Oral Answers to Questions

John Penrose Excerpts

Tuesday 14th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

I want to thank my hon. Friend for all her work and commitment in this vital area. Who can doubt that she, like my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) before her, is the very personification and essence of how this role should be performed? Last July we had an international ministerial conference to advance FORB and we always regularly raise cases of concern. On recommendation 6, she makes an extremely good point and the Government are considering it.

[John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)]

13. What diplomatic steps he is taking to encourage adoption of beneficial ownership transparency measures by (a) G20 nations and (b) offshore tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions.

[The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Mr Andrew Mitchell)]

We are working with a range of jurisdictions, including G20 nations, and global financial centres to promote beneficial ownership transparency and to make it a global norm.

[John Penrose]

My right hon. Friend has a superb personal track record on this issue. May I urge him to redouble his efforts? Does he accept that transparency about who owns what means that oligarchs, kleptocrats and crime lords have fewer places to stash their dirty cash; that it is the single cheapest and most effective measure that any country can take to cut the social and economic costs that international criminality imposes; and that it becomes ever more powerful as the network of truly transparent jurisdictions grows?

[Mr Mitchell]

Open registers of beneficial ownership are extremely important. My hon. Friend and I, and indeed the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge), did a lot of work on that from the Back Benches, and it is now Government policy. All overseas territories and Crown dependencies are committed to open registers. All have made voluntary commitments, and the Government intend to make sure that they stand by those commitments.

Sanctions

John Penrose Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

It is appalling to hear about the horrific situation that the family of the right hon. Gentleman’s constituent find themselves in, and we must be welcoming to refugees from this appalling, pre-meditated war created by Vladimir Putin. I will take his inquiry to the Home Office and get him a response.

[John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)]

Four years ago an inquiry was announced into the progress of golden visas that had potentially been misallocated. Will the Foreign Secretary confirm that anybody on her list who becomes sanctioned—I commend her on the ever-growing list of oligarchs who she is sanctioning—will have any golden visas that they may have been granted in the past summarily revoked?

[Elizabeth Truss]

Well, Mr Speaker, they will not be able to travel.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Penrose Excerpts

Tuesday 25th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

This is the country where the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was developed. It has been supplied at cost around the world and I have seen it being produced in the Serum Institute in India, as well as in Mexico. The fact is that we have supported the roll-out of vaccines around the world and donated to developing countries.

[John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)]

T8. How does the Foreign Secretary believe the role of the Commonwealth could and should be developed in future, now that the UK has left the EU?

[Vicky Ford]

The Commonwealth is a vibrant and valued network of countries and we are deeply committed to it. Commonwealth nations are crucial friends in the delivery of the Foreign Secretary’s vision of a network of liberty and the need to plant the flag for freedom around the globe. We look forward to hosting the Commonwealth games in Birmingham this summer and to attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Kigali in Rwanda soon.

Global Anti-Corruption Sanctions

John Penrose Excerpts

Monday 26th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have prioritised, amid a difficult settlement this year, the open societies agenda, and there is £419 million going into it. I cannot tell him the precise allocation country by country, because we are quite careful not to do that—it often gives such regimes and countries a tool or influence, and it exposes charities, non-governmental organisations and journalists to greater vulnerability.

[John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)]

May I, too, welcome these designations and this initiative today? Last year, the Foreign Secretary promised that he would extend the existing human rights sanctions to include corruption, and indeed he has done so today. That is a triumph not just for him, but for other campaigners such as Bill Browder, whom he has just mentioned. May I therefore press him to say whether he will be able to go even further, not just by designating more people, which I think he has said he already has in mind, but—he rightly pointed out that this is the trick—by following the money? There is a series of measures, for example relating to reforms to Companies House, that are being considered for potential inclusion in the upcoming Queen’s Speech, which would make it dramatically easier for this country to follow the money and for him to make more designations underpinned by proof. Will we be able to get those into the Queen’s Speech?

[Dominic Raab]

My hon. Friend is demonstrating yet again what a tenacious campaigner he is. He is lavish in praising others, but actually he has been one of the most thoughtful, ardent and tenacious campaigners for this reform. I will certainly take on board his comments about further measures that we can take in order to really reinforce the global sanctions regime. As he knows, I wanted to make sure that we got this right legally, in practical terms, so that we do not give those corrupt cronies the PR gift of a weak regime that could be challenged in the courts. We want to learn from the practice, but I will certainly continue to listen carefully to everything my hon. Friend says on this subject.

Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime

John Penrose Excerpts

Monday 6th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. The regime focuses on the most serious human rights abuses—those against the right to life, the prohibition against torture, and the prohibition against slave labour and forced labour—but of course many of those abuses can be directed at journalists and those practising their religion, and if he looks at the designations that we have made today, he will find that that is true even in relation to the first wave.

[John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)]

May I add my voice to the congratulations to the Foreign Secretary? This has been a personal crusade of his and this is a great moment not just for him, but for the Government and the country as well. May I press him to go a bit further and a bit faster, perhaps, on the points that he has made about fighting corruption and extending these measures to include corruption? He will understand that while many human rights abusers are indeed corrupt, there are many people who are corrupt but who are not necessarily human rights abusers, and therefore we may be able to get people only on corruption charges. Strengthening that element is vital if we are to be able to get people designated on corruption by Christmas.

[Dominic Raab]

I thank my hon. Friend and pay tribute to the work he has done not only on human rights but on transparency and anti-corruption. As I said, we will look at this. Work is already under way on the corruption element. I look forward to his contribution as we develop these proposals.

Detainee Mistreatment and Rendition

John Penrose Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Duncan]

It would be invidious of me not to thank the right hon. Gentleman for the service that he gives to the Committee, which he joined just after I had left. I do not want to pre-empt speculatively what might be the possible shape of a judge-led inquiry should it so happen, and I hope the right hon. Gentleman will allow me not to answer his question specifically, as it would indeed be only speculative.

[John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)]

The Minister has rightly pointed out the unprecedented and extremely difficult position that many UK security operatives were in at the time, but the fact remains that clearly some terrible things were done. The ISC report says:

“the UK tolerated actions, and took others, that we regard as inexcusable.”

This was an ugly, ugly moment in our country’s history. May I reassure the Minister—he is probably getting the message from right across the House—that when he has taken his 60 days and he decides to come back to the House and respond on behalf of the Government, there will be a huge cheer should he stand up and say he is going to introduce the independent judge-led inquiry that the former Secretary of State for Justice my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) promised at the time? This matter will not be put to rest until he does so and the inquiry happens.

[Sir Alan Duncan]

I hope time will prove that my hon. Friend is not right in saying that this would be the only way to put matters to rest. The inquiry itself over these years has been very thorough, admirable and indeed a good example of democracy working well, where this House and Ministers are held to account by a specially constituted independent Committee. It is absolutely true to say that it did take time for us to realise quite what was going on and for many of our agency people on the ground to realise that things to which they were not used —which they had not encountered before—were happening at the hands of others. I think that has largely now been addressed, but we will never rest totally satisfied and will always examine whether we can do better.

Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [Lords]

John Penrose Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 1st May 2018 Commons Chamber

[John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)]

I was about to ask the same question, and the answer that the Minister has just given will be enormously reassuring to many of us, particularly because the thing that many of these kleptocrats and organised criminals really fear is the glare of public disclosure.

[Sir Alan Duncan]

I hope that I will be able to continue to address the House with similar such effect this afternoon.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Penrose]

May I just follow up on that last point? It is not just trusts that are an essential and major omission here. It is also other kinds of assets, including real estate, mineral rights, debt and bonds. Unless we have complete and comprehensive registers in due course, my worry, and the worry of others, is that we may be over-claiming the benefits of transparency. It may be a necessary step, but it certainly does not cover all those other areas, which, arguably, are more important.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

I welcome the contribution from our anti-corruption champion—the hon. Gentleman was appointed by the Government to fulfil that role. Indeed, he is right, but I hope that he will work with me and others in ensuring that we get better coverage for the public registers. However, that should in no way limit what we are attempting to achieve today, which will be a remarkable, important and really world-changing measure in the fight against corruption.

Our overseas territories are an integral part of Britain and they should be guided by the same values as us. Clamping down on corruption and toxic wealth is morally right. We will never be a truly global Britain on the back of stolen principles. Other Members have mentioned the White Paper that was published by the Government in 2012 on our relationship with our overseas territories. I simply refer Members to one phrase in that document:

“As a matter of constitutional law, the UK Parliament has unlimited power to legislate for the territories.”

The Government put that phrase pretty high up in that White Paper, so they are jealously guarding their powers in relation to the overseas territories. These are powers that we should always be reluctant to use, but they are also powers that Governments of both parties have employed in the past.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Herbert]

The Crown dependencies do not fall within the ambit of new clause 6, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield pointed out. They are in a different constitutional position.

The wider point is this: I would have been minded to accept the Government’s compromise amendments and new clauses had the House had the opportunity to consider them. We should have avoided, if at all possible, dictating to the overseas territories what to do, but that option was not available. None the less, I welcome the fact that action is being taken.

In agreeing to new clause 6, the key concession that the Government made was that it was no longer acceptable that the overseas territories should move only at the pace of the rest of the world. As my right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe and the Americas said, the key concession was that he accepted that the will of the House was that the overseas territories should move ahead of the pace of the rest of the world for reasons that have been very well made by Members on both sides of the House. That said, we should not lose sight of the objective here. The objective is not to force the overseas territories to take action, but to ensure that we tackle corruption where we find it, and that has to be done on a global basis.

The arguments that there will be displacement should not be an impediment to action, because we can never argue that we will not tackle a crime on one street corner in case it moves to the next. That can never be a moral argument or a reason not to take action. Nevertheless, it is a serious argument. What are we going to do to avoid displacement? The imperative is therefore on the Government and on this place, which has now forced this action, to support every effort possible to mobilise the global community behind transparency for everyone.

This House and the UK will be taking a lead, and we will be requiring our overseas territories to take a lead, but we now have to step up. That may mean taking initiatives such as having another global summit to encourage action, as the anti-corruption champion, my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose), suggested. Whether it is through means such as the G20 or the G7, we must now drive action on a broader basis than simply the overseas territories or the Crown dependencies.

[John Penrose]

I completely back up what my right hon. Friend is saying. The time for global action must be now. We need to use the lead that we will create by imposing this measure to drive and exert a global leadership. It must be about not just the transparency of company disclosures but the transparency of trust disclosures and other kinds of asset classes as well as company shares.

Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [Lords]

John Penrose Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 20th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I want to start by making it clear that I think this is a very good Bill. It is clearly the right approach to take in these circumstances and a good administrative measure. It delivers sensible and orderly governance and addresses quite rightly the post-Brexit situation and the new framework for implementing sanctions. My purpose in this debate is to suggest two ways in which the Bill can be improved further.

First, I draw the Foreign Secretary’s attention to an area of the Bill that the Minister for Europe and the Americas understands extremely well. Sanctions regimes inevitably affect the peace-building work that humanitarian agencies do in some fragile and difficult places, and in particular key NGOs operating in sanctioned countries. I pay tribute to the remarkable work that is being done by British NGOs in some very difficult parts of the world; I am thinking, for instance, of Syria and Yemen.

Clare Short, the distinguished former International Development Secretary—she set up DFID—and I gave evidence to the Select Committee on the difficulties that can arise for the agencies on occasion. They can fall foul of terrorism measures, which adversely affect their life-saving work. There are difficulties in working in lawless areas, which inevitably involves negotiating with some extremely bad people. Under the regime that the Foreign Secretary is ushering in, the Bill will bring much greater clarity for donors who deliver via NGOs and for banks worried that they may fall foul of the regulations. It will help to reduce bank de-risking—I have heard of NGOs not being able to maintain access to their bank accounts or to transfer funds because of the regulations—when banks fear that they may breach sanctions by providing banking services. I hope the Bill will reduce banks’ concerns, assist transport and logistics companies in their work, help NGOs to access formal banking channels, and reduce or eliminate possibilities for remittancing, which, as Members on both sides of the House will know, involves a far bigger transfer of funds to the poor world than international aid.

The Geneva convention states that humanitarian aid be provided to those most in need, without discrimination. The Bill has the capacity to empower leading UK and experienced international charities to carry out our international obligations under such conventions yet more effectively. Building on that, we want to see a general licensing system for financial transactions for the provision of goods and services, which are essential to the delivery of critical aid, for individuals and entities that may be located in areas covered by sanctions.

My first point is that, while accepting that the Government have international obligations in respect of sanctions regimes that inevitably have an impact on the Government’s ability to deliver those commitments in full and on all occasions, the Bill nevertheless has the power to improve this area greatly. I hope the Minister for Europe and the Americas—as I have said, he has a very strong understanding of these matters from his time as an International Development Minister—will say a word or two about that tonight.

My second point is also about an area in which the Bill can be improved. This was mentioned by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), who led for the Opposition. It builds on the important comments made recently by David Cameron, the former Prime Minister, about the Magnitsky rules and the Magnitsky amendment, and I hope that the Bill is susceptible to improvement in that respect.

In spite of our self-image as a country that lives by the rule of law, the reality is that officials from autocracies around the world who are guilty of appalling crimes come to London to live safely and comfortably without much interference from us. There is now a mechanism to prevent this, which is used by the United States and other countries, called the Magnitsky Act. It is named after the Russian whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky, the appalling treatment of whom was described by the hon. Lady. The Magnitsky Act freezes the assets and bans the visas of human rights violators from around the world. The State Department recently published its Magnitsky list, which includes the son of Russia’s general prosecutor, a general from Myanmar implicated in ethnic cleansing, the ex-dictator of Gambia, a shady international fraudster from Israel and a retired Pakistani colonel suspected of organ trafficking. Alarmingly, every single person on that list is able to travel to the United Kingdom.

Last year, Parliament took an important step to combat this impunity by passing the Magnitsky amendment to the Criminal Finances Bill, under which human rights violators can now have their assets frozen by the Government. Unfortunately, the law is narrowly defined and does not match the standard of other Magnitsky laws around the world. For example, it does not address the issue of visas, and it places a huge burden on the Government in going to court to obtain an order to freeze assets, rather than giving my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary the power to do so by decree.

The Magnitsky amendment to this Bill—I very much hope it will be considered in Committee or, if not, on Report—would bring our legislation into conformity with Magnitsky Acts around the world. Any amendment would define precisely the types of human rights violators to be sanctioned, and most importantly, it would follow an example set by the United States and other countries by placing a requirement on the Government to report annually to Parliament on how effectively the sanctions regime is being used. In my judgment, we should not allow the Government to declare victory over human rights violators with the passage of a law that never gets implemented. I believe that such an amendment may well attract support from all right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House. I submit that, if passed, it would bring this aspect of UK law up to international standards.

[John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)]

As the Prime Minister’s anti-corruption champion, I am listening very carefully to what my right hon. Friend is suggesting. He mentioned existing legal powers. Does he have any sense of how often they are being used at the moment, even though he believes they are relatively narrowly defined?

[Mr Mitchell]

It is early days, but I think the existing powers are being used rather less than my hon. Friend and I would wish, and I have read out a list of people who are sanctioned by other countries, but not sanctioned by the UK. That was my second point.

My final point relates to the much discussed issue of open registers and the overseas territories. The House will recall the actions of the coalition Government and Britain’s leadership at the G8 in tackling tax evasion and tax havens. I thought the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland was a touch too curmudgeonly in acknowledging the extent to which the coalition Government made real progress on those matters. The UK has introduced publicly accessible registers of people with significant control, abolished bearer or anonymous shares and introduced unexplained wealth orders, while the anti-bribery law was finally introduced by the coalition Government. Britain has a proud record of world leadership on this under a Conservative-led Government.

This is the fourth occasion on which I, along with my right hon. and hon. Friends—under the able, cross-party leadership of the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge)—have tried to coax the Government into visiting on the overseas territories the same level of openness and transparency as we have in this country. Let us be clear on the constitutional position, which the Government set out in 2012:

“As a matter of constitutional law the UK Parliament has unlimited power to legislate for the Territories.”

The overseas territories themselves recognise that they gain hugely from their relationship with the United Kingdom.

The overseas territories have been resistant to this argument for three reasons. The first—let us call it the Dutch Antilles argument—is that if they have open registers, all the hot money will head off to other less law-abiding jurisdictions. Leaving aside the issue of whether any decent person should wish to handle hot money obtained through corruption or worse, the fact is that the international consensus is to bear down on such havens, and their footprint is narrowing. Indeed, havens that embrace such transparency will secure a business advantage precisely because their legitimate business will no longer be tainted by fears of the reverse. There is an understanding of this point in at least some of the overseas territories, which, if I may put it this way, camp on the prayer of St Augustine: “O Lord, make me chaste, but not yet.”

The second argument, which we must address head-on, is that the overseas territories’ private registers are already available to lawmakers and regulators such as the Inland Revenue. The territories proudly say that they can turn around inquiries from HMRC within hours. This is commendable, but it completely misses the point. That fact is underlined by the recent release of information by journalists, which the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland mentioned. Registers must be open—to civil society, the media, journalists, non-governmental organisations—if all the relevant dots are to be joined up, as the release of the Paradise papers so clearly shows. With the best will in the world, the regulatory authorities are not in that business, and narrow questions from regulatory authorities simply do not suffice.

Finally, I come to the point made movingly by the Foreign Secretary that many, although not all, overseas territories suffered an existential calamity from the recent hurricanes. The whole House will share his concern. I am sure the whole House can assist by agreeing, in any amendment, a longer but definitive period of time in which this reform in the overseas territories should take place.

Around the world, the UK is looked to and respected for its leadership on international development. Helping the poorest in often far-flung places is written deep into this country’s DNA. It is who we are as a Parliament. The appalling but temporary crisis afflicting Oxfam will not change that. We have an obligation, not least to our own taxpayers, to champion transparency and openness, and to have zero tolerance towards corruption. The highly respected Africa Progress Panel has shown that in the Democratic Republic of the Congo more than £1.5 billion of stolen funds and taxes have disappeared. These are funds stolen from some of the poorest people on the planet, who by contrast live in one of the richest mineral and resource-endowed countries in the world. As the World Bank has made clear, the money stolen from the people of Africa through unpaid taxes or concealment dwarfs all the foreign direct investment and international development money that flows into Africa each year. Much of that money ends up salted away in the tax havens I have described. We owe it to the poor of Africa, as well as to our own taxpayers, to take the action we can to bring about an end to this scandal.

I urge the Government, on this fourth occasion, to look very seriously at the amendment that will undoubtedly be tabled by the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) on Report, if not before. Four times we have been around this track. There is significant support on both sides of the House for that amendment. I urge those on the Treasury Bench to look very seriously at whether they can accommodate the House of Commons on this point.

UK Nationals Imprisoned Abroad

John Penrose Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2016 Westminster Hall

[Tom Brake]

At the risk of repeating myself, the information I have is that the Yemeni authorities clearly know that he was taken from there but have stated that they believe that no judicial process was followed to extract him in that way. That would imply that if there was an extradition treaty in place between Yemen and Ethiopia, it was not actually used as a means of extracting him from that country. Perhaps when the Minister responds he will give us some more detail on what he believes the position to be.

[John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman is being very generous in giving way, and is laying out his case carefully and strongly. I congratulate him on securing this important debate. May I pursue this question? He has already stated that Mr Tsege may quite possibly have been the victim of a crime or of several crimes. If no judicial process was applied in the rendition from the airport in Yemen, does that imply that there could have been an official but non-judicial process? Could there have been some sort of official complicity among Yemeni authorities as well, in which case should we be aiming fire at their potentially having committed crimes against Mr Tsege?

[Tom Brake]

That is a very helpful intervention, and the hon. Gentleman has highlighted an area that requires pursuing. When we had the meeting with the Ethiopian ambassador yesterday, he implied that in the past there have been arrangements between the Yemenis and the Ethiopians and that perhaps those arrangements were used, as opposed to there being a formal extradition process. Yes, we might well want to question the involvement of the Yemeni authorities.

What is clear is that had the Ethiopian Government wanted to extradite Andy lawfully, they could have made a request for his extradition from the UK authorities—although I understand that there is currently no formal extradition agreement between the UK and Ethiopia. I believe that no such request was made and, as far as I am aware, the UK Government have been provided with no evidence of Andy’s so-called terrorist activities. I understand that the UK Government are apparently being encouraged to follow—this is the description from the Ethiopian ambassador—the open trial process that found Andy guilty in absentia as their means of obtaining information, rather than necessarily expecting it from the Ethiopian Government directly.

The Ethiopian Government have publicly confirmed, on a number of occasions, that there are no legal options open to Andy. Most recently, at the meeting yesterday it was confirmed that he cannot appeal his sentence because he was absent from his trial. A plea for clemency to the Ethiopian President may be possible, and I look forward to some information that we were offered at that meeting about how such a plea could be initiated.

I maintain that access to a lawyer will not achieve justice for Andy. By continuing to pursue an unworkable strategy, the UK Government are not living up to their duty to protect British citizens facing the death penalty overseas. On that point, we got a degree of reassurance from the Ethiopian ambassador that Ethiopia does not apply capital punishment, although he did set out a couple of exceptions to that rule, so it was half reassuring and half not.

Andy’s most recent consular visit also highlighted continued failures by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in handling his case. For instance, although the FCO has continuously claimed, and represented to a UK court, that Andy could call his partner and children whenever he wanted to, the prison director informed the ambassador at the latest visit that

“prisoners cannot make phone calls.”

That, too, was confirmed in the meeting with the Ethiopian ambassador yesterday. Thus Andy is not—and, as far as I am aware, never was—able to call his family, so his children face the third Christmas in a row without any contact with their father. He does not even have a pen and paper to write them a Christmas card. Given the fairly significant failures in this case and the way that it has been managed, I hope that the Minister will be willing to conduct a meaningful review of the Government’s approach, because I do not think that approach is delivering.

What more can be done to help Andy and Nazanin? Although hundreds of thousands of people have supported petitions and campaigns, in partnership with the tireless advocacy work of groups such as Reprieve and Amnesty International, ultimately it is the Ethiopian Government, the Iranian Government and our Government who have the most influence and leverage. To the Ethiopian authorities, I make a simple plea: let Andy make that call before Christmas. He has had two years without contact with his wife or children, and that can stop very easily if the Ethiopian authorities permit it.

To the Iranian authorities, pending Nazanin’s release, which I hope will be soon, I say: allow for visits for her young daughter involving extended contact, and in a suitable environment, taking account of the best interests of the child in line with the provisions of the convention on the rights of the child, which I am pleased that Iran has ratified. There is not time to raise the case of Kamal Foroughi in any detail, but I hope that other Members may refer to his case as well.

What should the UK Government do at this point? They need to call openly and loudly for Iran and Ethiopia to free Nazanin and Andy respectively. I believe that the weight of the Prime Minister calling for their release would be significant and set a strong tone that the UK does not stand by and let its citizens face appalling treatment, trapped in prisons, thousands of miles from their homes. We have seen the US and Canada—and the UK previously—secure the release of their citizens after publicly raising calls for the release of their nationals imprisoned unlawfully abroad. Yet the UK Government appear reluctant to do the same now.

The FCO stresses the work that it does for the families of Andy and Nazanin, and says that it repeatedly raises their cases with the respective Governments. However, all it appears to be doing is acquiescing in the dubious charges imposed on them by saying that it will not get involved in the legal system of another state, despite those legal systems being grossly, and so obviously, unfair. I am familiar with that argument—all too familiar with it—in relation to the constituency case of Neil Juwaheer, whose parents believe was murdered by Brazilian police in a Brazilian police station.

If we were to get just one official public statement from our Prime Minister unequivocally calling for Andy’s and Nazanin’s release, and for the release of other British nationals imprisoned unlawfully abroad, that would convince the public that our Government will stand up for their citizens and would send a strong and unequivocal message to foreign Governments. My call is for the Prime Minister, the Government and the Minister to give Andy and Nazanin’s families some seasonal comfort over the next week—pick up the phone, issue a statement and call for their release.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Penrose Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

I have set out our position on Mr Tsege in an open letter on gov.uk. I cannot, I am afraid, comment further, because our handling of this case is the subject of ongoing legal proceedings.

[John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)]

T6. Evidence from Syria of hospitals and aid convoys being deliberately targeted and bombed have horrified and outraged people around the world. The Foreign Secretary has already said those responsible should be held to account in the International Criminal Court and that the Russians and the Assad regime are primarily responsible for what is going on. What measures would he therefore support to charge, arrest and prosecute either Putin or Assad, or both?

[Boris Johnson]

The most important thing at this stage is that the UK is leading the way in accumulating evidence against those responsible for these crimes. It will be essential, ultimately, that we have good secure testimonials against those responsible and I have no doubt that in due course they will be useful. The mills of justice grind slowly, but they grind small.