State hostage-taking: Can Parliament help?

Richard Ratcliffe, whose wife Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was detained by the Iranian authorities for six years, joins host Tom Tugendhat MP to discuss his campaign to free his wife, and whether the family’s case ‘moved the dial fundamentally’ for state hostages. 

In the second part of the episode, fellow parliamentarians Tulip Siddiq, the family’s local Labour MP Labour for Hampstead and Kilburn, and Royston Smith, Conservative MP for Southampton, who also sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee, discuss what more Parliament can do to prevent innocent British citizens being caught up in big power politics through no fault of their own.

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Transcript

Tom Tugendhat: Welcome to Committee Corridor, where we leave the noise and bustle of the House of Commons Chamber and head to the quieter committee rooms, where select committees do their work.

Now, committees are unique. They work at the heart of Parliament and across political parties and allow MPs to dig into the key issues of the day, asking the questions of the right people.

I’m Tom Tugendhat. I chair the Foreign Affairs Committee, and you are listening to Committee Corridor, a podcast which seeks to provide an insight into the role of various select committees here in Westminster. In previous podcast episodes, we’ve looked at international crises, such as Afghanistan, the flow of dirty money through the United Kingdom, and what Russia’s invasion of Ukraine means for Taiwan and the Baltic states.

Today, we take a different tack. We move from countrywide conflicts to emergencies that affect individuals—innocent British citizens being caught up in big power politics through no fault of their own. We are talking about wrongful detention or, to put it bluntly, state hostage-taking. What can Parliament do? What is the role of select committees? The Foreign Affairs Committee is investigating the Government’s approach to the plight of these hostages.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was detained by the Iranian authorities for six years. She was finally released in March along with another detainee, Anoosheh Ashoori. Throughout their detention, their families campaigned hard to keep their cases in the public eye and to keep the pressure on the Foreign Office to act. With the ongoing plight of others, including Morad Tahbaz and Mehran Raoof, who are still detained, now is a good time to reflect on the approach of the Foreign Office for handling these cases.

Tom Tugendhat: In a moment we’re going to be hearing from fellow parliamentarians who played their part—one from a constituency perspective and the other a member of the Committee. Tulip Siddiq is the family’s MP, and she’s a Labour Member of Parliament, and Royston Smith is a Conservative MP for Southampton, Itchen and sits alongside me on the Foreign Affairs Committee.

But first, I wanted to talk to Richard Ratcliffe. We all now know him as a tireless campaigner for his wife and, of course, other hostages. But how did it all start?

Tom Tugendhat: Richard, many of us will have heard how Nazanin’s time in captivity was particularly cruel in so many ways. Could you tell us a little bit about how she was treated and why you decided to go public on this and to engage with parliamentarians? What was it that triggered that change?

Richard Ratcliffe: Yeah, that’s right. She’s had a horrible experience that lasted many years—six years—and for most of that, we’ve been public, but at the beginning, we weren’t. And actually, the worst parts happened at the beginning. So she was taken off into solitary confinement, had her daughter taken away from her, was kept in a windowless, small room, interrogated ruthlessly, pressured to sign all sorts of things. And then later on, was toyed with as a bargaining chip to put pressure on the British government—so, toyed with in terms of potential sentences, more sentences, second convictions, and also potential releases—and at points, that took a huge psychological and physical toll on her. And, at points, yeah, she was hospitalised. There was a denial of healthcare as a way of putting pressure on her, and so on.

And in terms of your question, about going public, at the beginning, we didn’t know what was going on. At the beginning, I thought it was a mistake. She’d gone on holiday with our daughter. At that stage, Gabriella was 21 months, so very small. It was a family holiday for Iranian New Year. So like Christmas, like, everything’s closed. You just go out and have family meals and catch up with relatives, and she was, you know, showing that her baby can now walk a bit and can talk a bit and has got a few songs.

So it was bonkers that she was taken. And I did, at the beginning, think it was a mistake, and she thought it was a mistake, but we had no contact. So we reached out to the Foreign Office. We, you know, got some message to say she was going to be released. Then she wasn’t, and we were a bit bewildered.

What happened was I went round and met other families who were in a similar position, and almost all of them said, ‘Listen, it’s a really complicated process. It’s a really personal journey, but in the end, I wish we’d gone public more.’ And so I had this sort of emotional sense that, okay, we need to do it.

At the beginning, it was probably to put pressure on the Iranian authorities. I just thought this was so outrageous that it just needs to be shouted about from the rooftops. And I don’t think I had a clear sense of using Parliament at the beginning. At the very beginning, it was using the newspapers and the television. I went to Tulip Siddiq, who is our MP, probably a few days before I was going to go public just to say to her, ‘okay, we’re going to go public, and can you help’, but without really a clear idea of what she could do. So it was a discovery with her in her office—and then she was a fairly new MP at the beginning—about what you can do. And just the power of Parliament to really be someone’s voice, you know, in just cajoling the Government, but also just, you know, articulating outrage that something is unfair.

Tom Tugendhat: You led an extraordinarily courageous campaign, quite a lot of it on your own. I mean, I know you got a lot of support from Tulip, and you got a lot of support from many other MPs—I hope we gave some support from the Foreign Affairs Committee as well—but I mean, you led an extraordinary campaign. How did you find the support that you got from the Foreign Office? How did you find the support that you got from other families in those difficult years?

Richard Ratcliffe: So that’s right. We waited 30 days, and we started campaigning, and at the beginning it was very unsophisticated, and we just shouted from the rooftops. And at some point the newspapers stopped covering us in quite the same way. So we had to get more creative and, and you know, it wasn’t just enough to lament and say, ‘listen, our family story is unfair’, because you know, there’s a lot of injustice in the world, and there’s a lot of people writing to their MPs, badgering their MPs to do stuff and equally, you know, pressing the Government.

So, over time, it probably developed in terms of sitting down with Tulip’s office—our MP—and kind of working out, well, what could we do? What was the policy problem? Like, reasonably, what is the Government not doing that they might do? All those things that, you know, are not emotional questions about ‘listen, I want Nazanin home’, which is essentially what the beginning of the campaign was.

And I think it was always important for her, from the beginning, to make it a cross-party campaign. And that the role of government is to protect British citizens generally. Everyone has constituents in varying levels of difficulty. And, you know, quite possibly most parties are going to end up in government at some point. So, you know, don’t bash the Government too hard if it turns out to be your problem down the line.

And that was really good advice. She said some pretty strong stuff sometimes, at the beginning, I wasn’t ready to. Over time, I was more confident in, you know, willing to be critical of where I felt the Government was falling short.

But it was definitely a process of, you know, looking for MPs to sign letters, looking for debates in Parliament. We had a Westminster Hall debate once. So we had, sort of—something like 60 MPs came along—that level of care and support.

And of course, in most cases, they came, in part, because their constituents had written to them and said, ‘listen, this is an issue we care about’. They also cared about it genuinely. You know, knowing that we weren’t alone, you know, and part of what Parliament does is it just notices injustice and gaps in Government policy, and it just calls them out. Really important as a victim of any policy area that, you know, people are noticing. It’s not just passing in the shadows.

So I think that experience of having more and more open care from Parliament and lots of people writing to their MPs and, you know, encouraging their MPs, you know, we wouldn’t have had the support we got without lots of ordinary people caring.

Tom Tugendhat: Can you talk about how important it was to have an MP by your side? Did it make a huge difference? Did it make a minor difference? What was the important aspects of it, and what should other MPs be thinking about—and what should other constituents be thinking about—when asking for help in that way?

Richard Ratcliffe: Yeah. I mean, it’s definitely a voyage of discovery. When I went to Tulip’s office on whatever it was, day 20-something of our campaign, that was the first time I’d ever knocked on the door of my MP, so I didn’t know what you did. I didn’t know what you could expect from an MP. Until that point, MPs were people I’d seen on the television, and you know, you see them on the news and so on.

And so that discovery of the real person and that discovery of what an MP can do and the limits of, you know, what an MP can do and, and how busy they all are. For us, Tulip was Nazanin’s voice in Parliament. She was trying to rally as much support as she could—from her own party, from other parties—and just to make this a common issue that, you know, Parliament notices and that Parliament then pushes the Government to notice.

Tom Tugendhat: I mean, clearly, of course, Tulip, as your voice in Parliament has been incredibly important to your campaign. How do you think committees have played a role? How do you think they’ve made a difference? Have they helped? Have they not helped?

Richard Ratcliffe: It definitely helped. I mean, a committee’s got a different role, hasn’t it? A committee has a policy area to look at. It is deliberately cross-party. It’s not trying to organise debates in the Chamber and, you know, debates in the Chamber can be a bit point-scoring. A committee is there to look at a policy area and say, listen, this needs to be improved. So for us, the Foreign Affairs Committee was always quite important, partly predating us as a campaign.

So the Foreign Affairs Committee had done a report back in 2014 about how the Government deals with, you know, consular protection and consular services. And that had a couple of cases in it that were families that we spoke to. So when we first started, you know, they said, ‘listen, reach out to the chair, and you know, reach out to the other members, see what they can do’. And they said, ‘well, we’re more than happy to follow up on the recommendations we made before’. This is an area that we think, you know, government can always get better and we’ll, you know, continue to push.

So in fact, the Foreign Affairs Committee then had the then Foreign Secretary in front of them back in 2017 and followed up on Nazanin’s case and said, ‘listen, we’ve always been concerned about consular issues; here’s one: what are you doing about Nazanin’s case’, which is the one that, you know, on the time, potentially backfired, because it’s when Boris Johnson, who was then Foreign Secretary, misspoke. He was in Parliament, in the Foreign Affairs Committee, and was asked about what Nazanin was doing and her case.

And whilst he, you know, helpfully said that, you know – criticised the Iranian authorities. What he said that was wrong was— He said as far as he understood it that she was just there training journalists, which was untrue and which was used to justify a second case against her by the Iranian judiciary and, in particular, by the propaganda that came out day after day.

And, and as that news reaction over here was, ‘I can’t believe how irresponsible the Foreign Secretary was, he needs to correct it and needs to apologise’—and he was reluctant to do both of those things—there was an awful lot of Iranian coverage that says, ‘listen, he’s revealed the truth that the campaign had been hiding all this time’.

You know, that playing out for a long time just meant that suddenly we became a big political football, and it certainly made Nazanin’s situation a lot worse.

Tom Tugendhat: You’ve spoken there about the various different ways in which the Government has engaged and the change of tone that the then Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, made in 2017. How have you seen the Government’s response change since Nazanin was taken hostage and the way in which the Government has responded to different elements of pressure? What have been the helpful things that Government has done? What have been areas that may not have been quite so helpful?

Richard Ratcliffe: So I think it’s a really good question. I think its approach has gradually evolved, but really incrementally. So when we first began, you know, in those days we were just handled by the regular Iran consular team. You had one poor guy, completely overstretched with all, you know, really complicated cases, and probably the level of parliamentary pressure meant that we got moved onto special cases because we’d been shouting about our injustice. You know, more resources were put to deal with it.

And I think they got gradually braver at being willing to acknowledge that our detention was arbitrary—and the others’ were arbitrary as well—got braver at acknowledging that, you know, there are some people who are held innocent, you know, there are, you know …

So the first Foreign Secretary had—Philip Hammond—he articulated quite well in the inquiry that, you know, the Government historically was agnostic about whether someone was innocent or guilty. They didn’t take a view, which doesn’t work in a case where someone is cynically, you know—another state is cynically taking people.

Over time, the Government was gradually more honest about our situation and probably more open in trying to resolve it, or more open in acknowledging that it was negotiating, and so on. I’m not sure whether we moved the dial fundamentally. You know, if someone else was taken tomorrow, would their experience be so different from ours? I think we made ourselves, politically, a big enough issue that we got solved. But yeah, the Government is still very wary to protect people.

You know, in our case, we were lucky that the former Foreign Secretary—Dominic Raab, when he was Foreign Secretary—he acknowledged that Nazanin’s treatment amounted to torture, and there’s a whole set of international obligations that follow from that. There’s actually sort of UK Foreign Office policy that follows. Really reluctant to do it, though—like, really reluctant. And that sort of keen instinct to maintain cordial relations with other countries, which is, you know, is a good diplomatic instinct, but it just means that, you know, there’s a whole kind of accommodation of the abuse and a downplaying of the abuse. And I think that’s something that I hope the Committee can continue to, to push the Government, to, you know, to scrutinise how reasonable is it to allow other countries to abuse our citizens.

Tom Tugendhat: You, you raised an important question there, which is: what difference does it make? And did you notice a difference at different interventions from the Government, from the Committee, from Members of Parliament, or indeed from members of the public and through the media, in how the Iranian authorities treated Nazanin? Did you see obvious changes - access to your daughter or communications with you?

Richard Ratcliffe: Yeah, I think, generally, the more public we were, the safer we were. I mean, they’re obviously—. They seized on the mistake and, and that became a big thing, and everyone was very noticed, and so on, and it was all very cynical on the part of the Iranian authorities.

There was definitely, I mean, a complexity by the end in that, for example, I ended up camping on the street and asking lots of MPs to come down and visit in front of the Foreign Office. You know, the Iranians were quite happy with that. They hated it when I did it in front of their embassy, but they were quite happy with the pressure on the British government. And it always felt, well, we don’t want to encourage them to get out the popcorn and watch me pressurising the British government.

So we always try to make a balance and to make sure that we were pushing Iran also. But certainly, I remember at the beginning there was a real kind of instinct from the Government that any statement it made in Parliament would be watched really closely by the Iranians, and they need to be very careful, and they always treated Parliament like a sort of a site of diplomacy. And actually, it lost its kind of scrutiny role. I remember some really quite anaemic debates happening where everyone was walking on eggshells and, you know, kind of indulging what was outrageous behaviour from Iran.

I think, over time, a lot of MPs have been a lot more honest about describing just how outrageous the treatment is and how unacceptable it is, and gradually, ministers have moved. And I think that honesty is something that Iran noticed. They might not like it, but it is something that helps call them to account that that actually it is unacceptable to use people as bargaining chips.

Tom Tugendhat: And now, sadly, there’s—as you know—there are several other dual nationals, British citizens, still being held, not just in Iran, but in other countries around the world. You’ve spoken there about awareness and maintaining the public eye on individuals. Is that the takeaway advice that you’d have for families? Or, or do you think each situation is so difficult and so individual that it’s hard to have a single point of advice?

Richard Ratcliffe: I think each situation is different and, you know, I’m obviously extrapolating on the sample of one, so it’s just our experience. But yeah, I think it is always in the family’s interest and the victim’s interest to make noise about their injustice. It will always keep you safer.

There are risks of making it more complicated. There are risks of - potentially other people then stepping in and, you know, political bravado over on the other side. But, you know, sunlight is the best form of disinfectant. It makes sense to wait for a period to see if it can be solved quietly. But I think that’s days to weeks. I don’t think that’s, you know, months to years. But that said, I think it’s probably… You know, in our case it was really stark. It was a mum and baby on holiday who were then picked up for no… You know, it was obvious that she hadn’t done anything, and there must be something else going on. You know, if you were a middle-aged businessman who fell foul in a business deal, outside perceptions would be less clear about what was going on. You know, it may well be there was actually a big argument before it happened and someone powerful intervened.

So, you know, depending on context, you may have options to solve things quietly that we didn’t have. There may be more agendas going on. But the advice I’ve given to all families is twofold. One is to speak up and speak out. And the other is to talk to as many other families and share experiences.

I think the power of solidarity—and, you know, each case is a bit different—but the basic power of solidarity and understanding, you know, what the playbook is, what, you know, is the commonalities and standing together will, you know, help you feel less alone, but it would also help you and help your MP have a much stronger voice together.

Tom Tugendhat: And as you know, we are doing some work on this hostage-taking, not just in Iran, but actually, there are hostages who’ve been taken in China, as you know, and in many ways the Russian government is currently taking tens of thousands of hostages from Ukraine. What are the areas you think we as a committee should be looking at specifically?

Richard Ratcliffe: Uh, look, I think it’s a big challenge. I think—. What do I think the Government needs to do on hostage diplomacy? I think be more honest about the fact that this is hostage-taking, and that they need structures to deal with it as hostage-taking, rather than as a, you know, a consular case, which implies it’s, sort of, someone’s fallen foul of a legitimate law and they’re helping out.

The problem with hostage-taking—and Nazanin’s case is part of this—is there’s very little accountability for it at the moment. The bad guys in our case took a lot longer to get what they wanted than they were expecting, but in the end they got it, and calling them names isn’t really going to worry them too much. I think we do need to look at mechanisms that are proportionate, but that also, with other international allies, hold them—the Iranians—accountable and hold Russians and whoever else.

Tom Tugendhat: Now the family’s back together, just tell us how is Nazanin doing? How is Gabriella doing? And how are you doing? What’s it like being back together again?

Richard Ratcliffe: Yeah, definitely much better. Much cheerier. Yeah. Homecoming is a journey. There’s an adjustment for Nazanin, as obviously, years have passed. And in some ways that’s quite hard because you kind of want to go back to the life you had before, and that water has moved.

But yeah, it’s so much better to be doing normal things and dealing with normal problems and, you know, promising my boss that I’ll do my job. And just, you know, going to sports day or assemblies at school.

Certainly for Gabriella, who’s, you know—when you’re little, you’re a bit more straightforward about these things—having her mum and dad back and her mum properly back and showing off her mum and, you know, nice to be reminded that, you know, it’s not an everyday happy ever after, but it’s a much happier ever after than it was before.

Tom Tugendhat: I’m delighted to welcome Tulip Siddiq, the Labour Member of Parliament for Hampstead and Kilburn. Tulip is also the constituency MP for the Ratcliffe family and has walked with them throughout their campaign to free Nazanin.

I’m also delighted that we’ve got Royston Smith, Conservative MP for Southampton, Itchen and a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee along with me since 2017, when this issue first arose in one of our evidence sessions with the then Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson.

Tulip, a lot of ministers have praised you for your support of the Ratcliffes throughout this extraordinary campaign. Can you remember your first meeting you had with Richard and what you saw your role as being as you backed him?

Tulip Siddiq: Yes, I do very clearly remember my first meeting with Richard. It was a weird time in my life because I’d just been elected the year before. And then I had had a baby, and I was actually recovering from my emergency C-section when I had a call from my office manager, Oliver, who said, ‘I wouldn’t normally disturb you when you’re recovering from such a major operation, but we have a constituent called Richard Ratcliffe whose wife had been detained in Iran, and we need some advice. It’s not a decision the office can take because he wants us to go public with the fact that his wife had been detained.’

The first meeting, the thing that struck me most was that he was asking us to go against official Foreign Office advice, and that’s something as a legislator, I was very nervous about. So he said to me that his wife had gone on holiday in Iran, with ‘a suitcase full of nappies’, as he described it, and their 18-month-old daughter, she had been detained at the airport, and that he hadn’t heard from her for nearly six weeks. He had gone to the Foreign Office, but they had said that he needs to stay quiet. But he had now decided and made an individual decision to go public with the case.

And frankly speaking, I was petrified, because I thought, ‘if I took his advice and went public in the way he was saying, would we be putting my constituent Nazanin in harm’s way?’ Because what did her husband know? He was an accountant from West Hampstead. I mean, how did he have the knowledge to make that decision? So the first meeting was quite difficult, and to some extent, I tried to present him with all the options of what happens if you go public. How do you know what’s going to happen with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard? How will they react? How will our politicians react?

But he was adamant. And in the end, Tom, I took my cue from her husband, because he’s the one who’s married to her. He made the decision. I’m the local MP, and I followed his lead.

Tom Tugendhat: Look, that’s pretty comprehensive. But people are sometimes reluctant to engage with their local MP when a member of their family has been arrested abroad. What advice would you give them? In fact, what advice would you give us as MPs on how to engage with Parliament, including select committees?

Tulip Siddiq: The advice, I guess, I would give to anyone who’s engaging is that if you want to genuinely win a battle—and my battle was to bring my constituent home—you’re not going to do that as a one-man band, if that makes sense. I had to engage with MPs across the spectrum from different parties. The first ever time we went to Number 10 to hand in a petition, we went with Oliver Dowden, who, you know, is a Conservative MP. One of his constituents had been detained in Iran for many years, and he was going with us to hand in the petition. And there was a real show of strength because I was a Labour MP. I was with Oliver Dowden, a Conservative MP. We knocked on Number 10 together, and we went in together.

And every debate that I did—and I think it was nine urgent questions in the end that we had—I had people from all different parties. Whether it was the Conservatives, the SNP, the Lib Dems—everyone turned out. The Green MP turned out to speak in support of Nazanin.

And I genuinely think, Tom, this campaign wouldn’t have been possible if all the MPs hadn’t come together. This isn’t something I was going to solve as an Opposition MP on my own.

Tom Tugendhat: Well, look, Royston, we’ve all been involved in this, and I know you’ve spoken in some of those urgent questions. I’ve spoken in some of those urgent questions, and we’ve all been very supportive of Tulip and, of course, particularly of the Ratcliffes, and we’ve also been touched by, you know, the cases of Nazanin and Anoosheh and indeed some of the others who’ve been held—many of the others who’ve been held—in Iran. What do you think the role of the committee has been in keeping the Government accountable on these issues?

Royston Smith: Well, I think we have two roles, Tom. One is to support Tulip, in this particular instance, and the Ratcliffe family, as a committee. And when we have the Foreign Secretary or Ministers before us, you know, this subject always comes up. We know it’s going to come up. We plan for it to come up. And we made sure that we were all singing from the same song sheet.

But we also have an opportunity as members of the committee, because of our role and because of our profile in foreign affairs, to raise it in bilaterals. And I know that, you know, every time we had a visiting Iranian delegation, particularly, you know, after all the niceties, we would make sure that we always raise the case of those that were detained in Iran.

So as Tulip was saying, I think, you know, very eloquently, these things are very difficult to do on your own, if not impossible. But there are even more people involved or willing to be involved or wanting to help that perhaps you don’t always see.

Nine urgent questions were quite obvious and quite public, and everyone knew about them. These sometimes, almost, you know, behind closed doors, bilaterals do play their part too. So there were a lot of people doing lots of things to make sure that the issue was kept at the top of the agenda.

Tom Tugendhat: Tulip, Richard has told us that he believes the support of Parliament made a huge difference to pressuring the Government to act. Do you agree? Do you think that was an important part of making his case be so prominent in the Government’s mind? And what would the consequences for Nazanin have been if this pressure hadn’t been there?

Tulip Siddiq: Without a shadow of a doubt, the support of Parliament was crucial to making sure that the debt was paid and then Nazanin was freed. There’s no doubt in my mind. So every minute that every MP spent—whether that was asking a supplementary question in the urgent questions, intervening on the Prime Minister or the Foreign Secretary—I think it made a huge difference. Because it wasn’t just that her name was repeatedly mentioned in the Chamber, it was a knock-on effect. So it was the fact that journalists then picked it up. So every single Prime Minister’s question I had—whether it was David Cameron, whether it was Theresa May, whether it was Boris Johnson—I raised it at every opportunity I had.  And what happens is, as I mentioned, it’s a snowball effect. So a journalist will pick that up and write about it. And then 10 people will see it and then contact their MPs and say, ‘you’ve got to lobby the Prime Minister’.

But Tom, it wasn’t just current politicians that we engaged with. I engaged a lot with Jack Straw, the former Foreign Secretary, because he had been to Tehran five times when he was Foreign Secretary, and he knew the Iranian regime like the back of his hand. So I had a lot of advice from him.

I had a lot of advice from the Lords as well. There were lots of Lords who knew about Iran, knew how to engage, knew the buttons we should press, if you like, in terms of getting our voice heard. So it was a mixture of past and present politicians. It was a mixture of journalists and media pressure. It was also Richard himself. I mean, going on hunger strike outside the Foreign Office was key, because people passed him and knew what the story was.

So it was about keeping the story alive, but it was also repeatedly making the same point we had said from the start: if you don’t pay the debt, you’re not getting Nazanin back. Because Nazanin herself had been told that from the second week of her imprisonment.

Tom Tugendhat: Royston, as a backbench MP, what difference do campaigns about state hostages, such as Nazanin and Anoosheh, have on you and the work of the Committee and actually just more generally in parliament? Do they have a major impact on your life as well?

Royston Smith: When you know the full story of a family that are separated because someone is, you know, held against their will somewhere else, that can’t not have an impact on you.

In this case, I think there’s almost no doubt that by making it public and having a public campaign and doing the things that Tulip did. And there’s no doubt that that brought it to a head, and then of course it was the outstanding debt which needed to be paid. So there was something very obvious about it all, as well.

But I’m not completely sure that I know whether going public is the right thing to do. So, although I’m not here to defend the Foreign Office, and I’m not defending the Foreign Office in what I’m about to say, I sort of understand why they might have that reluctance. Because, you know, once it becomes public in the way that this case was, you’re not entirely sure where that might end and how that might land when you are trying to negotiate for someone’s release.

So in this case, I think there was no doubt. And I think the Foreign Secretary made it clear to us in our last evidence session that the debt and the release of Nazanin—and others, although not all of them have been released now—were being negotiated in parallel. And once the Foreign Secretary says that, then you know that that is then the defining issue. And in this case, that was it.

And that would only have only come to light because of the Ratcliffes’ willingness to go public, desire to go public, Tulip’s fantastic campaign…  Because it’s a complicated business, you know, people’s bandwidth can’t be on a subject for very long. And I don’t mean that pejoratively. But once you said there was this outstanding debt, then that became another issue, which people actually could be, you know— They understood that more than just somebody being locked up in a country far, far away. So I think in this case, it’s absolutely right, but I’m just not sure that it is always the right thing to do.

Tom Tugendhat: And look, there are at least two more dual nationals still being detained in Iran, British dual nationals. How can MPs—and more specifically, how can the Foreign Affairs Committee—keep pressure on the Foreign Office to prioritise their cases? Tulip, what do you think?

Tulip Siddiq: I’m going to answer you, Tom, in a second.  I just want to pick up on what Royston said. It’s absolutely true that going public was something I was very unsure about and uncertain about. But I think what— the reason why I got more convinced about going public is because I dealt with five Foreign Secretaries in the six years that we campaigned for Nazanin, and not a single one of them acknowledged the link between the outstanding debt and Nazanin’s imprisonment. I pointed it out in countless meetings, all the time, and they would always deny the link. The Foreign Ministers did and the Secretary of State did, as well. A breakthrough came when, actually, Liz Truss took office, because she, for the first time in a meeting, said they were connected.

So I think if we hadn’t gone public, I’m not really sure how we would have established that link, because that was what we kept saying in the papers. And then ultimately, it became the truth and the received wisdom, if that makes sense. However, I do agree with you. I mean, I felt uncertain because you never know what’s going to happen. I’m, you know, we’re not an expert in hostage-taking.

For me, Tom, in terms of what we do to avoid this sort of situation in the future—because obviously, Morad Tahbaz is still there and another dual national—it’s something that has been mentioned in your select committee, by Jeremy Hunt—who was, obviously, a foreign – former Foreign Secretary—and we’ve discussed this at great length. I think it’s got to become a network of allies. If one person is taken from the West, all of us countries needs to come down really hard on whichever country it is—Iran or whichever regime is taking hostages—to say, ‘if you hit one of us, you’ve hit all of us’. It’s got to be a network of allies, come down hard and say ‘if you take one Brit, actually all of us are going to come down on you’. A bit like NATO. Otherwise, I’m not sure what else we do. There’s just no other policy that we can apply which is going to make them release our dual nationals, which has been happening in several countries, not just in Iran, as you know.

Tom Tugendhat: Well, as you know, we’ve been very vocal in supporting Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, two Canadians who were grabbed by the Chinese state a number of years ago but, thank God, have been released. Royston, what more do you think we can do?

Royston Smith: Well, I mean, we were lucky enough, Tom, recently, you and I, to visit the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs in Washington, who is the one point of contact in the US when hostages are either taken or whether some people who have been detained are then changed status to hostage, rather than to someone who’s incarcerated for something else.

And their system, I think, was something that we could learn a lot from, you know. He said that if someone wanted to go public, then he would help them do that. If they didn’t want to, then he would make sure that it was kept as under wraps as possible. He would contact them straight away, and that he would give them his mobile number, and they had a point of contact, and it didn’t matter if it was 11 o’clock at night. They could phone him.

He would give them good news and bad news in equal measure. In fact, he said, interestingly, that it was easier sometimes to deliver bad news than it was good, because if you deliver some good news, the expectations suddenly rocket, and you are only saying that, you know, we’ve made a small breakthrough here or we’ve made some progress there, but their systems seem to be set up, and there seem to be this one point of contact—there is this one point of contact and a group of people that work very closely with him—that work with all the people that are detained or deemed to be hostages. And we could learn an awful lot in this country from the way they do it in the US now.

Tom Tugendhat: Royston, I mean, it would be interesting to hear as well, however, what you think we should be thinking about with those families who don’t wish to go public. There are many who think it will jeopardise the chances of their loved ones to be released. What can we, as a committee, do—or even individually do—to support families in a less public way?

Royston Smith: Well, that’s when we have to do things a bit behind the scenes, and it’s interesting, Tom, because you have to be careful about what you do say about these things, then, in public. There was recently some people released from Afghanistan, and there was no publicity. They didn’t want any publicity. But, you know, there was a success, and they’d been held for six months or so. And now they’re home.

But if you are starting to talk about things in public, you run the risk, don’t you, of saying something like, and I’m paraphrasing, ‘as far as I’m aware, Nazanin was just teaching some journalism’. And that line is then picked up and amplified around everywhere. Now, that’s talking about somebody that was giving evidence to us, but that could easily be us.

So what we can do is use those private bilateral meetings to keep these things on the table for those that don’t want any publicity for their family or loved one that’s been detained.

Tom Tugendhat: And Tulip, what do you think? I mean, you’ve dealt with one of the most public cases the country has had. What do you think you’d be thinking about if you were giving advice to a friend or colleague about somebody who didn’t want to go quite so public as Richard did?

Tulip Siddiq: Look, I don’t pretend to be an expert on all hostage-taking cases, but I just want to say two things. One is in response to what Royston said. I mean, I agree with you that the line that was said by Boris Johnson was deeply damaging to her, but I don’t think it was a result of us going public. I think it was a result of him not reading his briefs, to be honest. And I think that’s why he made that mistake.

But I take your point that things can be said offhand, which then gets translated to the public, which then the Iranian regime might pick up. So there’s always a danger of that. But from my experience, Tom—and as I say, it does not relate to every single case—the first time Nazanin was mentioned publicly in Parliament—. When I listened to your inquiry into Nazanin, Philip Hammond said the date around that time when she was first mentioned in Parliament is the first time he ever raised it with his counterpart. Maybe that’s not why he raised it, but it does seem like a coincidence.

The first time the UN ruled that she was being tortured by their standards, she was then, as a result, we think, allowed a medical examination. The first time I had my urgent question—two weeks after that, she was allowed to see her family.

We saw direct results. We’d been asking weeks and weeks after for an examination, cause she had lumps on her breasts. She was denied that. And she told me when I spoke to her when she was under house arrest that she was the best and most well looked after prisoner in Evin Prison because of the campaign.

So I find it really hard to move away from the fact that we did the right thing. Obviously, if the constituent themselves is feeling uncomfortable about going public for some reason, then my advice would be they have to somehow get the attention of the Foreign Secretary. When Liz Truss took on the post, she actually called me as soon – the day she was appointed and said, ‘Nazanin is top of my agenda’. And I really appreciated that. I’m an Opposition MP. I did not expect a call from the Foreign Secretary to say personally, ‘Nazanin is top of my agenda’. So my advice would be somehow if it’s not going public, get through to the Foreign Secretary, whoever it may be, and get your constituent’s name top of the agenda – that’s the only way it will get solved.

Tom Tugendhat: Well, look, Tulip, Royston, thank you both very much, but I think most importantly, welcome home, Nazanin and Anoosheh. And thank you very much for sharing your part in her story.

Tom Tugendhat: Now we’re going to be taking a break over the summer, but we will be back with other subjects when the House returns in September, or a little bit later, so look out for us then.

I’m Tom Tugendhat. I chair the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, and you have been listening to Committee Corridor. Thank you very much for listening. I hope you’ve enjoyed this first series of podcasts, please don’t forget to subscribe for the next lot and look for us wherever you see your podcasts. And of course, do leave a review.