Jagtar Singh Johal

Patrick Grady Excerpts

Tuesday 27th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

I could not disagree, as I often say, with my hon. Friend. The gurdwaras not only in Scotland but across the whole of the UK share that concern about the ability of the Sikh diaspora to return to India and to engage freely. It is an issue for all of us as citizens, not just for those of a certain faith with clear relation to the Punjab. It is for any UK citizen travelling abroad to consider the support that they may be given once an issue arises.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

Like others, I have heard from a significant number of constituents about this case, particularly from those who attend the Guru Nanak Sikh temple in Otago Street, but also, as my hon. Friend says, from the wider community. There are concerns about the different approaches that the UK Government seem to take to citizens held in captivity in different countries. Does he agree that there must be consistency of approach from the Foreign Office, that all UK citizens who are held overseas must be treated with fairness and justice, and that, where there is a question of injustice, we must make efforts to ensure that people have the opportunity to return home?

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention; I think he might have read my speech and got to the end of it before me, because I was going to raise that point. I know that it is an issue not only for the all-party parliamentary group for British Sikhs—I see its redoubtable chair, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill), in her place—but for the all-party group on deaths abroad and consular services, the chair of which is my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell), who is on my party’s Front Bench at the moment.