Foreign Affairs Committee
26 October 2026
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Committee House of Commons
00:00 - 01:15
Speaker 2
Or in fact probably be fair to say campaigned for. So we're really pleased to see you today. For those watching this session, I think I should make it clear that the witness is not going to be able to discuss individual cases in any in any depth during this session. Instead, we're going to be asking more general questions about the newly created role, what is remit is and how it relates to existing government structures for supporting those that are being detained overseas. So I think if I start really with that, we're as I say we're really pleased to see you today for this committee.
And and we have been calling on several occasions for for this role to be created and our predecessor committee, which Dan was part of of both. So we'd like you really to if you can set out what you see your new role to be. And and I think particularly with reference to the terms of reference, we wanted to really know how independent you were, how much you had to be directed by the Foreign Secretary, how much discretion you had and so on.
01:15 - 02:24
Speaker 1
Okay. Well first of all, it's very nice to see you. And to say a warm thank you to the committee because you did indeed, you and your predecessor, you know, pressed for the role. So this is a great example of parliamentary democracy and government working together. You thought it was necessary, it's incorporated in the last manifesto of the present government and here we are.
But certainly without the inquiries that took place in recent years to look at what had happened in certain cases, talk to those who had been detained and particularly their families, we probably wouldn't be here. So so thank you very much. Where we would be though would be with extremely hardworking consular staff all over the world who deal with thousands of cases, roughly, you know, 25 to 30,000 cases a year. We have some between 9 and 10,000 UK nationals, dual nationals are detained at any one time. There may be 5,000 of those new each year.
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