Detained British Nationals Abroad

Phil Brickell Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Phil Brickell (Bolton West) (Lab)]

I, too, congratulate the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) on securing this vital debate. He is an impressive champion on this issue, as I know from my time spent serving as an officer with him on the all-party parliamentary group on Magnitsky sanctions and reparation.

It should be a primary function of any given state to protect its citizens. It should not matter where in the world a British national or an individual with strong ties to the UK gets into trouble; we as a nation should be right alongside them trying to get them out. Arbitrary detention abroad and related human rights abuses, such as torture, are unacceptable. They often have profound, long-lasting physical, psychological and social impacts, not just on the individual concerned, but on their loved ones, friends and wider social network.

Many Members have spoken in depth today about individual cases of British nationals or UK-linked individuals detained abroad, so I will touch just lightly on two that I have followed mostly closely. First, as the right hon. Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) has mentioned, there is the unacceptable continued detention of Dr Gubad Ibadoghlu in Azerbaijan, whose son, Ibad, I had the pleasure of meeting just last month. Ibad and his siblings are hugely impressive advocates for their father, and I know that he will be proud of the tenacity and dignity with which they have conducted their campaign for his release.

Dr Ibadoghlu has spent more than a quarter of a century advocating for a democratic Azerbaijan. He has tirelessly fought for fundamental human rights and campaigned against corruption in Azerbaijan’s fossil fuel industry. He has been detained since July 2023 on clearly spurious charges, under threat of spending 17 years in prison, while contending with serious health issues. The European Court of Human Rights has demanded that he be transferred to a specialised medical institution so that he can receive the treatment that he so desperately needs. But, all the while, the Azerbaijan Government have denied this request, claiming spuriously that his health is “satisfactory”.

I wish to place on record my support for the immediate release of Dr Ibadoghlu. As a British resident and visiting fellow at the London School of Economics, the UK should be standing by him and using all available diplomatic levers to show the Azeri Government that their flagrant human rights abuses will not be tolerated.

Secondly, I wish to join the right hon. Members for Chingford and Woodford Green and for Maldon, and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), in raising the case of Jimmy Lai. Jimmy has been held in solitary confinement in Hong Kong for over four years for publishing content critical of the Chinese regime. I have a significant Hong Kong community in my constituency of Bolton West, and I know from speaking to many of them that they worry that, if it is Jimmy detained today, it could be them tomorrow. Indeed, many of my constituents were effectively forced from their homes in Hong Kong due to China’s disruption of Hong Kong’s democratic freedoms, which we have heard about in this Chamber today. Only last week, in a debate on the status of Taiwan, we heard how Jimmy’s treatment is part of a broader pattern of behaviour, which is China’s consistent and blatant disregard for the international rules-based system.

In both those cases, I fear that the UK Government have not done their utmost to fulfil that very central function of protecting our nationals. I share the view of colleagues that, unfortunately, the Foreign Office lacks a clear, centralised and proactive strategy for dealing with arbitrary detention of UK nationals. Given the severity of the issue, I believe that a dedicated UK envoy in this area, in a similar vein to the US role of presidential envoy for hostage affairs, should be considered very swiftly by the Foreign Office. While in opposition, the Foreign Secretary pledged to look at that, so I hope the Minister can give me an update on how this pledge will be realised in fairly short order.

A good first step, however, would be to consider greater transparency in the Foreign Office. It could, for example, share with us information about how many British nationals are currently being arbitrarily detained. I hope the Minister will speak to that in his wind-up. At the very least, we should be able to hold statistical data on the number of victims of arbitrary detention, as the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green quite rightly said.

I welcome this Government’s manifesto pledge to give British citizens the legal right to consular access when they get into legal difficulties overseas. I find it extremely concerning that that is not already the case. As colleagues have already attested to, consular assistance not only comes with protection against the very worst excesses of arbitrary detention, but is sometimes the only link between the individual suffering in absolutely harrowing circumstances and the outside world. It is no exaggeration to say that it can be life-saving, and I wish to go on the record to commend the work of dedicated officials in the Foreign Office when such assistance has been provided.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I wish to say one final word on the diplomatic levers available to us. Magnitsky sanctions are a critical tool for ensuring that there is a cost to hostage taking and arbitrary detention, and they should be deployed in a consistent manner in cases such as those mentioned in the Chamber today. In addition, we know that asset freezes can be a very effective tool, as can denying sanctioned individuals access to London’s financial sector and property market. Sanctions must be used in a holistic manner against those responsible for arbitrary detention of British nationals. To deter states from engaging in arbitrary detention, we must also ensure that they bite as much as possible.

On a related point, just last month, Financial Times analysis found that companies registered in the British overseas territories exported $134 million worth of goods to Russia in 2024, in an apparent breach of UK sanctions. The lack of open ownership records in our British overseas territories complicates efforts to establish who is involved in such shipments. The same principle applies to assets that we would seek to freeze. That matters for today’s debate, because without fully public registers of ownership, we will never be totally comfortable that we are not unwittingly allowing individuals who are subject to sanctions to evade them.

I place on the record my thanks to the organisations campaigning on this issue, including Redress, and my deepest sympathy with the families of those who have been arbitrarily detained abroad. Their suffering, and of course the suffering of those detained, is why this debate needs to be had, and why the Government must act on the concerns raised by colleagues on both sides of the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

To make the final Back-Bench contribution, which I have no doubt will be just as impactful as the others, I call Douglas McAllister.