Shaker Aamer

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Westminster Hall

[Jane Ellison]

I could not agree more; it is exactly that. It is one of the distinguishing lines that we should draw between our mature democracies and those we have criticised over many years. For many decades, the west criticised the gulags of the Soviet era, yet we seem to have replicated them.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate; she makes a compelling case. Can she shed any light on the change from what we thought was clearance to be freed to clearance to go only to Saudi Arabia? I have seen it reported in the press. Does she know how that change in, presumably, the US position occurred?

[Jane Ellison]

In short, no. That is one of the things I hope to tease out in the debate. The US did not specify any countries at the time, but clearly said “countries where appropriate arrangements can be made.” I shall go on to make the case that the UK is the most appropriate country with which those arrangements could be made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alistair Burt]

I understand the point fully, and, again, the answer is partly the same that I would have given a moment ago, in terms of allegations made against British security forces and the like. However, I will say two things in response. I can say clearly that we are using, and will continue to use, our best endeavours to secure Shaker Aamer’s release. I am aware of the allegations that have been made, and want to make it clear that all parts of Government are pulling in the same direction, for Mr Shaker Aamer’s release.

Also, as to the Government’s response to allegations of wrongdoing in the past by British security services, and our attempts to open things up and to give compensation where things have been wrong, the Prime Minister has said explicitly that torture and rendition are not part of British security activity, whether or not they have been in the past. We have opened that up and offered compensation where things have been wrong. I think that the hon. Lady will appreciate that it is not in our interest, having gone so far in relation to other cases, to seek to do something contrary now. I give an assurance that all parts of the British Government system are pulling in the same direction, for the return of Mr Shaker Aamer.

[Stephen Timms]

I am grateful for that assurance about the activities of all parts of the UK Government. Can the Minister shed any light on the point that we discussed earlier about the reason for the change on the part of the US authorities from apparently clearing Mr Aamer for release, to clearing him only for release to Saudi Arabia?

[Alistair Burt]

As far as I am aware—I checked with officials during the debate—our understanding is that he has only ever been cleared for transfer. I am not aware that he has been cleared only for transfer to one place. [Interruption.] He has been cleared for transfer to Saudi Arabia; but it is our understanding that he has always been cleared for transfer to Saudi Arabia. That does not, of course, prevent the United Kingdom from seeking to get him returned to the United Kingdom. We believe Shaker Aamer should be returned here, to his family and everything else. Our understanding is that the United States has not changed its position and that it has always been the case—he is cleared for transfer to Saudi Arabia.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Tuesday 4th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

9. What recent assessment he has made of the security situation in Israel and Gaza.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

14. What his latest assessment is of the prospects for a two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

15. What recent assessment he has made of the political situation in Israel and Palestine.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hague]

Yes, absolutely. The way forward is what we discussed a few moments ago: to make a success of the second stage of the ceasefire negotiations. Egypt did a very good job, supported by the UN Secretary-General and the United States, in bringing about the ceasefire. Now it is important to conclude the second stage, which will bring—we hope—improved access and an end to the smuggling of weapons. The hon. Lady is right to say that secure borders are necessary for Israel, as, too, is having a viable, sovereign state of Palestine. That is what we want for Palestinians.

[Stephen Timms]

The Foreign Secretary told the House earlier that the additional settlement building in the E1 area of East Jerusalem announced last week would clearly be unlawful. What prospect is there of prevailing on Israel to comply instead with the requirements of international law?

[Mr Hague]

That is the point that the world is stressing to Israel—that those settlements are illegal, that they are on occupied land and, in particular, that the unfreezing of development in what is known as the E1 block threatens the prospect of a future Palestinian state being able to operate on contiguous land. This point is being made strongly, not only by us and our European partners but by the US and the whole Arab world. I hope that despite the election campaign in Israel—election campaigns affect the politics of any country—it will listen carefully to those points.

Rohingya Communities

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Tuesday 11th September 2012 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I am very pleased that my hon. Friend has secured this debate. Has he heard, as I have, that one problem is that those who have fled from their home areas have not been able to cross into Bangladesh, which has made their position worse than it might have been had such an escape been possible?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

My right hon. Friend quite rightly makes an incredibly important point, and I hope to touch on that later. I also hope that the Minister will say something about Bangladesh and its response to this crisis.

Malnutrition in the camps is a particular concern, with very high levels of severe acute malnutrition among children, especially those from the Rohingya community. It is clear that there is a desperate need for humanitarian assistance for both the Rohingya community and, indeed, the Rakhine community in the camps. However, the response has been hampered by restrictions on access, by threats and intimidation and by the arrest of some UN and aid agency staff. I would therefore be grateful to the Minister if he made a commitment to increase the diplomatic pressure on the Burmese regime to enable full humanitarian access to all the people of Rakhine, including the Rohingya community.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Tuesday 17th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr Jeremy Browne)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the diligence with which he has pursued the case of his constituent. I have raised the case with the Indian authorities on two occasions but have not yet resolved it to his or my satisfaction. I am more than happy to meet him and others to try to make further progress.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

T8. The International Crisis Group reported in December that:“Women in Sri Lanka’s predominantly Tamil-speaking north and east are facing a desperate lack of security in the aftermath of the long civil war.” It refers to forced prostitution and trafficking. Will the Minister raise those issues in his dialogue with the Government of Sri Lanka?

[Alistair Burt]

We thought that it was a good report, with elements that we certainly recognise and that also match some of the issues raised through the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, so those concerns will form part of our dialogue with Sri Lanka as it works towards its own determination to secure peace and reconciliation for the future, which we believe must also be based on justice for the past.

Abduction of Lydia Hunt

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for granting this, the final debate of the calendar year. Lydia Hunt is the first child of my constituent Jonathan Hunt and his wife Irma Obregon Guerrero. Lydia was born in June 2006. At Easter 2008, shortly before Lydia’s second birthday, the family travelled to Mrs Hunt’s native Mexico for a holiday with her family. Mr Hunt returned to the UK in May for work commitments, and the plan was that his wife and Lydia would follow a couple of weeks later. Some time later, Mrs Hunt called her husband to tell him that there would be a delay. She first said that she was unwell and then that her father was entering a land deal and that she needed to sign some papers in connection with it. She noted that the slow-moving legal system in Mexico meant that she would have to stay for at least a month.

The plan was that Mrs Hunt and Lydia would accompany Mrs Hunt’s parents to the UK in August, where they intended to spend a holiday, but on 16 August 2008, at 1 o’clock in the morning, Mr Hunt received a call from his wife to inform him that they would not be coming and that she did not intend to return at all but instead planned to remain in Mexico with Lydia. To date, Lydia remains in Mexico with Mrs Hunt. Their whereabouts are officially unknown. An arrest warrant for Mrs Hunt was applied for some time ago and finally confirmed in July this year after numerous appeals and delays, but it has not been acted on. When asked for a reason, the Mexican authorities say that they are still investigating.

Mexico is a signatory to The Hague convention on the civil aspects of international child abduction of 1980. This requires the determination of abduction cases involving minors within six weeks from the date of commencement of proceedings. I want to take this opportunity to thank the Minister, who is in his place on the Government Front Bench, for the personal interest that he has taken in the case. He has raised it on a number of occasions with his Mexican counterpart, and I know that the Foreign Secretary also discussed Lydia’s abduction with the Mexican Foreign Minister on a recent visit to the UK. I am very grateful for those interventions, but Lydia has not been returned and Mexico has still not met its legal obligations. This evening, I should like to press the Minister on the further specific actions that the UK Government can take to secure her return.

I am keen to underline two points: first, the length of time it has taken for Mr Hunt’s case to be dealt with—three years and counting; and, secondly, the wider issue of the non-compliance of a signatory to an international treaty. On the first point, let me set out a little more detail on the case.

Under The Hague convention, when a child has been removed abroad from its habitual residence, they have first to be returned to the country of habitual residence for the courts in that country to start determining custody. That is the basis on which the convention works. Three days after Mr Hunt’s wife made her bombshell telephone call announcing that she was not coming back—that is, on 19 August 2008—Mr Hunt filed a convention request for the Mexican authorities to return Lydia. Before that date, Mr Hunt knew nothing at all about The Hague convention, which requires that such requests be complied with within six weeks—that is, in this case, by the end of September 2008. In fact, more than three years later, it has still not been complied with.

Lydia was made a ward of the High Court in London in January 2009, so any major decision about her has to be made by the High Court. After a delay of almost a year, the Mexican court issued a return order for Lydia in December 2009 with immediate effect, and that judgment correctly followed the terms of The Hague convention.

In the following March—that is, March last year— Mr Hunt’s wife filed for an amparo, a Mexican legal procedure that is intended, I understand, to protect the constitutional rights of a Mexican citizen. It appears in practice—at least in this case—to give almost unlimited scope for frustrating the execution of international law. As a result of the amparo, The Hague order and the arrest warrant for Mrs Hunt were both suspended.

In May this year, an amparo hearing was held. The judge ordered that the original notice was not executed according to local domestic law, and that the entire process should start again. Mr Hunt was advised at the time by his very experienced lawyers in Mexico that that conclusion was wrong. It certainly was not consistent with international law, and his advisers pointed out that the judge, in his ruling, did not refer at all to The Hague convention and overlooked several aspects of amparo legislation as well.

On 11 August this year, Mr Hunt’s lawyers submitted an appeal to the federal court. The appeal panel of three federal judges in San Luis Potosi upheld Mrs Hunt’s amparo on 11 November on the grounds that she was not notified of the return order made by the first family judge under the terms of The Hague convention 1980. Of course, she was in fact well aware of the order: she had been engaged in challenging the initial judgement, and she would not have been in a position to do so if she had been unaware of the order.

Mr Hunt has now been told that a new Hague hearing will be scheduled for 26 March next year in San Luis Potosi. He is understandably worried that, although a date has been set, there is nothing to stop his wife from once again embarking on a series of amparos and appeals, as the previous three years of litigation have been rendered null and void by the court’s decision. If legal proceedings were to stall again, there would be an argument that Lydia was by now settled in Mexico and any enforced return would be detrimental to her welfare.

It may be appropriate that the amparo process gives rise to limited delays, but in this case the process has continued for more than three years, and it is now set to last even longer, even though it clearly makes a nonsense of Mexico’s obligations under The Hague convention.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

As chair of the all-party Mexico group, I am pleased to support what my right hon. Friend is doing and compliment him on the huge amount of work that he has done—and, indeed, the Foreign Office on the pressure that it has applied in the case of the Mexican Government. He and I are due to meet the ambassador in January, when we will obviously press the ambassador to insist that Mexico adhere to all its obligations under The Hague convention.

My right hon. Friend is making a most serious point—that a further delay in the amparo at San Luis Potosi in March will mean that it could be argued that this child is a normal resident of Mexico. That is the danger. This is, bluntly, a case of abduction. We look to our friends in the Mexican Government and Mexican judiciary to adhere to international conventions and law and to allow this child to be returned to this country. She is, after all, a British national.

[Stephen Timms]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for the support that he has given in this case. I very much look forward to the meeting with the ambassador in January. The fact that that meeting has been put in the diary is in no small part thanks to my hon. Friend’s intervention. He is absolutely right, of course.

The heart of this debate is Lydia’s welfare and well-being. She was two when she was abducted. I have no idea what she has been told about the whereabouts of her father or about what became of her former home in the UK. She has had no contact at all with her father for more than three years. There has been no effort to enable her to meet, or even to speak, to her father throughout the whole of that period. The preamble to The Hague convention states that signatories should be

“firmly convinced that the interests of children are of paramount importance in matters relating to their custody desiring to protect children internationally from the harmful effects of their wrongful removal or retention and to establish procedures to ensure their prompt return to the State of their habitual residence as well as to secure protection for rights of access”.

Signatories to the convention are required to consider the interests and the welfare of an abducted child as being of paramount importance. That has clearly not happened in this particular case.

One consolation to my constituent would have been if a welfare check ordered by the British Embassy had been carried out. That check has not been carried out because of a number of difficulties in trying to do so, and despite an intervention on the part of Bob Geldof. My constituent has not only not had the chance to see or to speak to Lydia in the past three years, but has not even been able to establish whether she is safe and well.

Mr Hunt’s hopes were raised when his wife failed to “ampere” a criminal charge, which meant that an arrest warrant could finally be executed. That would have allowed the police to locate her and require her, by the terms of bail, to give an address where she lives with her daughter. Unfortunately, the warrant has still not been executed. The whereabouts in Mexico of Mrs Hunt’s family are known to the police. The family well knows where she and Lydia are; and the police could, if they chose, quite readily find out from the family where she and Lydia are. It seems highly unlikely that they do not know where she is, but the warrant, for whatever reason, has not been implemented.

Obviously, the British Government cannot interfere directly with the legal processes of another country. However, the fact is that despite Mexico’s having signed The Hague convention, Lydia has yet to be returned. The website of The Hague Conference on Private International Law describes the convention as

“a multilateral treaty, which seeks to protect children from the harmful effects of abduction and retention across international boundaries by providing a procedure to bring about their prompt return”.

The convention has clearly been flouted in this particular case. Many abduction cases are resolved promptly, but some cases, such as this one, are held up because countries refuse to comply with the terms of The Hague convention, even though, like Mexico, they have signed it. A flagrantly non-compliant country can still press other treaty partners to fulfil their obligations and return children who have been abducted from their own country.

A disappointing aspect of my involvement in this case is that it has not yet been possible for me to meet the Mexican ambassador. I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) for his intervention. I am pleased, as he said, that we now have an appointment with the ambassador in January.

Child abduction is becoming more common. Reunite International child abduction centre, which has been working with Mr Hunt over the past three years, tells me that until September this year, the number of abduction cases reported to its advice line was up by 46% compared with the same period last year. The number of prevention cases went up by 35% in the same period. The problem of non-compliance will be suffered by many other parents in the future—parents who, like Mr Hunt, have had their children abducted to countries that signed The Hague convention only to find it time-consuming and expensive to pursue a return, as has Mr Hunt. My constituent has so far spent more than £80,000, mainly in legal costs, in attempting to secure his daughter’s safe return. It could well be that he will have to find a similar sum again, given that it appears that we are back at square one as a result of the most recent court decision.

I noted recently that a Republican Congressman in the United States, Chris Smith, the long-serving representative for Robbinsville, New Jersey, has sponsored a Bill on this topic. The International Child Abduction Prevention and Return Bill proposes the establishment of an office on international child abduction, which would report regularly on progress in individual cases and on the compliance of countries with their obligations under The Hague convention. The Bill would vest powers in the President, allowing him to impose specific sanctions to increase pressure to end cases of non-co-operation. Perhaps we should consider something similar in the UK. That initiative in the United States Congress underlines that, as a signatory to The Hague convention, the UK is not alone in struggling to ensure that non-compliant nations meet their treaty obligations.

I will finally pose three questions to the Minister. First, what assistance can the British embassy provide to the Mexican authorities in their search for Mrs Hunt? I know that a letter was sent by the attorney-general in San Luis Potosi to the attorney-general in Mexico City asking that he instruct the police, who are under his jurisdiction, to locate Mrs Hunt and arrest her. That would, in turn, allow the British embassy to conduct the long-awaited welfare check on Lydia. Mrs Hunt must be obliged to give recognised contact details, which would enable the process of returning Lydia under the terms of The Hague convention to get under way.

Secondly, can the Minister assure me that he will continue to raise this case with the Mexican authorities, as he has on a number of occasions, and to impress on them the importance of meeting the obligations that they have signed up to under The Hague convention, which they are not currently fulfilling? I was pleased to learn that Lord Justice Thorpe, who leads on these matters for the UK judiciary, has offered his assistance to the Mexican authorities in complying with their obligations under The Hague convention, and that he plans to raise this case in The Hague next month at a meeting convened for the purpose.

Finally, what steps can be taken against countries, such as Mexico, that are non-compliant in this way? It is clearly not right for a treaty partner not to fulfil its obligations as set out in an international treaty that it has signed freely, and which it will be able to take advantage of when it wishes to do so. What recourse is available when a signatory to an international treaty—this one or others—does not fulfil its obligations under that treaty? What specific action can the UK Government take to address Mexico’s non-compliance in this particular case?

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

9. What recent discussions he has had with the Mexican authorities on progress in the investigation into the abduction of Lydia Hunt.

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr Jeremy Browne)]

I raised the case directly with the Mexican Deputy Foreign Minister during my meeting with her in Mexico City last Tuesday, and my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary also raised it when he met the Mexican Foreign Minister in London in June. We expressed our concerns about Lydia Hunt’s welfare, the delays in locating her, and the slow progress in resolving the case through the courts.

[Stephen Timms]

I am very grateful to the Minister. My constituent Jonathan Hunt has been seeking his daughter’s return for three years since she was abducted to Mexico, although the country is a signatory to The Hague convention, which requires the determination of cases involving minors within six weeks. What more can the Minister do to help Lydia, and how can he tackle non-compliance with the convention by member states such as Mexico?

[Mr Browne]

That, in essence, is the point that I put to the Minister when I saw her last week. We are keen for progress to be made as quickly as possible, but we are told by the Mexicans that legal obstacles prevent it from being made as quickly as we should like. We continue to press the case of the right hon. Gentleman’s constituent.