International Child Abduction

Matthew Offord Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mrs Cummins. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) on securing the debate.

During my time as the Member of Parliament for Hendon, I have supported several parents in my constituency in cases of international child abduction. I have raised cases with the Foreign Office, Interpol and even the ambassadors of the countries involved. In every instance, apart from one, eventually we have been successful in getting the abducted children returned to the UK and reunited with their illegally deprived parent.

One case, however, remains outstanding—that of my constituent, Beth Alexander, and her estranged twin sons in Austria. Beth has been fighting for custody of her sons for the past 10 years. More recently, she has been fighting simply for contact, which she has been deprived of by Austria’s courts. I do not suggest that the UK should dictate to the courts of another country how they should run their legal system, any more than I would accept another country dictating to us how to run ours, but I am shocked and indeed disappointed that the Austrian system has permitted this case to perpetuate to the point where my constituent has had little or no contact with her sons for a number of years.

Beth continues to seek access to her children, as all of us here would expect, but the Austrian judge overseeing the case has not only rejected Beth’s legal efforts, but barred all contact between her and her children, saying that that would not be in the interests of those same children. That that should be happening in a fair, civilised country, which has signed The Hague convention on child abduction seems extraordinary.

The purpose of the convention is to secure the prompt return of children who have been wrongfully removed to, or retained in, a contracted state, back to their place of habitual residence. That is in order to protect them from the potentially harmful effects of international abduction by a parent, and to organise or secure the effective rights of access to the child. Regrettably, there seems to be an imbalance in the way in which contracting states apply the convention, and the deprived parent can find themselves confused by the process, sometimes in a country where they do not speak the language, are uncertain what actions they should take, and are at the mercy of foreign systems.

This afternoon, we have heard about different countries, including places occupied by foreign aggressors, in the case of Cyprus. In particular, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher) for raising the case of his constituent, Mr Fletcher, and his trials and tribulations. We need to be aware that parents will do anything for their children, and it must be an almost Kafkaesque nightmare to be unable to access their child, because of another state’s legal system.

Contracting states should be required to be transparent in all their actions, but a real risk—as stated by other Members—is that the convention is used by some to protect the abducting parent’s actions. If parents are to have confidence in the fairness of the convention, it is time to consider whether it is meeting its aims and purpose effectively. From the stories we have heard this afternoon, I do not believe that that is happening. The case of my constituent is a tragedy, and it is time that it is brought to an end.