The comments made by James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary, on Twitter on 6 February 2023.
The UK is sending immediate support to Türkiye including a team of 76 search & rescue specialists, equipment and rescue dogs.
In Syria, the UK-funded White Helmets have mobilised their resources to respond.
We stand ready to provide further support as needed.
The speech made by James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary, in London on 24 January 2023.
Your Excellency the Ambassador of Israel, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.
I’m deeply honoured to join you on this occasion.
Last year, on a winter evening, I stood on a concrete platform of the disused Radegast station in Lodz in Poland.
From this nondescript and functional building, 200,000 Jewish men, women and children were transported to Nazi death camps.
I reflected that there were countless unused buildings like this, scattered across occupied Europe, all being used, to send human beings to be murdered.
Radegast was where the Jews of Lodz ghetto were transported to Chelmno and Auschwitz-Birkenau.
I stood where they would have stood, and I saw what they saw; the crude wooden cattle trucks, drawn up by the platform.
Inside the station building, I turned over page after page of neatly typewritten names of the people who were forced at gunpoint onto those trucks.
One of those who was deported to Auschwitz, in her case from Romania, was Olga Lengyel, who lost her parents, lost her husband, and lost her two sons.
She wrote, and I quote: “Whenever I recall the first days at the camp, I still grow hot and cold with nameless terror. It was a terror that rose for no particular reason, but one that was constantly nourished by strange occurrences whose meaning I sought in vain.
“At night the glow of the flames from the chimneys…showed through the crevices in the walls. The shrieks of the sick or the wounded, crowded together in trucks bound for some unknown destination, grated on our nerves.
“Sometimes we heard revolver shots, for the SS guards used their guns freely. Above these noises came orders barked in overbearing voices. Nothing would let us forget our slavery.”
And then Olga Lengyel asks: “Could such conditions really exist in Europe in the twentieth century?”
Today, every one of us shares a solemn duty to remember that those conditions did indeed exist in Europe in the 20th century, that six million men, women and children were consumed by the Holocaust,
Now our only possible response is to mean it, heart and soul, when we say the words “never again”.
But there were, at the time, some ordinary people who meant it when they said to themselves that they would not stand by, and they would not watch others being transported to their deaths.
It remains an extraordinary and uplifting fact that ordinary people in Denmark managed to save almost all of their country’s Jews.
They were hidden in churches, in hospitals and in family homes, and spirited to coastal towns, from where they were taken to safety in Sweden, on board fishing boats or kayaks or motorboats.
In the town of Elsinore, the escape line was run by Erling Kiaer, the local bookbinder, Thormod Larsen, a policeman, Ove Bruhn, a clerk, and Børge Rønne, the editor of the local newspaper.
They called themselves the “Elsinore Sewing Club” and they carried about 700 Jews across the Sound to Sweden.
They knew full well that they were risking their own lives.
And indeed in May 1944, the Nazis arrested Erling Kiaer after intercepting his motorboat, and he was incarcerated in Neuengamme concentration camp in Germany.
But he survived until the camp liberation, and he lived until his 77th year, dying in 1980.
The members of the Elsinore Sewing Club – and others like them across occupied Europe – consciously decided to place themselves in the mortal peril in order to save others.
But the hard truth is that when the moment came, there were never enough people like them.
If almost every Jew could be saved in Denmark, why not elsewhere?
Today, we must all silently ask ourselves the difficult and searching question, what would I have done?
Would I have taken that risk, not just for myself but for my family?
And as we answer that profoundly difficult and necessary question in our hearts, we owe it to the six million who were not saved to reflect, to learn, to grieve, and above all, to remember.
The statement made by James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary, in the House of Commons on 16 January 2023.
With permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a statement on the execution of a British national in Iran.
On Saturday morning, Iran’s regime announced that it had executed Alireza Akbari, a British-Iranian dual national. I know that the thoughts of the whole House will be with his wife and two daughters at the time of their loss. They have shared his ordeal—an ordeal that began just over three years ago when he was lured back to Iran. He was detained and then subjected to the notorious and arbitrary legal process of the regime. Before his death, Mr Akbari described what was done to him and how torture had been used. Let there be no doubt: he fell victim to the political vendettas of a vicious regime. His execution was the cowardly and shameful act of a leadership that thinks nothing of using the death penalty as a political tool to silence dissent and settle internal scores.
In February last year, Mr Akbari’s family asked the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office for our support, and we have worked closely with them ever since. I want to pay tribute to them for their courage and fortitude throughout this terrible period. In line with their wishes, the Minister of State, my noble Friend Lord Ahmad, lobbied Iran’s most senior diplomat in the UK as soon as we learned that Mr Akbari’s execution was imminent. We maintained the pressure right up until the point of his execution, but, sadly, to no avail.
When we heard the tragic news on Saturday morning, we acted immediately to demonstrate our revulsion. I ordered the summoning of Iran’s chargé d’affaires to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to make clear our strength of feeling. Our ambassador in Tehran delivered the same message to a senior Foreign Ministry official. Ten other countries have publicly condemned the execution, including France, Germany and the United States, and the European Union has done the same. I am grateful for their support at this time.
We then imposed sanctions on Iran’s Prosecutor General, Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, who bears heavy responsibility for the use of the death penalty for political ends. His designation is the latest of more than 40 sanctions imposed by the UK on the Iranian regime since October, including on six individuals linked to the revolutionary courts, which have passed egregious sentences against protesters, including the death penalty. In addition, I have temporarily recalled from Tehran His Majesty’s ambassador, Simon Shercliff, for consultations, and we met and discussed this earlier today. Now we shall consider what further steps we take alongside our allies to counter the escalating threat from Iran. We do not limit ourselves to the steps that I have already announced.
Mr Akbari’s execution follows decades of pitiless repression by a ruthless regime. Britain stands with the brave and dignified people of Iran as they demand their rights and freedoms. Just how much courage that takes is shown by the appalling fact that more than 500 people have been killed and 18,000 arrested during the recent wave of protests. Instead of listening to the calls for change from within Iran, the regime has resorted to its usual tactic of blaming outsiders and lashing out against its supposed enemies, including by detaining a growing number of foreign nationals for political gain. Today, many European nationals are being held in Iranian prisons on spurious charges, including British dual nationals, and I pay tribute to our staff—both in Tehran and here in the UK—who continue to work tirelessly on their behalf.
Beyond its borders, the regime has supplied Russia with hundreds of armed drones used to kill civilians in Ukraine. Across the middle east, Iran continues to inflict bloodshed and destruction by supporting extremist militias. And all the while, the steady expansion of the Iranian nuclear programme is threatening international peace and security and the entire system of global non-proliferation. In the last three months alone, Britain has imposed five separate packages of sanctions on Iran, and today we enforce designations against more than 300 Iranian individuals and entities. We have condemned the regime in every possible international forum, securing Iran’s removal from the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women and, alongside our partners, creating a new UN mechanism to investigate the regime’s human rights violations during the recent protests.
The House should be in no doubt that we are witnessing the vengeful actions of a weakened and isolated regime obsessed with suppressing its own people, debilitated by its fear of losing power, and wrecking its international reputation. Our message to that regime is clear: the world is watching you and you will be held to account, particularly by the brave Iranian people, so many of whom you are oppressing and killing. I commend this statement to the House.
The statement made by James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary, on 17 January 2023.
A year ago today the Houthis inflicted a deadly attack on the UAE, killing 3 innocent civilians.
The UK’s commitment to standing with our Emirati friends in the face of threats to their security is as strong today as it was then.
The statement made by James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary, on 14 January 2023.
The execution of British-Iranian Alireza Akbari is a barbaric act that deserves condemnation in the strongest possible terms. Through this politically motivated act, the Iranian regime has once again shown its callous disregard for human life.
This will not stand unchallenged and we will be summoning the Iranian Charge d’Affaires to make clear our disgust at Iran’s actions. Our thoughts are with Mr Akbari’s family.
The statement made by James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary, on 13 January 2023.
The Iranian regime should be in no doubt. We are watching the case of Alireza Akbari closely. Iran must not follow through with their brutal threat of execution.
The statement made by James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary, on 7 January 2023.
The execution of Mohammad Mahdi Karami and Seyyed Mohammad Hosseini by the Iranian regime is abhorrent.
The UK is strongly opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances and the Iranian regime has done further lasting damage to its reputation at home and overseas with yet another disproportionate response to the Iranian people protesting legitimately against their oppression.
We have and will continue to make our views clear to the Iranian authorities – Iran must immediately halt all executions and end the violence against its own people.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by James Cleverly on 2016-07-19.
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what assessment his Department has made of potential alternative uses of MDP Wethersfield.
Mark Lancaster
The Ministry of Defence together with the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) jointly commissioned a study by Cushmann Wakefield in 2015 to identify potential future uses for the Wethersfield site, subject to all necessary planning approvals.
The study reported that the site had the potential to be a mixed development of commercial/employment, housing, education and community uses with supporting public open space.
The HCA will work closely with the Local Planning Authority and other interested parties to consider the best possible future uses for the site.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by James Cleverly on 2016-10-18.
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what recent steps his Department has taken to detect and prevent electoral fraud involving polling cards and voter registration.
Chris Skidmore
The Electoral Commission provides guidance on preventing and reporting electoral fraud sets out the role of Local Electoral Registration Officers, Returning Officers, the police and political parties in detecting and preventing fraud. This guidance can be found online.
Moreover, the security of registration has been improved by the introduction of Individual Electoral Registration. This service checks the details provided by the applicant, including their National Insurance number, against government data before passing the application to the relevant local electoral administration team.
For applications with no National Insurance number and other applications not verified through the digital service, the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) will seek further information regarding identity. For all registration applications, online or otherwise, the ERO is also responsible for ensuring that other eligibility requirements, such as the nationality of the applicant, are satisfactorily met.
Finally, the Government considers the integrity of the electoral system of the utmost importance and has recently welcomed the report published by Sir Eric Pickles into electoral fraud.
The Government will closely consider the recommendations laid out in that report and issue its response shortly.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by James Cleverly on 2016-10-18.
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what recent steps his Department has taken to detect and prevent electoral fraud at polling stations.
Chris Skidmore
The Electoral Commission provides guidance on preventing and reporting electoral fraud sets out the role of Local Electoral Registration Officers, Returning Officers, the police and political parties in detecting and preventing fraud. This guidance can be found online.
Moreover, the security of registration has been improved by the introduction of Individual Electoral Registration. This service checks the details provided by the applicant, including their National Insurance number, against government data before passing the application to the relevant local electoral administration team.
For applications with no National Insurance number and other applications not verified through the digital service, the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) will seek further information regarding identity. For all registration applications, online or otherwise, the ERO is also responsible for ensuring that other eligibility requirements, such as the nationality of the applicant, are satisfactorily met.
Finally, the Government considers the integrity of the electoral system of the utmost importance and has recently welcomed the report published by Sir Eric Pickles into electoral fraud.
The Government will closely consider the recommendations laid out in that report and issue its response shortly.