Foreign Office complacent over Britons held overseas, says Richard Ratcliffe | Foreign policy

Richard Ratcliffe, the husband of the British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, has accused the Foreign Office of complacency after it rejected a call by MPs to overhaul the way it goes about trying to secure the release of British nationals overseas.

A report by the foreign affairs select committee published in April, after members took evidence from Zaghari-Ratcliffe and the families of other political prisoners, condemned the Foreign Office’s attitude as secretive, inconsistent and built on the false assumption that quiet diplomacy works.

It said a churn of Foreign Office ministers meant figures such as Zaghari-Ratcliffe were kept in jail in Iran from 2016 to last year partly because it took time for ministers to grasp the central issues, including the need to repay an acknowledged £450m debt that the UK government owed to Iran.

In its written response to the committee report, the Foreign Office said: “It would not have been appropriate for the government to pay a debt still under consideration by a court.”

It said the discharge of the debt took so long because of “the technical complexity involved in doing so legally and in a sanctions-compliant manner”.

The response did not acknowledge that the court proceedings lasted so long partly because of the approach adopted by UK lawyers in first denying that the debt existed and then wrangling over the level of interest payable.

Many of the detailed letters sent by Ratcliffe’s lawyers to ministers inquiring how the debt issue was being handled received either no reply or only brief acknowledgements.

Rejecting the committee’s central recommendation for a special envoy to oversee cases where UK nationals are detained for diplomatic leverage, the Foreign Office said: “It is ministers, ambassadors and senior officials who hold the necessary relationships to intervene decisively with a detaining state.”

The US appointment of a dedicated state envoy for hostage-taking had impressed the committee.

The Foreign Office denied it instinctively put broader bilateral relationships ahead of a consular case. Relatives of political prisoners such as Abd el-Fattah, a British national held in Egypt, question whether the UK is ultimately willing to jeopardise trade and security relations to secure his release.

The Foreign Office also denied that the high turnover of ministers and officials since 2015 had affected the speed with which detainee cases had been addressed. “Incoming ministers are briefed within days of arrival, with complex cases prioritised,” it said.

It dismissed suggestions that it locked families of detainees out of discussions on the best approach, saying it was “committed to considering all requests for consular assistance, and to providing effective, tailored support where it is safe and appropriate to do so. Where appropriate, we would consider using third parties, including NGOs, as interlocutors.”

It said: “It is not the case that we always judge there are risks in taking a public approach to a detention case,” adding that a decision on whether to go public was ultimately for the family.

In a joint statement, Ratcliffe and his local MP, Labour’s Tulip Siddiq, described the Foreign Office response as “incredibly disappointing”.

They said: “It beggars belief that after everything Nazanin went through and the detailed work of the foreign affairs committee, the government is still refusing to take the issue seriously.

“Their refusal to engage with the fact that Nazanin’s release was clearly linked to the payment of the [Iran] debt – which took place at the same time – is utterly confounding and insulting.”

Ratcliffe said: “The government still has its head in the sand. It feels like it is trying to suppress the existence of state hostage-taking, still does not want to deal with its consequences and is still in denial about the role the debt played and how the government could have handled it better.”

In a letter to the Foreign Office, Alicia Kearns, the Conservative chair of the foreign affairs committee, said: “It is disappointing that the government has missed the opportunity to demonstrate understanding of the experiences of families and to focus on how best to make any improvements in liaising with them.”