Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Tulip Siddiq
Main Page: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)Department Debates - View all Tulip Siddiq's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(7 years, 1 month ago)
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Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
My constituent Richard Ratcliffe wrote about his wife’s case in the Evening Standard:
“My complaint is not that her imprisonment has become a diplomatic incident this past week. It is that it wasn’t for the 19 months that came before.”
That shows the sheer dignity with which my constituent has been campaigning for his wife’s release for 19 months.
Richard has told me that their family’s lawyer, working together with the non-governmental organisation Redress, wrote to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office two months ago with a legal opinion about Nazanin’s right to diplomatic protection. I know that the Foreign Secretary has already said to my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) that he will consider diplomatic protection, but will he urge that a meeting takes place between the FCO and the lawyers, and will he give some indication of whether diplomatic protection will be given, as this could save my constituent’s life?
Boris Johnson
As I said in answer to the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury, I will be talking directly to Richard Ratcliffe about that issue on Wednesday.
Briefly, on consular protection, every day in some part of the world, a UK national or a dual national is detained, and I pay tribute to the consular work that the Foreign Office does across the world. A huge amount of work has been done on behalf of the constituent of the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) by my right hon. Friends on the Front Bench, who have met members of her family repeatedly and will continue to do so until we solve the problem.