Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

Justin Madders Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

Back in June, I tabled a written question asking what the total cost to the taxpayer was of the merger. The Department could not provide an answer at the time. Can the Secretary of State do so today?

[Dominic Raab]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. Over time, I am very confident that we will be able to deliver administrative savings because, of course, of back-office staff and other efficiencies. Of course, the work in terms of calculating the short, medium and long-term effects will be part of the CSR, and if the hon. Gentleman wrote to me, I would be very happy to write to give him a more detailed response.

UK Telecommunications

Justin Madders Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

My right hon. and learned Friend makes an important point about interoperability that was lost on some of the earlier remarks, and he is right in his assessment. On transparency—I appreciate that these are difficult issues for the House to grapple with—we have put as much into the public domain as possible. The telecoms supply chain review’s final report was published in July 2019, and the National Cyber Security Centre’s analysis is available on its website.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

The Foreign Secretary said that measures will be put in place to protect sensitive intelligence data, and in due course his judgment will be found to be correct or not. Given that he has described Huawei as high-risk, my constituents will rightly be asking what protections are in place for their sensitive data.

[Dominic Raab]

The crucial reassurance that I can give to the hon. Gentleman and his constituents is that their data will not be at risk at all because of the geared, leveraged and calibrated set of restrictions, including the exclusion of high-risk vendors from the core functions —the sensitive network operations—and the various other restrictions, including the 35% cap, on operations at the network level. If the hon. Gentleman looks at the package in the round, he will see that it is the right approach to protect not just the network’s resilience, but the integrity of individual data, while also ensuring that we are open for vital investment.

Situation in the Gulf

Justin Madders Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I have just asked the Defence Secretary that very question, to which the answer is yes.[Official Report, 24 July 2019, Vol. 663, c. 16MC.]

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

I agree with what the Secretary of State has said about the importance of freedom of navigation, so may I ask what guidance has been issued to escorting vessels about the use of force in defence of that principle?

[Mr Hunt]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will understand that we do not discuss rules of engagement publicly, for very obvious reasons, but we are always doing everything we can to make sure that those vessels are able to do what it takes to keep vessels safe.

British Citizens: Consular Support

Justin Madders Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2017 Westminster Hall

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered consular support for British citizens.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. I am grateful for the opportunity for this debate. My interest in this important issue was sparked by two of my constituents, who approached me with different issues but with one common theme: the help they had hoped would be provided by our consular services was not there when they needed it.

The first issue relates to my constituent David Greenaway, a former member of the British armed forces. Mr Greenaway contacted me by email on 28 October 2016 to tell me that he was being held in Iraq against his will and was not receiving assistance to remedy the situation. To summarise the case, Mr Greenaway was working in the city of Basra for Hannaford Construction, a company with headquarters in the United States. Unfortunately, after he started work in Iraq, he discovered that his employer had failed to pay a succession of outstanding invoices for his accommodation and an office that the company was using. By the time Mr Greenaway contacted me, it had also failed to pay his salary for four months, leaving him without the financial means of addressing his situation. That resulted in the owner of the hotel that Mr Greenaway was staying in confiscating his passport and holding him against his will until the arrears could be paid. At that stage, Mr Greenaway was also informed that he was banned from travelling out of the country until the debt was paid.

Mr Greenaway contacted the British embassy to request urgent assistance, but unfortunately the officials there did little more than advise him to seek legal advice, which of course he could not afford because his salary had been withheld for a significant time. No assistance with funding for legal fees or other ways of obtaining pro bono advice were offered.

On 31 October 2016, I wrote to the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), then Minister with responsibility for the middle east, to request that urgent assistance be provided to my constituent. I followed that up with a question to the Leader of the House on 3 November, who undertook to raise the matter with his colleagues in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Following my intervention, an official from the FCO was able to speak with the chief executive of Hannaford, Shane Hannaford, on 4 November, who undertook to resolve the matter as soon as he could. However, that proved to be no more than another empty promise by Hannaford, like those Mr Greenaway had received on many occasions previously.

Mr Greenaway was again informed that he could not be assisted with access to legal advice, obtaining a replacement passport or funding to obtain an exit visa. Mr Greenaway had of course also been informed that even if he obtained a passport, he would be prevented from leaving the country due to the outstanding debts in his name. In the meantime, the situation in the UK was also becoming difficult, with Mr Greenaway and his wife unable to meet mortgage payments and struggling to keep food on the table for their two young children.

When I spoke to the FCO official handling the case, I was extremely disappointed that he kept coming back to the matter being a commercial dispute for Hannaford to resolve, and did not offer anything that I considered to be concrete assistance. I found that particularly concerning given that Mr Greenaway was being subjected to a travel ban, which I understand is unlawful. The FCO did however eventually undertake to speak with colleagues in the US embassy. In the meantime, I made a number of telephone calls to Hannaford in the United States.

Eventually, on 14 November I received an email from Shane Hannaford in response to my calls telling me that the funds were being transferred imminently. Sadly, that was much like his other promises; the money did not materialise. Fortunately, in the meantime, Mr Greenaway, with the assistance of his family, managed to obtain a sum of money that the hotel accepted as a down payment on the arrears that had been accrued, and it agreed to return his passport.

By 18 November, Mr Greenaway had finally managed to leave the hotel, but he was still unable to leave the country due to the travel ban remaining in place. I continued to lobby my constituent’s employer on his behalf for the funds, which were finally transferred by Hannaford on 7 December, enabling Mr Greenaway to return to the UK two days later.

I hope that the Minster will understand from the circumstances I have outlined why I am so concerned about the response that my constituent received. Despite having served his country in the armed forces for a number of years, at times Mr Greenaway felt that he had been left completely isolated. Sadly, I do not see that the matter would have been resolved without my intervention. Simply advising an individual who is subject to an unlawful travel ban and who has had his salary withheld for four months to speak to a lawyer is really not good enough. I hope that the Minister can assure me that the right lessons will be learned.

How can it be right that an individual who has done nothing wrong can be effectively detained in another country, without any judicial process and without access to legal advice? I accept that there are times when diplomatic channels mean that a direct approach may not be the best route, but in this situation there cannot be any justification for the lack of a robust approach. I hope that the Minister will acknowledge that the support my constituent received was just not good enough. I also hope that the debate will serve as a warning to anyone thinking of working in Iraq for Hannaford Construction, which acted outrageously at all stages and had no regard to my constituent’s safety or wellbeing at all.

The second situation relates to my constituent Paul McCann, and sadly it is still unresolved. Paul, along with his twin brother Gary, founded the charity Twin Vision, which undertook work in India with disadvantaged children. Tragically, on 30 October 2004, while on the way to a meeting with an American charity in New Delhi to discuss establishing an outreach photography project with the city’s impoverished street children, Gary was involved in a hit-and-run incident. After arriving at New Delhi following a lengthy train journey, Gary hailed a rickshaw to take him to his hotel, but at around 6 am a 30-seater bus jumped a red light and collided with the rickshaw, killing him instantly. The driver did not stop at the scene, but he was later apprehended by a witness and subsequently arrested.

I cannot imagine the hurt and distress that the incident caused Paul and the rest of his family, but sadly, 13 years after that tragic incident, Paul is still on a painful journey to obtain justice for his brother. Despite making very simple requests on repeated occasions, he has not been aided in that journey either by our high commissioner in India or by the Indian high commissioner here in London. Because of the intransigence of the authorities in India, it took him more than a decade just to obtain his brother’s death certificate. Sadly, despite multiple requests, he was not aided in that by our consular services. Despite us being almost thirteen years on from the tragic incident, he has still not been able to obtain any details at all about the status of the case against his brother’s killer.

Mr McCann initially approached my predecessor, Andrew Miller, before I took up the matter when I was elected to this place just over two years ago. However, despite the best efforts of us both over a number of years, and innumerable letters to both the Indian high commissioner and FCO officials, we have been unable to make significant progress. Mr Miller attended a meeting some years ago with a previous high commissioner, and I have met with another, who has also since moved on. We also both engaged in numerous exchanges with our own officials. However, what should be a simple request for information has still not been met, and none of this has resulted in anything more than promises for follow-up correspondence, which subsequently fail to materialise. To deny Mr McCann any sense of closure all these years on is a tragedy on a tragedy, and one that I am determined to help him address, however long it takes. All this is compounded by what he feels is a failure of our consular services to do anything to assist him.

I will first ask the Minister, as I have asked his predecessors in the past in writing, whether he will instruct his officials to make representations on Mr McCann’s behalf to the authorities in India, asking them to provide him with an update as soon as possible. I also ask him to look into this matter personally and assure us that he is satisfied that everything that can be done has been done.

I would also like to put on the record my anger and frustration with the Indian high commission in London, which has either given me undertakings that updates would be provided and then not met them, or ignored my correspondence altogether. I hope that today’s debate will be the final spur it needs to provide Mr McCann with meaningful information in the very near future. It may be that it will still not respond, and it may be that a more assertive approach from our consulate would not reap any rewards either, but if it could make a personal approach out in India, then at least my constituent would know that every avenue had been explored.

[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

I commend the great work and the service that the hon. Gentleman is doing on behalf of the Greenaway and McCann families. He will be aware, as will the Minister, of the fate of the six British ex-service personnel languishing in jail in Chennai in India, including my constituent Billy Irving. Will he join me in asking the Minister to put pressure on the Foreign Office and the consular service in India to give as much support as they can to the families, and to seek a speedy resolution—the release of those innocent men?

[Justin Madders]

I certainly echo those sentiments. My hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) also has a constituent in that dreadful situation. It looks like it could drag on for many years, which is intolerable for the families. I understand that sometimes these things cannot be best discussed in an open forum—that does not always reap the best results—but we are in a much more open society now. Channels of communication across the world are much easier, and the information needed should be getting to those in this country, so that they can feel that some progress is being made. I understand the frustration and anxiety of the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O'Hara) that things do not seem to be moving as swiftly as we would like.

I know that the Minister is also aware of the very serious cases of British dual nationals Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Kamal Foroughi, who are imprisoned against their will in Iran, and that a request has been made of the Government in Iran for Mr Foroughi to be released.

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for mentioning the case of my constituent Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has been imprisoned in Iran for 18 months, separated from her daughter and husband. She is a dual national, as he said. She has been refused consular access countless times. Does my hon. Friend agree that where there is a pattern of a country denying consular assistance, the Government should commit to bringing cases before the International Court of Justice?

[Justin Madders]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention and agree with her suggestion. It seems that only certain countries play by the same rules, and it is frustrating when what we think is the right way to deal with things is not replicated in various locations around the world. I know that she has been an assiduous supporter of her constituent, and I hope that the Minister can give some assurances on that case.

In conclusion, as we have heard from the two cases I mentioned and from other hon. Members today, these situations are complex, difficult to navigate and far from easy to resolve. Some of the situations I have referred to have been stretching on for years. I am sure that every Member of this place wants the assurance and confidence of hearing from the Minister that consular support, the Foreign Office and individual Ministers and Members are doing absolutely everything they can to assist our citizens when they are in these difficult situations abroad.

European Union Referendum Bill

Justin Madders Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

Thank you for calling me, Mr Deputy Speaker. I understand that during my maiden speech I am unlikely to be interrupted. That is good to know, as it is an experience that I have not had since my children learned to talk.

It is a privilege to follow such a long-serving and formidable parliamentarian as the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash).

I want to pay tribute to my predecessor, Andrew Miller, who served the constituency with distinction for 23 years. In his five years as Chair of the Science and Technology Committee, he commanded the respect of the whole House for his diligent, thorough and fair stewardship, just as he was respected in Ellesmere Port and Neston for his commitment to representing its people. I am personally grateful for all the help and advice that he has given me over the years.

The constituency is largely based on the footprint of the old Ellesmere Port and Neston Borough Council, on which I served for 11 years. It contains rural villages such as Elton, Willaston, Childer Thornton, Burton and Mickle Trafford—and, most notably, Neston, with its thriving market and natural beauty at Ness Gardens. However, the constituency is a largely urban area centred on Ellesmere Port and Little and Great Sutton. There is some major industry: Vauxhall and Essar, although sadly they employ a fraction of the number of people they employed 30 years ago, are still of critical importance.

The borough council’s achievements in diversifying the employment base mark it out for special note. Under the leadership of Fred Venables and Reg Chrimes, great efforts were made to tackle the ravages of unemployment during the 1980s, and decisions that were made then still benefit the constituency today. I subsequently served on the successor unitary authority, Cheshire West and Chester, where I was fortunate enough to work with another stalwart, Councillor Derek Bateman. All three of those men, whose combined time in office was 151 years, were the kind of community leaders who have been the backbone of public service. I for one will always remember the valuable lessons they taught me about respect, loyalty and basic decency—qualities that are too often forgotten in modern politics.

The constituency has historically benefited from investment from the EU and only last year Ellesmere Port was granted assisted area status, which will help accelerate growth. That status lasts until the end of the decade so is a very direct example of what my constituency could lose if we leave the EU.

Existing major employers who strategically invest on a Europe-wide basis will be looking at their plans and asking themselves whether they really want to take the risk and invest in a country whose future is unknown. We are in a very competitive world and we can be sure that major employers such as Vauxhall and Airbus, who between them employ thousands of people in my constituency but also have factories throughout Europe, will be having those other factories pointing out at every opportunity the certainty that they offer. I welcome the opportunity for the country to have its say, but let us have a swift decision and give everyone certainty for the future.

It is not just the investment that is at risk, but also hard-won employment rights enshrined in the social chapter. Do we really want to go back to a time when we had no right to paid holidays, no right to rest breaks, no limits on a safe working week? That would be a return to the dark ages. I saw first-hand as an employment lawyer the importance of those rights in a system that offers no job security. I have met too many people who have given half their lives to an employer, offering loyalty and fidelity, only to find themselves discarded at the stroke of a pen by someone based in an office halfway around the world.

Insecurity at work in all its forms is one of the most insidious facets of modern life. People not knowing whether they will be able to put food on their family’s table at the end of the day and having the spectre of unemployment looming over them can be debilitating, destructive and deeply damaging not just for the individual but for their whole family.

Social justice includes workplace justice and the system as it currently stands does not deliver justice, but even access to that flawed system is denied to thousands of people every year. An 80% drop in employment tribunal claims since fees were introduced should be considered not a mark of success, but a mark of shame, for even the most begrudging would have to concede that some of those 80% have been denied justice and that poor employment practice has won.

I recall speaking to five women who had all worked in the same shop over a few months. All had been denied their pay for periods ranging from between one and six weeks, but not one of them could afford to proceed with an employment tribunal claim. Our rights are only as good as our ability to exercise them, and I do hope a serious appraisal of the fee system takes place as a matter of urgency.

We also need to look at the many ruses and mechanisms used to stop effective workplace protection—be it bogus self-employment, zero-hour contracts or the fact that people have to work somewhere for two years before they get any kind of basic statutory protection. Too many people feel a sense of vulnerability and inevitability about their job and the challenge for us is to value the quality and security of work as much as the creation of the job itself.

So I intend to spend my time here standing up for the people of Ellesmere Port and Neston, but also fighting for a fairer and more secure workplace for everyone in the country.