International Child Abduction

Mark Fletcher Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Mark Fletcher (Bolsover) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins, and to follow the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter). I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds), who gave an outstanding introductory speech. He and I have spoken about the issue on a number of occasions, as we are two Members with constituents who are affected. It is an incredibly difficult and complex area. As he alluded to in his opening remarks, my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), who unfortunately cannot be in the Chamber, has been incredibly helpful, and has covered a lot of ground on this. We have followed in her slipstream to try and make progress in this incredibly complicated area.

Parental child abduction is a dreadful act that is unfortunately more common than we anticipate in our society. In such complicated and emotive cases, it is crucial that the welfare of children is at the centre of all our discussions. Too often, the legal and moral questions become a battle of wills between parents, and leave a vulnerable son or daughter displaced, manipulated and stranded from the life they were due.

I want to raise the case of my constituent John Fletcher, and his daughter Maya who was abducted by her mother to Poland in 2018. Maya was born in November 2014 and is now eight years old. Despite court orders in both the UK and Poland, Maya’s mother took her to Poland in 2018. An appeal at The Hague found in favour of Mr Fletcher, yet the Polish authorities have not assisted in locating and returning Maya to the UK. He has tried his best to have the court’s decision enforced multiple times since 2019, at great personal and financial cost, but to no avail.

The Polish authorities have not been co-operative and have given spurious reasons for their lack of assistance. Mr Fletcher believes that the Polish authorities are siding with the mother. As a result, Maya is currently residing with her mother in Poland, despite a court order saying she should be returned to the UK to live with her father. That is legally and diplomatically incredibly difficult.

I do not wish to return to the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner, and the way in which he outlined the legal situation, but I will touch on two areas. First, I am from Polish stock; my mother’s father was very proud of being Polish and I have always had a great affinity with that country. As has been alluded to in more than one speech, Poland is a great ally of this nation on many fronts. I appreciate that we recently left the European Union—there was a bit of news about that—which has changed the relationship in some ways. Nevertheless, diplomatically, I feel that parental child abduction is one of the great sore points in our relationship with that great nation.

I appeal to the Polish authorities and indeed the Polish Government to take stock and think. If the shoe were on the other foot, would a similar reaction be acceptable? Various legal procedures have been followed by many of our constituents, yet they still are not getting anywhere. I am great friends with the Minister. I know that she is always assiduous in researching every debate that she responds to, but I ask her directly whether the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office is giving enough resources and priority to these cases. It feels to me as though we are finding officials at a very junior level, but the engagement that is necessary at a more senior level is perhaps being denied to our constituents.

I would also like to touch on what it is like emotionally for the parents involved. I mentioned the great financial and personal cost; Mr Fletcher sold his house, moved back in with his parents, moved jobs so that he can work more shifts and has gone out to Poland almost once every six weeks to try to retrieve his daughter. He spends every pound that he can gain on trying to return his daughter. It is really important to say that he loves his daughter very much. She is his world. He has lost not just his marriage, but the thing that came from his marriage that he is so fond of. When we have these debates, we must cover the technical, legal and diplomatic aspects, but we must also remember the individuals behind the stories.

I am not prone to hugging the constituents who come to my surgeries. I think I would have even fewer attendees if it was well known that I did. But I have to be honest; I spent half an hour with Mr Fletcher, who I had met previously, and I had nothing helpful to say to him beyond, “I will try and I will work with other hon. Members who are dealing with similar situations.” In those circumstances, we need to remember those individuals. A hug is meaningless in a surgery unless I can stand here and tell the Minister that this is what we are facing and unless she can go back to her Department and all those officials who speak to the Polish Government and others on a regular basis and make it a priority, because Mr Fletcher really needs our help.