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Iran (UK Policy)

The hon. Gentleman makes the point more candidly and coherently than I. I totally agree that that is the problem. Furthermore, although our Foreign Office spends a great deal of time and energy every year producing a very good report on human rights abuses, it is not strong on the extensive human rights abuses in Iran. Through our silence and inactivity, we are to some extent acquiescing in those abuses, in contrast to our response to other bad countries in which human rights abuses are extensive. Sometimes we are more heavy on those countries, simply because they are not as big a player as Iran. Those mixed messages concern me. However, the most serious point, which concerns hon. Members with an interest in Iran from right across the political spectrum, is the fact that the United Kingdom Government, who have encouraged the European Union on this matter, try to trade with the Tehran regime. They say, ““If you do not go down the road of uranium enrichment and developing an atomic weapons programme, we will continue to proscribe and ipso facto persecute?—albeit at a fairly low level—““those people in exile who try to draw attention to the human rights abuses in Iran, want to bring democracy to it and are in exile around the world.? I refer in particular to the People’s Mujaheddin of Iran, or the PMOI, which was proscribed at the insistence of the British Government in their attempt to trade good will with the Tehran regime. To its credit, the PMOI took the British Government to the European Court of First Instance, I think, in December. The court found in favour of the applicants, the PMOI. When the referee blows the whistle, a person normally leaves the pitch, but the British Government are playing cat and mouse. After the court had made a judgment that the proscription of the PMOI as a terrorist organisation was wrong, the British Government persuaded the Council of Ministers to reinstate that proscription, without any basis whatever. The court made it clear that the PMOI has never been furnished with the information on why it is still regarded as a terrorist organisation; the PMOI might otherwise have had the opportunity to rebut it. I suspect that it has not been furnished because it does not exist. That is the first thing. Secondly, when the PMOI asserted to the court that it was not engaged in terrorism, the defendants—namely the Council of Ministers, at the instigation of the British Government—again refused to rebut the claim of innocence. That state of affairs is very unsatisfactory and grossly unfair and it sends the wrong signals to Tehran.