Source · Select Committees · Foreign Affairs Committee
Recommendation 32
32
Deferred
Paragraph: 92
We recommend that a list is prepared of countries where UK nationals face an increased...
Recommendation
We recommend that a list is prepared of countries where UK nationals face an increased risk of arbitrary detention and being taken hostage. This should inform decisions around the escalation of cases as well as the outward facing travel advice. We recommend that updated FCDO travel advice includes clear criteria, with accompanying explanation, to support an obvious and user-friendly category of “Risk of arbitrary detention”. Moreover, the FCDO should actively brief organisations, businesses and individuals on the risks they face in travelling to these countries and on sensible precautions they can take to mitigate them.
Government response summary AI-generated
The decision to exercise diplomatic protection formally raised Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case to a state-to-state level, but it did not assist efforts to secure her release as Iran refused to recognise Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s British nationality.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Paragraph Reference:
92
Government Response
Deferred
HM Government · verbatim extract
Deferred
59. FCDO travel advice provides information to help British nationals make informed decisions about foreign travel. Travel Advice remains under constant review to ensure it reflects our latest assessment of risks to British nationals. The safety of British nationals is our overriding concern when determining our travel advice. We advise against travel when we consider the risks to British nationals to be unacceptably high, including where we judge there to be a serious risk of arbitrary detention. Travel advice is advisory. It is for individuals to decide whether they feel it is safe for them to travel to a particular country taking into account their particular circumstances. 60. Giving tailored advice, or advice that goes beyond our Travel Advice, to individuals or organisations, including those travelling against FCDO advice, would breach our parliamentary commitment to have no ‘double standards’ in the provision of FCDO Travel Advice. The advice we provide British nationals orally and in writing must always be consistent with our Travel Advice. Through our Travel Aware campaign, and via travel industry stakeholders, we consistently push messaging to raise awareness of Travel Advice. We recommend travellers sign up to email alerts for their destination country so they can be notified of any changes. 61. FCDO advises against all travel to Iran due to the significantly high risk that British and British-Iranian dual nationals could be arbitrarily detained in Iran, among other risks. This is clearly stated in our current Iran travel advice. We follow the same approach for other high risk states. We have to consider how to represent this risk in travel advice alongside all other risks to British nationals so that we set out all the relevant risks, including that of arbitrary detention, proportionally. Through our Travel Advice, we will continue to ensure we are providing robust and timely information to British nationals about the risks of foreign travel.
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