Mr Jagtar Singh Johal

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I can give that direct assurance. As well as being Minister for our relationship with India I am also, as the noble Earl knows, Minister for Human Rights. We have a very structured engagement on human rights. I am not going to go into specific cases, in order to protect some of those individuals, but we have a very productive exchange. We raise a number of cases as well as broader human rights issues, including the key aspects often raised in your Lordships’ House.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to raise again the issue of arbitrary detention. I know it is rather difficult for us because we are now facing huge delays in our own criminal justice system, but six years is a long time to wait for due process. We keep being told this by the Indian authorities—when the issue was raised by Boris Johnson some years back, he was given the same reassurance that there was going to be a trial very soon. Here we are, six years on and there has not been a trial, so not surprisingly the family have very little confidence in those kinds of reassurance. The international community has confirmed that Mr Johal has been detained in conditions which suggest that he has been seriously tortured. It really is coming to a point where one is expecting something more than polite conversations with the Indian Government. Were we having more than polite conversations?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

I assure the noble Baroness that whatever the nature or substance of a conversation, I would regard any engagement we have as polite, but politeness does not mean that we cannot be straight and candid in those exchanges. The engagement we have with the Government of India is a constructive friendship; it is a partnership. As I have already said from the Dispatch Box, I fully accept that Mr Johal’s case has continued over a number of years, and I have been engaged directly on this. That is why it is important that we keep it very much on the front burner, and that is exactly why in the bilateral engagement my right honourable friend had with the Prime Minister of India, he raised this.