Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe's husband has urged the government to scale up efforts to return a jailed British couple from Iran to prevent another family being separated for years.

Craig and Lindsay Foreman were arrested by Iranian authorities in January while on a motorbike trip from Europe to Australia. They were accused of espionage, a charge which the couple and their family deny.

Richard Ratcliffe told the BBC the government should have learned lessons from his wife's detention, urging it to take "serious measures".

The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO) said it takes all "allegations of human rights violations, including that a detention may be arbitrary, very seriously".

"The assistance we can provide depends on the individual circumstances of the case and the local conditions – the impact and influence we can have will not always be the same," an FCDO spokesperson said.