran

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

Our position is that regime change relies on the execution of the wishes of the people of Iran. We want to see the people there being able to live, as they are telling us they wish to, in freedom and able to exercise their fundamental rights, one of which is to protest without fear. At the moment, that is not possible. The regime there could take a different position, but we want to see a situation where those people can live without the fear that they are currently exposed to.

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, there are a lot of questions that the Minister, quite understandably, cannot answer, but she gave a rather strange response to one question that I asked the other day. Could she simply just say thank you to Elon Musk for providing Starlink into Iran?

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I will thank Elon Musk, now that he has made his platform free of the child abuse and some of the demeaning content that he was allowing to flourish on there up until, I believe, the first thing this morning. I am glad that he has taken a sensible position on that now, so I am very happy to acknowledge what he has done to enable communications—in the incredibly limited way that he has, but it does matter. I was very happy to say the other day that the access to social media and communications that he has made possible, however that is done, is vital. We need to do whatever we can to improve that situation for people.