Tim Roca

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Western. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Rachel Blake) on securing this important debate. I put on the record my interest as the vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on arbitrary detention and hostage affairs. I am going to speak in general terms about the issue of state hostage taking and arbitrary detention. Hon. Members have spoken eloquently about some of the cases and the constituents for whom they are fighting for so powerfully. The right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) talked about Ryan Cornelius, who has now been in prison for 17 years and in May 2018 was sentenced to a further 20 years, meaning that he will not leave prison in the Emirates until he is 84. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire (Douglas McAllister), who spoke strongly about his constituent, Jagtar Singh Johal. Many of us will know of the case of Alaa Abd El-Fattah as well. The individuals in those cases, along with Jimmy Lai, have something in common: they are considered by the UN working group on arbitrary detention to be arbitrarily detained. Their rights have been trampled on and they are being incarcerated effectively unlawfully, without any due process or regard. When we talk about victims of arbitrary detention, we need to remember the impact on their families as well as on them. Ryan Cornelius’s son was six years old when his father was imprisoned; he is now 23. Alaa Abd El-Fattah’s mother, Laila, has been on hunger strike for some time now. The impact still scars those lucky enough to have been released. I saw Matthew Hedges last week and hon. Members will have met Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her husband Richard, who fought so powerfully for her release. We need to have a conversation about why the UK struggles, in some cases, to free its citizens from arbitrary detention abroad. I have the highest regard for the Minister and our excellent diplomats, but the Foreign Affairs Committee report “Stolen years”, from the previous Parliament, highlighted some clear failings in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office approach to those who are arbitrarily detained. It talked about the need for urgency and to be clear about when our citizens are facing torture, interrogation and having their rights trampled on. Indeed, the case of Ahmed al-Doush is being considered at the moment by the UN working group on arbitrary detention because the UK has not explicitly said that it believes his rights are being trampled on. Saudi Arabia has said, “Well, the United Kingdom has not raised any issue about his rights being trampled on” and uses that as an argument in the working group itself. We have to be extremely clear when we see our citizens’ rights being traduced.