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.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Fletcher Excerpts

Tuesday 20th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

Particularly after the Harry Dunn case, and what we learned about the risk of finding gaps in immunity—including long-standing gaps that date back to the last Labour Government—I will make no apologies for being very careful with EU representation, which falls somewhere between a normal international organisation and a sovereign Government’s mission. We must ensure that privileges and immunities are tailored to their functional need, and that we do not find ourselves with a gap. That means that we can hold people to account for ordinary crimes, as the public would expect. Frankly, given the various voices from the Labour Front Bench who have raised the case of Harry Dunn, I am utterly surprised that the hon. Lady would not expect us to take such a rigorous approach.

[Mark Fletcher (Bolsover) (Con)]

I have been in correspondence with the Minister for European Neighbourhood and the Americas with respect to a complex constituency case. What help can FCDO officials give to constituents who have favourable court orders in both this country and another jurisdiction to repatriate a child to the UK, but who face constant battles and hurdles to do so?

Commonwealth in 2020

Mark Fletcher Excerpts

Monday 9th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

I worked with the Commonwealth secretariat and I have worked at the United Nations on these issues, so I know exactly what the hon. Lady is referring to. However, the proof is in the pudding, and I am afraid that the pudding is going rotten—things are going backwards. The situation of LGBT rights in these countries is deteriorating, not improving. If this is all done through private discussions, which are important, those discussions are going very poorly. Perhaps there comes a time when gently—we do not have to embarrass people—we publicly say, “We don’t think enough progress has been made on this, and we would like to move forward.”

It is important to say that all those countries have laws on their statute books because we imposed them. Those laws were not there before colonisation. In many of those countries, there was no legal discrimination and we imposed it. We have rightly seen our historical mistake and we have changed how we do things here, but we have a duty then to support others on the ground. It was right that the then Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), apologised last year. It was a brave thing for the Government to do, but it is time now for actions. Not only did the Government fail to put LGBT rights on the agenda, but the communiqué from London failed to mention them even once. Let us contrast that with what happened at the Commonwealth youth forum, where LGBT rights were raised in the opening and in the calls for action.

[Mark Fletcher (Bolsover) (Con)]

I am struggling a bit with the hon. Gentleman’s mental leap. He seems to be saying that we are responsible for all the problems with our colonial past and the laws that were created, and we are equally now responsible—he is lambasting the Government for this—for not forcing other Commonwealth countries to live up to our standards. I cannot see how we are responsible for the former and we are also responsible for letting them have free countries.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Usually, where someone goes into a shop and smashes a vase, they have a responsibility to fix it, or at least to pay for it to be fixed or replaced. If we go around the world smashing some people’s civil rights up, we have a responsibility to help sort it out. The question I asked the Minister was: how are we supporting the activists on the ground in those countries to make sure that they can pressure their Governments on laws that we imposed? I am afraid that if the hon. Gentleman cannot understand that, we are not going to see eye to eye on history or diplomatic relations.

Going back to where there is perhaps a glimmer of hope in the Commonwealth, the CYF brought together 500 delegates from around the Commonwealth, and it started to show us the future direction of many countries. Some 60% of the Commonwealth’s 2.4 billion population are under 30, so what are our Government doing to ensure that those young people’s voices are heard and amplified? As my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) suggested in the previous debate, we need to start to take Commonwealth youth service seriously, so that we can support those young people to hold their leaders to account. Will the Minister commit to training and funding young people to ensure that they are able to participate in the Commonwealth youth forum at this year’s forthcoming CHOGM? I am talking about supporting people from Britain and from some of the poorest countries from around the world that are Commonwealth members.

I have attended three CHOGMs, and this year’s will be the first to be held in a country that has never been a part of the British empire or part of a realm of the Crown. It will be held in a country where gender equality has been achieved by its Parliament, where the median age is 22.7 and where 69% of people are under 30. The CHOGM in Rwanda provides a real opportunity for gender equality and young people to be at the heart of the Commonwealth, and to put right some of the missed opportunities we had in London.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Fletcher Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

6. What diplomatic steps his Department is taking to help promote prosperity in Africa.

[Mark Fletcher (Bolsover) (Con)]

16. What diplomatic steps his Department is taking to help promote prosperity in Africa.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Stephenson]

I start by paying tribute to my predecessor for the work that she did in the early preparations for the summit. The summit achieved its objectives of laying the foundations for a new, stronger relationship between the United Kingdom and Africa, based on mutually beneficial trade and investment. Following our departure from the European Union, the Government will build further on those foundations in a range of ways, and we are currently looking at the feedback from the summit.

[Mark Fletcher]

I echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) on the Africa investment summit. Too often, Britain’s interests when it comes to Africa are piecemeal and we are not good enough when it comes to sustained engagement, so what plans does the Minister have to engage with the African Union on a regular basis?

[Andrew Stephenson]

Excellent. I very much welcome that question. The African Union is justifiably seen internationally as a strong and influential partner, able to bring African countries together. During the Africa investment summit, chairperson Faki met the Prime Minister and my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary. To support the development of the African continental free trade area, the Secretary of State for International Trade announced a £200 million southern African regional trading connectivity programme and a £20 million trade connect programme at the summit, which will further and deepen our partnership with the African Union.