Iran Detainees

Martin Docherty-Hughes Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I congratulate the hon. Lady’s constituent on the work she has done to campaign for Nazanin’s release. The hon. Lady is right: we cannot let this happen again. This needs to be about what we do as the United Kingdom and how we work with our international allies to make sure that there are not incentives in place for these regimes to carry out arbitrary detention.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

It is right and proper that the House congratulates the Foreign Secretary and the ministerial team on delivering on real diplomatic action—it is great to see. We congratulate the hon. Members for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) and for Lewisham East (Janet Daby) on a job well done as parliamentary representatives; it is a great honour to sit in any Parliament and that is the job of an MP. We also congratulate the families, who are watching. I was interested to hear the Foreign Secretary talk about arbitrary detention and how we can work with other countries to ensure that not only dual nationals or tri nationals, but full UK nationals are not arbitrarily detained, no matter our friendships with countries. Further to the point raised, I believe, by the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), who is no longer in their place, the Foreign Secretary said that they would be meeting families who are detained. In that spirit of collaboration and working together, will the Foreign Secretary consider meeting me and the family of Jagtar Singh Johal to understand the issue of arbitrary detention for other states? It would be a most welcome deliberation for the future.

[Elizabeth Truss]

As I said, I have raised this specific case, but I would be happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss it further.