Baroness Coussins (CB)

My Lords, I know the Minister is already well aware of the recent escalation in the Iranian authorities’ harassment and intimidation of BBC Persian journalists and their family members in Iran. The aim is to intimidate the journalists into stopping their work for the BBC World Service and to silence independent reporting on events in Iran. Reports to the BBC’s security team and to counter-terrorism police have not produced any relief or decline in the levels of intimidation. The targeting includes criminal convictions in absentia, freezing of assets, threats of kidnap and death and a disturbing increase of family members in Iran being questioned, harassed and having their passports confiscated. London-based journalists cannot travel to see their families in Iran, obviously, so travel the other way is essential. However, there are significant problems with patchy advice from the Home Office and long delays in securing responses and the necessary documentation. The BBC has established good engagement on this with the FCDO, for which I am grateful to the Minister and his predecessor the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, but what is urgently needed now, on which I seek explicit and urgent assurances from the Minister, is a whole-government approach to supporting the Persian Service journalists and holding Iran to account both internationally and in the UK. What would help immediately would be some effective leverage from the FCDO on the Home Office to get it to support and speed up its processing of visa applications for family members wishing to travel to the UK to visit Persian Service journalists based here. Will he agree to take this up with his Home Office colleagues urgently?