Iran

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Falconer]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for her questions; I will respond to them in turn. We have taken a series of steps to ensure that anyone in this country wishing to support the Iranian Government must meet a much higher threshold to do so. We have introduced 550 sanctions, including some introduced by the last Government and some that we have built on. I will come to the sanctions we announced yesterday in due course.

Let me turn to the foreign influence registration scheme. We have now put Iran at the very top tier, which means additional reporting requirements for those who would seek to act here. That provides new options to our services and our police force should those seeking to act for Iran attempt to do so in the UK. This House has heard from me, and the right hon. Lady knows from her time as Home Secretary, about the extent of the threat that Iran poses to the UK. I reassure the House that we continue to treat that threat with the utmost seriousness that it requires, and we believe that the legislative steps we have taken on FIRS, the increase in sanctions and implementation of the Hall review will all further increase our defences against such action.

The right hon. Lady asks about discussions in recent days. We have been in regular discussion with all our regional partners. I am sure she will be aware of commentary over the last few days about further conversations between the Iranians and the United States. I do not wish from the Dispatch Box to get ahead of the direct participants but, as she would expect, we are in regular discussion with all those with an interest. As I said in my initial response to her urgent question, we want Iran to have no prospect of achieving a nuclear weapon. A diplomatic process to that effect is necessary, and we support all efforts by the United States and our other partners to assure that.

The right hon. Lady asks about our plans regarding assets and what scenarios may entail. She will appreciate why I will not be drawn into speculation in any great detail. These are clearly very delicate moments for Iran; as she rightly says, there has been very widespread loss of life on the streets of Iran. I will also take this opportunity to say that I know that for many British Iranians, there is great anguish about the lack of contact they have been able to have with their families in Iran. I feel that most acutely for British people still detained by the Iranian regime, but it is obviously an experience felt widely across the country. The British-Iranian community make an important contribution to this country, and I understand the anguish they feel over these recent days.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

I would like to turn to the threat that Iran poses to people here in Britain. The Intelligence and Security Committee has said,

“since 2022 the risk appetite of the Iranian regime to attempt assassinations of dissidents and…journalists in the UK has increased significantly”.

We need effective collaboration between the police and the intelligence services to protect ourselves—particularly those of Iranian heritage—against the Iranian regime’s use of wide-ranging and persistent threats, including physical threats, harassment and intimidation. What is being done to prevent attacks on media freedom in the UK by the Iranian regime, such as the stabbing of Pouria Zeraati in March 2024?

[Mr Falconer]

I will repeat to the House the message I gave the Iranian ambassador on one of our first interactions: any violence on the streets of the UK that is linked back to Iran, whatever Iran might think about the origin of those individuals or the press coverage they might supply, will be treated in the most serious terms by the British Government. I have left the Iranian ambassador—and, indeed, all our Iranian contacts—in no doubt about the strength of our feeling on these questions.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[James MacCleary (Lewes) (LD)]

We have been watching developments in Iran with anger and disgust. By some accounts, as many as 30,000 Iranians may now have been killed during the regime’s brutal crackdown on peaceful protest, leaving relatives to sift through piles of body bags. There can be no doubt that Iran’s leaders have perpetrated crimes against humanity on a catastrophic scale—it is utterly intolerable.

The UK has a responsibility to hold Iran’s leaders to account. The Government must take concrete steps to ensure that those responsible will one day face justice. Those steps must include sanctioning the senior leadership, on which the Government have already taken welcome steps in the right direction; using British satellites to collect evidence; pursuing action through the United Nations; opening a case at the International Criminal Court; and proscribing the IRGC. Will the Minister tell me how the Government will hold Iran’s leaders to account, and will he commit today to those concrete measures? What is being done, working multilaterally with our partners, to apply sustained pressure to make Iran drop its nuclear ambitions and ensure that it never acquires a nuclear weapon?