Middle East and North Africa

Lord Kempsell Excerpts

Wednesday 7th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

We consider all eventualities and work these things through carefully, because some things seem imminently likely while others seem less likely but would have wide-ranging consequences should they occur, so we do the kind of work the noble Baroness has asked me about. I am not in a position to give a detailed analysis right now of what that looks like, but the Government’s position is that we support people who want to see an open society in Iran. We think that the repression that they have lived under is wrong, and they have tolerated it for far too long.

[Lord Kempsell (Con)]

I thank the Minister for all her valiant efforts on these intractable issues. Specifically on the fallout from the case of Mr el-Fattah, which dominated the agenda for so many days and now seems no longer to do so, the department is reviewing the process around such cases. Can the Minister throw light on whether that review will include a review of extant outstanding real-world consular cases that may throw up similar issues, or is the department only looking in scope at the process?

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

There is going to be a review, and I hope it is very quick. I do not know about anyone else, but I would certainly like to draw a line under this. We need to understand what went wrong here. Mr el-Fattah was given British citizenship under the previous Government. The noble Earl, Lord Courtown, asked me about this and I did not give him an answer, so I will do that now. It takes a lot for us to remove someone’s citizenship. I was asked whether we look at the previous social media of everyone we provide consular assistance to. No, we do not do that routinely. There may be occasions where that is appropriate. Some of our fellow citizens—how shall I put this diplomatically?—have views that we do not particularly appreciate, but that does not mean that we do not try to help them. We do not make a judgment in all cases about why they went somewhere we told them not to go to, or got themselves in a situation we would prefer they had not got into. We provide assistance judgment free, if you like.

This situation is slightly different because of its high-profile nature and because of ministerial involvement over successive Governments from all parties, so it is right that we look at exactly what went wrong here and why we did not know, because we may have made slightly different judgments at different points along the way. That is what this review is about. I hope it is quick so that we can share the findings and perhaps avoid this sort of situation in future.