Oral Answers to Questions

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[James Duddridge]

I must say that my hon. Friend dresses better at home than he does in the House of Commons.

Travel advice has always been against all travel to Syria. There is no consular support. We do not have a diplomatic presence. For those reasons, sadly, we do not have a firm number. However, I invite my hon. Friend to discuss privately the security issues and very difficult situation of some of these cases—as he very well knows—with the Minister for the Middle East and North Africa to try to carve out a better solution to the problems that he quite rightly and so eloquently and visually addresses.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab) [V]]

The official end of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s five-year detention is less than 50 days away, but despite this, she continues to live under the threat of a further prison sentence. In 2017, when the current Prime Minister was Foreign Secretary, he promised to “leave no stone unturned” to bring Nazanin home. Can the current Foreign Secretary also make this commitment, and will he, unlike his predecessor, actually make good on this promise?

[Dominic Raab]

We are leaving no stone unturned to secure the release of Nazanin, but also all the other dual nationals arbitrarily detained. I have spoken to Nazanin—she is subject to furlough at the moment—a number of times over recent months. We are doing everything we can. The fact that she is on furlough and not in Evin prison is a sign that we have made some progress, although not enough, in securing her release and return back to her loved ones at home.