Lammy urged to fulfil pledge to help Britons jailed abroad

Alicia Kearns, as a former Foreign Office official and an outspoken voice on foreign affairs, is an MP who understands how the department ticks.

- Patrick Wintour

She is also someone who does not give up easily and has some freedom to operate, since she is neither on Kemi Badenoch's Conservative front-bench nor the Labour-dominated foreign affairs select committee, a body she chaired until this summer.

That makes her a rarity in the Commons: knowledgeable about foreign policy but free to express her often strongly held views. Kearns's record leading the committee was generally admired, but she has one piece of unfinished business to attend to.

With a small group of MPs and campaigners, she has set up an all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on arbitrary detention and hostage affairs. The aim is to pursue the recommendations of a report she helped publish, called Stolen Years, which made the case for the UK appointing a special envoy for hostage affairs. The recommendation was rejected.