Government should have appointed an envoy to carry out checks on activist in citizenship row, says Emily Thornberry
The government could have avoided “embarrassing failures” in the case of Alaa Abd el-Fattah by having a special envoy deal with complex cases involving Britons detained abroad, Emily Thornberry has said.
The chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee criticised “serious shortcomings” in information sharing, which she said could have been resolved by having a dedicated official carry out background checks.
Former foreign secretary David Lammy said in 2024 that the government would appoint an envoy to deal with “complex detention cases” involving Britons abroad but no such figure has been named.
In a letter to the foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, Thornberry said: “Had an envoy been established [in 2024] … it is clear to me that such embarrassing failures of due diligence and information sharing would have been avoided.
