Andy Slaughter
MP for Hammersmith and Chiswick · Labour · United Kingdom
“I welcome the Bill, and thank the Government for introducing it and bringing it back to the House before the summer recess. It is the result of years of committed campaigning, led by the families of the victims and survivors of Hillsborough.”
“I know that case means a huge amount to the hon. Lady as a constituency MP, and I thank her for all the work she does on the Justice Committee. I think we have only begun to scratch the surface. This Bill will be a transforming piece of legislation. I will make one final comment.”
“This would be a new, independent public body that collated, analysed and followed up on the conclusions and recommendations made after official investigations into deaths and state failings, in order to improve oversight and implementation of them.”
“I think I have taken enough time, but I thank the Member for that intervention. This afternoon, the Justice Committee signed off a new major report on legal aid, which will be published on Friday. Those who are interested can read more there.”
“In the time that I have, I will focus my remarks on clauses 1 to 16, which create a new appeals body for immigration and asylum cases known as the independent immigration appeals authority.”
“From that visit, our diagnosis was that these are operational problems. There are two key questions for the House: will the IIAA fix the problems with the current system, and will it be truly independent from the Home Office?”
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“The petitions received a very high number of signatures, and some of the highest numbers were among my constituents. That shows how a case such as Natasha’s can have a profound impact on not just a family, but a whole community. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) for securing last week’s debate marking Allergy Awareness Week and for his speech today. I looked carefully at the Minister’s reply, which I will come back to in more detail in a moment, from the debate last Thursday. I read nothing about steps towards appointing an allergy tsar in that response, which is unfortunate because that is something that the allergy community tell us is needed to keep people safe and to keep research moving forward. As we heard in both debates, allergies in the UK are on the rise.”
“Not only have they set up the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, which we have heard about, but they pioneered Natasha’s law, which came into effect in 2021. It requires food businesses to include full ingredient labelling on foods that are pre-packed for direct sale. Natasha’s law filled an important gap in food legislation and food safety, and Owen’s law would do exactly the same in another respect. His family are here today, and I praise them for having courage and pursuing this matter. I hope that because of the efforts made by these families, we will see a positive response. Although we have taken those important steps forward, there is still a lot of work to do, hence the petitions and the debates today and last week in this Chamber.”
“The afternoon I spent with Nadim, Natasha’s father, will stay with me for the rest of my life. He described his experience of how she went from enjoying a happy holiday—getting ready to go out, the excitement of getting ready to fly, taking the precautions she normally did as someone who knew about her allergies, in this case to sesame—to end in her awful death. I do not want to draw that out today, though. I am very pleased to see Natasha’s mother Tanya here today. I feel huge sympathy and compassion for the family, but also huge admiration for them and everything they have done to commemorate Natasha’s life, going far beyond what many people have done to ensure that the lives of others are improved.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham, in such an important debate. I will echo the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, the hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine), and others. Through relatively small changes to how the NHS is organised and to legislation, this dramatic change would both improve and save the lives of millions, so I hope we will hear something positive from the Minister. I also thank the hon. Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher), who opened the debate, for his comments about Natasha Ednan-Laperouse and her family, and for the sensitive and compassionate way in which he dealt with that tragic death. Natasha’s family are my constituents, and we have heard that Natasha died at the age of just 15 from eating an inadequately labelled Pret a Manger sandwich.”
“No one will wish the new commissioner of the Met success more than London MPs, whose constituents have suffered a catalogue of institutional harm under his predecessors, but his statement in the Evening Standard today is political somersaulting from start to finish, including justifying arrests because celebrating crowds “applauded and cheered” them. Is that not a direct result of the undue pressure put on the commissioner by a Conservative party that increasingly picks and chooses when it follows the rule of law?”
“T4. On 15 May, it will be 75 years since the Nakba—the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and the destruction of 500 Palestinian villages. Given Britain’s historical role in Palestine, what message does the Foreign Secretary have on this anniversary for the millions of displaced Palestinians in the occupied territories, refugee camps and the wider diaspora?”
“My constituents feel under siege from drug dealers, antisocial behaviour and online fraudsters. They will feel insulted by the Minister’s attempt to whitewash this Government’s record. Why did he destroy neighbourhood policing, and why does he ignore fraud, which represents 40% of crime but gets virtually no policing resources?”
“It was disappointing that there was no announcement in the Minister’s statement on recognition, on settlement trade and on supporting international law processes in the International Criminal Court or the International Court of Justice. We all agree with the condolences that he has expressed, and we have a debate this afternoon. Will he deal with one point, which is the transfer of a major part of the occupied territories to civilian administration? As a matter of law, that is de facto annexation. What has he addressed specifically with the Israeli Government on that point?”
“That is a disgrace. The Palestinians deserve justice, peace and a country of their own. We should recognise Palestine immediately and I hope we will hear some movement from the Minister when he responds.”
“It does not matter whether we are talking about de facto or de jure annexation—that is what is happening on the ground. When this was previously threatened, by a previous Netanyahu Government, the Government and the Opposition said that they would ban settlement goods if annexation took place. Annexation has taken place and it is now time for action, not simply for words. I am sorry that I do not have more time to expand on these thoughts. There are very clear legal principles. The International Criminal Court investigation, which will investigate the crimes of all combatants not just Israel, and the UN investigation deserve the support of the British Government. They would have had that support in previous years, but now, consistently, this Government are voting against that and blocking independent, international investigations.”
“What do we expect from the UK Government? I return to the point I made earlier, when I talked about annexation. The Minister, who is always very courteous and thoughtful in these matters, said that my analysis was right, so I hope that he will have got some more briefing notes from his civil servants and will be able to say a little more about that. Two things have happened so far this year. First, there has been a clear statement, both in the coalition agreement and from Prime Minister Netanyahu, to the effect that “the Jewish people have an exclusive and uncontestable right on the entire land of Israel. The government will advance and promote settlement in all parts of the land of Israel,” including in Judea and Samaria, which is their description of the occupied west bank.”
“The Government should be asking for an immediate end to the occupation and the blockade, but I fear they are stuck in time and the only moves that the current Government have made are in the wrong direction. Let me turn briefly to the issue of international law. The whole apparatus of occupation has been in effect for 56 years, and in three weeks’ time it will be the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, when 750,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes. That occupation, which has gone on, has an apparatus that controls every aspect of the daily lives of Palestinians, whether through home demolition, forced displacement, illegal settlement construction—there are now 750,000 illegal settlers, if east Jerusalem is included—greatly increased settler violence, movement restrictions, arbitrary detention and systematic discrimination.”
“Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) mentioned solitary confinement—a quarter of Palestinian children are detained in solitary confinement, for an average of 16 days but in some cases up to 40 days. That is a form of torture being practised on a widespread basis. Let me mention Gaza briefly, as I suspect there will not be much mention of it. It is a trap that we all fall into, because Gaza is blockaded and is kept away from the rest of the world. It is under occupation, effectively, despite the withdrawal of Israeli troops. Some 2.2 million people are in that open prison; there is about 50% unemployment and 60% of people rely on food aid. A whole generation has grown up in those abhorrent and appalling traditions. Again, those are breaches of international law.”
“It is very worrying that not only are there attacks on health workers and not only are ambulances routinely used as cover for Israeli troops engaged in military operations, but medical staff are prevented from reaching wounded people. We have heard about the effect on children. I was briefed by Defence for Children International, which has been in the UK this week. It is one of six organisations proscribed—on no evidence—as a terrorist organisation, along with Al-Haq and other well-known Palestinian human rights organisations. It told us about the thousands of children who have been imprisoned, some in administrative detention, which is a disgrace. The majority are in Israeli prisons, which is a breach of international law. My hon.”
“As we heard earlier, it also includes the murder of three British-Israeli women. Every one of those deaths is a tragedy, but they are the most serious instances of brutality, and include state-backed settler violence, as in Hawara, and the massive expansion in illegal settlement building and the violence that occurs around that. It includes the 1,000 Palestinians at imminent risk of forcible transfer from Masafer Yatta. I am grateful to Medical Aid for Palestinians, Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights and others who have briefed us for this debate. MAP says that 2,560 Palestinians have been injured so far this year, and there have been 260 settler attacks against Palestinians and their properties.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Member for Dundee West (Chris Law) and the Backbench Business Committee for securing this debate. The conditions on the ground in the occupied Palestinian territories are the worst they have been for nearly 20 years. That is directly related to the new far-right Government in Israel, and their willingness to terrorise or to allow the terrorising of the Palestinian civilian population and to ignore international law in the quest for the formal and actual annexation of large parts of the occupied Palestinian territory. We have heard that 98 Palestinians— 17 of them children—have been killed so far this year, and 17 Israelis. That includes a 15-year-old Palestinian boy killed by Israeli troops in the Aqabat Jaber refugee camp in Jericho.”
“To think it can be tinkered with through the sorts of means this Government are introducing now is a pure fantasy.”
“We need development corporations and an interventionist market in areas of high need. One of the good things about canvassing, which I first started about 40 years ago, is that we get to see how people live. Forty years ago, we were worried about conditions in the private rented sector. Now, in many cases the social housing sector is just as bad. Housing associations are running their stocks badly, partly because they do not have the means to do it. Unless and until we have a Government that are serious about housing people on low and medium incomes particularly, but also the population generally, as was the pledge from Governments of both parties in years gone by—until we get that sea change in attitude, we are not going to resolve this problem.”
“We now have, for sound environmental reasons, a huge bill for retrofitting and we also have—which we discovered in the wake of the Grenfell tragedy—a huge bill for fire safety. Against that, there has been a decline in the amount of money available. This is a created crisis. I do not believe that this Government are going to even begin to try to solve it in the next year, but a future Labour Government will have to tackle it head-on. There are many practical ways. Yes, of course more grants and investment are needed, but there are underspends in Homes England. There are ways of incentivising developers. There are ways of changing plans to require a minimum of 50% affordable housing, particularly in areas of extreme shortage. That is not impossible; in Vienna the requirement is 66%.”
“The cut to the social housing grant that was introduced in about 2011 and the freeze on rents, which prevented housing associations and councils expanding their stock, has really hobbled providers. This has been a 40-year process of decline. We have lost about half our council homes. It has gone from being a mainstream to a residual form of housing. Until we can reverse that, we will never resolve the housing crisis. In fact, the struggle now is much greater. Because the last major building programmes were back in the ’60s and ’70s, many of those estates and homes are now either reaching the end of their useful life or need substantial repair. That money is not there.”
“Not only could I have made this speech in any year since I was first elected in 2005, I have made this speech in every year since then, because sadly, since long before that, there has been a sustained decline of social housing. Effectively, half the council homes have been lost since the right to buy was introduced as part of Thatcher’s attack on social housing. It has been a very political attack. There is a completely erroneous belief that social tenants vote Labour and that Conservative voters do not particularly like social housing to be built. Actually, a survey last week showed that 70% of Conservative voters do want more social housing to be built. Perhaps the Conservatives’ electorate is slightly ahead of them on housing policy, because we are now in a deep housing crisis.”
“The hon. Gentleman is making a very good speech. Understandably, most of this debate has been about general needs housing, but there is also social housing, asylum seeker and refugee housing and housing for Roma Gypsies and travellers. These are especially neglected groups, and the Government have an appalling record on each of them.”
“Friend the Member for Sheffield Central indicated, the Government’s alternative simply does not address the issues of certainty, longevity or, in particular, leveraging in. It is impossible to replace what is being achieved. This is a real crisis and a fundamental moment of decision for the Government. We have to go back into Horizon; we have to have that access. Our universities are doing absolutely everything they can. They are world-leading. We need a Government who have the vision and understanding to match that.”
“About 60% of Imperial’s research papers with a US collaborator also have a European co-author, as do 68% of research papers with Canada and 83% with Brazil. Imperial told me in advance of this debate: “Outside Horizon Europe, the UK is in real danger of ceding our hard-won position in the global R&D hierarchy and becoming less attractive as a research partner and less attractive for foreign direct investment. As part of Horizon Europe, the UK can influence the future direction of billions of pounds worth of research investment to more closely align with UK strategic priorities.” That is what is at risk. Already, R&D investment in the UK is little more than half what it is in Japan, the US or Germany. Also, as my hon.”
“On average, over eight large-scale collaborative Horizon 2020 projects with a budget of more than €50 million, Imperial accessed world-class research consortia with funding that was at a scale of 280 times its own financial award, and those projects averaged 94 co-collaborating organisations. Hon. Members can take my word for it, but we also heard a lengthy intervention from the right hon. Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) about one of those Imperial projects and its success. We are not just talking about regenerating a whole district of London, and about a top UK university; we are talking about enabling British science and technology to compete with the US. The quality of the national ecosystem and the way it leverages in the wider EU ecosystem allows us to achieve scale through partnership.”
“Imperial was a partner on collaborative Horizon 2020 research projects worth more than €2.2 billion over the course of the programme. That means that in addition to direct funding, it had access to the data, infrastructure and knowledge generated through the wider project consortia. On average across all its collaborative Horizon 2020 projects, Imperial received access to world-class research consortia that had funding at a scale of 27 times its own financial awards. Those projects averaged 16 partner organisations, which developed networks and shared research expertise.”
“It is a major employer, builder and investor in the area, and it is developing world-leading research on quantum engineering, clean energy, machine learning and clinical trials on dementia, infectious diseases, cancer and many other matters. This is absolute cutting edge, but like many of our leading universities, Imperial relies on Horizon, and has done over a long period. I will explain what that means and why the Government’s solutions are simply not adequate to the task. UK universities have built high-impact science and innovation networks over more than three decades of collaboration within EU framework programmes. Those deep-seated networks aid the flow of ideas, talent and funding that underpins the UK’s leading science base.”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) on his excellent speech, and on getting this debate, which is relevant and pertinent, given what the Government are saying but not doing on this subject. I want to use my few minutes to talk about Imperial College London. Hon. Members will be familiar with Imperial; it is consistently one of the world’s top universities and is of great standing. It has been around for more than a century and leads in fields of science, engineering, medicine and business. If I can be slightly parochial, it also has the new White City campus, which is of much more recent origin, but which is already an innovation district. It has an industrial strategy jointly with Hammersmith and Fulham Council.”
“Is the Minister aware of the long-standing research by the University of Leicester on knife injuries, which found that carving knives are the most commonly used in stabbing incidents? A campaign was led by retired circuit judge Nic Madge, who has tried many knife offence cases. He said: “my experience is that the vast majority of knives carried by teenage boys are ordinary kitchen knives.” The campaign has made some practical recommendations such as only allowing the sale of large kitchen knives with rounded tips, to reduce serious injuries. Will the Minister engage with that work? What he announced today will make very little difference to the number of deaths and serious injuries on our streets, as perpetrators have other sources of knives available.”
“Last month, the Attorney General told the Justice Committee: “It is particularly important that they”— Government lawyers— “work to keep the Government acting properly and within the rule of law”. The House of Lords Constitution Committee found in January that the Government had “twice knowingly introduced legislation in Parliament which would…undermine the rule of law: the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill and the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill.” This Illegal Migration Bill, even before the Attorney General’s own Back Benchers are finished with it, is a further example of that. When will her “first duty…as an officer of the court”— those are her words—trump her loyalty to a lawbreaking Government?”
“The Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary has told Channel 4 FactCheck that he intends to correct the record, following his use at yesterday’s Prime Minister’s questions of an incorrectly low figure for rape convictions. Given the prominence and significance of the error, it would surely be inadequate were this to be done through a written ministerial correction squirrelled away at the back of Hansard . Will the Leader of the House persuade her Cabinet colleague to do the decent thing and come to this House, speedily and in person, to rectify his error?”
“In the past few weeks, asylum seekers have been placed in hotels in my constituency that the Home Office has then deemed unfit for occupation, and those asylum seekers have been dispersed to undisclosed locations at no notice. Children have been taken out of school in the middle of exams, and I am told that last night asylum seekers were dumped outside a hotel in Shepherd’s Bush and told to share rooms and beds with complete strangers. Is it the Government’s policy to punish and humiliate asylum seekers in these ways as a means of discouraging further migrants, even though on past experience the majority are likely to be granted status in the UK?”
“The best support that families could get is representation, but the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 virtually abolished private law family legal aid. Saturday will be the 10th anniversary of that Act coming into effect, and since then, legal aid expenditure has been cut by a third, advice is given in three quarters of a million fewer cases and applications for full legal aid have halved, as has the number of providers. In the light of that, does the Minister think that LASPO has been good or bad for access to justice?”
“T3. Last week, a supervising officer at HMP Wormwood Scrubs was brutally attacked a matter of yards from the prison entrance. The Prison Officers Association tells me—the right hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst) will be concerned about this—that last week an officer leaving Rochester Prison was threatened by an ex-prisoner. He was told he would be shot and his house burnt down. I am sure the Minister will join me in wishing a speedy recovery to the officer who was hurt, but we need more than that. What is the Ministry of Justice doing to ensure that prison officers, who have a difficult job, are safe coming and going from work?”
“On 20 February, after 18 months in a bridging hotel in west London, the Nadiri family and many other Afghan refugees were relocated to Leeds and housed in another bridging hotel. Yalda Nadiri was about to take her GCSEs at William Morris Sixth Form in my constituency. Five weeks on, she still has no school place. Will the Minister see that Yalda can return to her school and take her exams? If he cannot do that, one wonders what he can do.”
“Does the Minister accept that this business-as-usual approach legitimises the actions of the extremists in the far-right Israeli Government in relation to both the incitement of violence against the Palestinian civilians and the de jure annexation of the west bank by its transfer to civilian administration?”
“Every death in this conflict is a tragedy, so I hope the Minister will disassociate herself from comments from those on her own side who either ignore the deaths of Palestinians or, in relation to Palestinian civilians—including the many children who have been murdered this year—choose to call them “confrontation with the IDF”. That is beyond the pale. The Minister said that the road map signed this week is out of date, which is candid. It contains no territorial clause, so it opens the way for illegal settlements to be treated as part of green line Israel. Far from raising concerns about the abuse of Palestinian human rights and breaches of international law, it attacks UN bodies for raising those very concerns.”
“I will grant it as my birthday present to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) that I am taking last place behind him. Afghan refugee children who have already spent 18 months in hotels are being removed out of London—not to settled accommodation, but to other hotels several hundred miles away. That breaks the Home Office’s own guidelines on moving children in the middle of exam periods. Asylum-seeking children are having to travel four hours a day to continue their education, again after compulsory relocation and despite the fact that under guidelines they should be placed no more than an hour’s travel from where they are housed. Will the Leader of the House persuade the Home Secretary either to follow her own rules, or to come to the House to explain why she refuses to do so?”
“It seems the theatre in the Minister’s constituency was drawn out of the Arts Council lottery and won a prize. I am pleased to say that the theatres in my constituency also did not have their grants cut, but the loss of the London Coliseum and the English National Opera is a grave blow to London, and indeed to the whole country. Will the Government use their best endeavours to ensure that very misguided decision by the Arts Council is reconsidered?”
“I would like some idea of what the Government think can be done. If there are other matters that can be raised in correspondence after this debate, then so be it, but I would like to see a willingness to engage with myself and my constituent, as well as other people who have been affected in the same way, to address the issue. The problem has been going on for far too long now. It has been put into the “too difficult” column because of political and jurisdictional issues. However, as a consequence, court orders made in this country are being flouted, and, more importantly, children are growing up without seeing parents because one parent does not like the judgment they have been dealt. I hope we can make some progress today, although I realise it is the beginning, rather than the end, of the matter.”
“It would be useful to have a clear procedure that applies to the TNRC as well as to other countries where there are particular problems. It would also help if there were a more proactive role for Government to work with parents in that position to identify pathways for the return of their children. To prevent what happened in this case, the Government could consider the suspension of children’s passports during residence proceedings to limit the chance of children being taken abroad to avoid complying with court orders. I will leave my remarks there. I am interested to hear what my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) says. What I am looking for from the Minister is an acknowledgment that there are particular problems with the TRNC and such countries, and that they are not being addressed now.”
“The first is that there is no legal aid available for non-Hague convention cases, which seems a double unfairness. Many parents fighting to bring their children home face huge pressures on their finances and, no doubt, some simply cannot afford to continue. Such proceedings can be ruinously expensive and can run on for years—often through deliberate delay in the courts. Unless there is some financial assistance—this should not be a matter of how deep people’s pockets are—it may be that some families will never be reunited and children will remain separated from their parents. I would also like the FCDO to look at how we engage specifically with individual countries and jurisdictions on the issue. Clearly, there is not a one-size-fits-all answer.”
“I know that in this country property is advertised for sale in that area and, indeed, that many holiday companies in the UK will offer holidays there as well. I understand the Government’s dilemma that they do not want to give plausibility or credibility to a country that has been illegally occupied for a number of decades, but the fact remains that it is in people’s humanitarian interests—and, it appears, in commercial interests, as well as, in some cases, law enforcement interests—for business to be done in that way. I would say that child abduction cases are certainly as serious a matter as commercial dealings and recognition of qualifications. It is clear that there are practical means, as well as some legal means, that can deal with this situation. Before I conclude, let me suggest one or two other things that could be done.”
“It may be that the Minister cannot give a full response today on what legislation or other steps would be needed, but I hope that this is at least the start of a dialogue that will look at that. I would like to hear from the Government what their thoughts are on this matter. I would also like the Minister’s agreement that we can go away and look at the cases of children taken to the TNRC specifically against the rulings of the courts in this country. Perhaps I should add that there is some below-the-radar contact between the two jurisdictions. There have been examples in serious criminal cases of co-operation between the law enforcement agencies of both countries. I am told that we recognise the qualifications gained through the education system in northern Cyprus.”
“It is going to a location with which the errant parent may have no connection. It is not, as is often the case, somebody taking a child back to their own country of birth, or where they have existing contact links or other family. This is about purely using a jurisdiction that is unlawful in the eyes of many countries, including the UK, in order to escape attention. To be honest, it is not good enough for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to say that there is nothing that it can do about this, and, effectively, that is what it says. If we look up the TRNC on the FCDO website, we will see that there is a specific footnote to say that there is nothing that it can do in child abduction cases. That is not satisfactory.”
“It is easy to find out, simply by internet research, that some organisations give advice and assistance to help those who wish to leave this jurisdiction to do so, and a number of parents have specifically gone to northern Cyprus because they know of the jurisdictional problems —or fracture—and that it is therefore a place where they can more easily escape the enforcement of judgments by UK courts. The Government should be particularly concerned about that, if there is an organised flouting of court orders that brings the whole process into disrepute. I am told that this has been going on for more than 10 years. As I have said, there are now a growing number of cases—word gets round, people find out. In my experience, this is quite an unusual form of child abduction.”
“The courts in England and Wales recognise the father as the legal guardian of the children, but they are powerless to bring them home unless the mother co-operates with the return order, which all her conduct so far has shown that she will not, or unless—this is the point of my taking part in the debate—the UK authorities are able in any way to intervene. This is not an isolated case. As I am sure the Minister has been made aware, other parents face a similar ordeal to be reunited with their children with little or no support or guidance on how they to do that.”
“All the proceedings through all the UK courts are not taken into consideration. I think they will be read for reference, but clearly they do not apply in northern Cyprus. There is likely to be some bias towards resident rather than non-resident parents; clearly, neither the father nor the children is at fault for that. There is also no role for child welfare—that is, it is a pure consideration of rights of visitation. The whole process is starting again, with the time and the costs and everything else that that involves. A return order is in place. The UK authorities, like the father, are aware of the children’s location in northern Cyprus, but there has been no action.”
“They have spent most of their lives embroiled in litigation or its consequences, because on the day before the final appeal decision was handed down, and in knowledge of what that decision was likely to be, the mother fled to the TRNC with the two children, following a convoluted route that went from Scotland to Northern Ireland to the Republic of Ireland to Turkey and then finally to northern Cyprus. One can infer from those facts that she knew exactly what was happening and that there was a disregard for the law in this country. The father has not seen his children since and has had no contact with them. He continues to instruct counsel in northern Cyprus, again at further significant personal cost, to try to arrange some visitation rights. However, any attempts to have his children returned to him have encountered immovable barriers.”
“There were seven years of litigation, which again is not uncommon, because one parent made it as difficult as possible for the court to do its work over that period. There were many court hearings and appeals, and much turmoil, and a final appeal decision in 2018 unambiguously granted custody to the father. The children, who were four and two at the beginning of the process, were 10 and eight at the end of the proceedings in this country. They were then taken out of this jurisdiction and are now aged 15 and 13.”