2022

On Wednesday 16 March 2022 I met with the family of Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe in Parliament. Nazanin’s husband Richard, daughter Gabriella and brother Mohammad were on their way to RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire to meet her off the plane. They were overjoyed at the prospect of seeing Nazanin. 

It has been wonderful to see Nazanin and her family enjoying time together now that justice has at long last been secured for her and Anooseh Ashoori. Nazanin has said that “”the meaning of freedom is never going to be complete” until other dual nationals such as Morad Tahbaz are free. Anoosheh has said “I will not be quiet until he and the other dual nationals are released”. 

On Wednesday 16 March 2022 we received the fantastic news that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori will be returning home to the UK, after years of baseless detention by Iran. I first raised Nazanin’s imprisonment by Iran at Business Questions on 8 December 2016. I asked the Leader of the House “Given that it is soon Human Rights Day, will the Leader of the House follow up on the Prime Minister’s response to the request from my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) to secure the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British national imprisoned in Iran? If the Foreign Secretary is too busy trying to learn who his counterparts are, perhaps we can ask the United States, which signed that agreement with Iran. We need the Human Rights Act to protect basic freedoms—every day, everywhere.”

On Wednesday 16 March 2022 I met the Ambassadors to the UK from Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam and Uzbekistan at a roundtable event hosted by the Inter-Parliamentary Union British Group. The Ambassadors made presentations, which were followed by a question and answer session. His Excellency Hayashi Hajime has been the Japanese Ambassador since December 2020. He has previously held government posts in national security and the cabinet office in Japan, as well as diplomatic roles in India, Belgium and the USA. Before becoming Ambassador to the UK, His Excellency Dr Desra Percaya served as Director General for Asia Pacific and Africa at the Indonesian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, responsible for relations with over 100 countries, including the ASEAN network. He also knows Walsall, having studied at the University of Birmingham.

The EU Treaty of Lisbon recognised animal sentience. After the UK left the European Union and ceased to be a party to that Treaty, the Government did not transpose that recognition into UK law. The Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill recognises all vertebrate animals and some invertebrate animals such as octopi, lobsters and crabs as sentient beings. Sentience is not defined in the Bill. The Bill requires the Government to establish an Animal Sentience Committee (ASC). The ASC will be able to scrutinise and report on whether the Government is taking into account the adverse effect of any policy on the welfare of animals as sentient beings. The ASC will not have an advisory or enforcement role.

In the UK, more than 200 professions are regulated by law, and regulators have established processes to recognise credentials gained overseas. These rules help determine whether qualifications acquired abroad include an adequate level of skill and training for the professionals to practice in the UK, and sometimes whether they can use a professional title.  The UK’s current system for qualification recognition comes from EU law and treats qualifications gained in the European Union and European Economic Area differently to those gained in the rest of the world. The Professional Qualifications Bill would set out a new system where qualifications have to meet the same requirements to be recognised in the UK wherever in the world they are originally gained. It would seek to allow regulators in the UK and overseas to mutually recognise qualifications where they cannot do that now.