Lord Cryer (Lab)

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for bringing these SIs to the Grand Committee. Like my noble friend, I shall speak briefly about one or two points, in my case, specifically about Iran and the provisions that apply to Iran and, more specifically, about the effectiveness of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has developed a notorious reputation over the past 30 or 40 years. It came along with the revolution in 1979 and has established itself as an arm of the Iranian state since then. I particularly want to talk about Iran for one reason: Iran is probably the only significant world power that is effectively run by clerical fascists. I cannot think of a parallel country. It is a state that uses proxies all over the world. We all know about Hamas and Hezbollah, but there are other proxies, and this has been covered extensively in the mainstream press. The IRGC uses criminal gangs to further its aims in this country and other countries across Europe and the world. I have two questions for the Minister. Can he confirm that anybody who does not register a relationship with the Iranian state, who fails to register an interest or a connection, will be committing a criminal act and be subject to criminal prosecution? Does that also apply to anybody who has a clear relationship with an IRGC or Iranian state proxy, for instance Hezbollah or Hamas? Would that also apply to others? For instance, there have been parliamentarians in the past—I hope that there are none now, but there probably are—who have accepted money from PressTV. They will have to register that in the normal way, but do they also have to register it under the provisions of the statutory instruments that we are talking about today?