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Dr. Bray: Will the Minister look further at the arrangements made for the exploitation of the GPRD, because a good deal more could be done?
Mr. Malone: I was going to give an undertaking that I would look carefully at the hon. Gentleman's remarks. Clearly if there are ways in which greater use can be made of this asset, we would wish to use them. I will take his remarks on board and look at ways in which we might take the matter forward. The MCA has used the GPRD on, I believe, 14 occasions until now. The database is important, and its value is clearly recognised by the Government.
The provision of information is vital, as hon. Members will recognise. Without it, collecting the information is valueless. Often information arrives that must be made available to the public rapidly because of public safety issues. Value judgments must be made, and I make no bones about the fact that--with the benefit of hindsight--better methods could have been used or further investigations carried out. The Government take responsibility for drawing to the public's attention as early as possible any information affecting public safety. If the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey can create a conspiracy theory from Ministers coming to the House to provide information, I wonder what theory he would have concocted had the decision been not to do so.
There is a range of ways in which information is made available to the professions and the public, including the British National Formulary. Other regular publications bring the information up to date and draw it to the attention of the profession. Perhaps the best known is the bulletin, "Current Problems in Pharmacovigilance", which provides more detailed and technical information on specific drug safety issues. In addition, if an important new hazard is identified, the chairman of the Committee on Safety of Medicines writes to all doctors and pharmacists as a matter of urgency. We also make use of electronic communication networks to get important information to health professionals more quickly. That is a rapidly developing field.
The MCA is playing a key role in initiatives--both within the EC and more widely, involving the USA and Japan--through the International Conference of Harmonisation to develop standards to support electronic transmission of pharmaco-vigilance information. It is important that the network spreads and that information can be made available in a comprehensible way so that it can be brought to the public's attention and to the attention of health care professionals as quickly as possible.
This has been an extremely useful debate that the Government very much welcome. Everyone recognises that medicines sometimes have adverse effects. I accept the point made by the hon. Member for Motherwell, South that we must develop the systems that inform us and improve, where we can, the research that is undertaken. We must always get the balance right but never, as Ministers and as the licensing authority, be afraid to go to the public with information as and when it becomes available.
Dr. Bray:
In half a minute, will the Minister say what is the machinery for examining the interactions between safety and other matters?
Mr. Malone:
I am not certain that I shall be able to deal with that point in the 30 seconds available. I have listened carefully to what the hon. Gentleman has said and I will write to him in detail on that.
In conclusion, we take our obligations very seriously. This has been a useful opportunity to air the Government's policy and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for choosing this subject.
Sir John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling):
I warmly welcome my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department to his maiden voyage at the Dispatch Box. I am sure that he will have a successful time there and stay there for many years to come.
I have initiated this debate in my capacity as a vice-chairman of the all-party child abduction group. With your consent, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I know that the chairman of the group, the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Olner), wishes to intervene briefly in the debate. The all-party group felt that this was an important moment to have a debate on the Hague convention on child abduction, given that the third review meeting of the Hague convention will take place early next year.
Mercifully, child abduction is not numerically a severe problem. There are between 100 and 200 new cases a year of children abducted from the UK which come to the Lord Chancellor's Department as the central authority under the Hague convention. There are another 100 to 200 cases of children who have been abducted to the UK, which also fall to that Department to deal with.
However, the trends are disturbing. The figures that my hon. Friend the Minister gave me in a parliamentary answer yesterday show that cases of abduction both to and from the United Kingdom have risen in each of the past five years since 1991. Although the problem may be numerically relatively small, one cannot overstate the magnitude of the distress caused to those who are involved in the forcible removal of their children. There is the distress caused to the parent from whom the child is abducted and the distress caused to the children.
There are five issues on the working of the convention that I wish to bring to my hon. Friend the Minister's attention. First, there is the issue of entitlement to legal aid. The convention's provisions are effective only to the extent that they are legally enforceable in the jurisdiction that is dealing with the case. Inescapably, many parents--probably the great majority--find the cost of lengthy litigation beyond them. Eligibility for legal aid is of paramount importance for their ability to enforce their rights under the convention. The UK has a reasonable and creditable record on that. The chief executive of the Legal Aid Board, Mr. Stephen Orchard, has confirmed to me that what is creditable about our position is that the country of residence of the individual is irrelevant in deciding whether legal aid can in principle be made available.
The answers that my hon. Friend the Minister gave me yesterday showed that our expenditure on legal aid in child abduction cases in the past financial year was higher in respect of overseas claimants than in relation to claimants who are resident in this country.
Unhappily, the position is different for cases that involve UK residents who have had their children abducted overseas and who seek to obtain legal aid in countries overseas. There are many cases of UK residents having had extreme difficulties in getting legal aid to enforce their rights under the convention. There is a serious issue of reciprocity. In equity, it is only right that, if we extend a level of legal aid availability to overseas residents pursuing cases in Britain, the same legal aid rights should be extended to UK residents who are pursuing cases overseas by those countries.
The second issue that I want to raise relates to one of the most difficult parts of the convention, but it is critical. It is the extent to which the wishes of an abducted child should be taken into account in determining to which parent he or she should be returned. The relevant provisions of the convention are set out in article 13, which states:
The provision is sensible, but it is evident from the study of individual cases that it can be used exploitatively by a parent who has abducted a child. A young child will be easily capable of being influenced by the parent that the child is with. It is possible to manipulate a child to express a wish that he or she should remain with the parent who had carried out the abduction, rather than going back to the parent from whom that child was abducted.
In the forthcoming review, close attention must be paid to how that provision has worked in practice, and, as far as possible, steps should be taken to try to ensure that it is not exploited and abused by parents who have carried out abductions to try to secure the retention of the children that they have abducted.
Thirdly, there is the critical issue of the extent to which independent professional advice is made available to the courts in the jurisdiction in which the case is being held about which parent the child should reside with. In part, that flows from the previous point that I made about the wishes of the child.
It is clearly essential that the court has access to the wholly independent advice of child psychologists, possibly psychiatrists, social workers and others, who have been professionally involved with the child and are able to advise the court on where the child's best interests lie. It has been patently clear in many cases that the court has not taken steps to have before it fully independent advice, wholly divorced from one of the parties.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea (Sir N. Scott) brought home the lack of fully independent advice that had been available in the court proceedings in Germany concerning his constituent, Mrs. Catherine Laylle, in a debate that he initiated in July last year. It is imperative that wholly independent professional advice is made available.
My fourth point concerns the operation of the convention's rights of access, which are set out in article 21. The wording of article 21 is very reassuring. It refers to
My fifth point is that the convention's wording is generally satisfactory and has stood the test of time since its drafting was concluded in 1980. The convention's weaknesses concern the way in which it is operated and interpreted in some overseas jurisdictions. Clearly it would be an extremely laborious task to amend the convention.
Will my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary consider extremely carefully whether we could improve the convention's operation by introducing an internationally agreed code of practice on the operation of its sensitive provisions, especially in the sort of areas to which I have referred? I hope that he will consider tabling at the review meeting next year a draft code of practice for such areas, to try to improve the effective and fair working of the convention's provisions.
The Government have frequently stated that they are in favour of open government. This issue provides an excellent opportunity to practise that desirable principle. The review meeting will take place early next year, and many people outside the House and beyond Whitehall have a contribution to make to it.
12.30 pm
"The judicial or administrative authority may also refuse to order the return of the child if it finds that the child objects to being returned and has attained an age and degree of maturity at which it is appropriate to take account of its views."
The wording is unexceptional in itself. There is no doubt that an inflexible provision whereby every abducted child would be automatically taken back to the parent from whom the abduction had taken place would be wrong. In some compelling cases, there might be justice, in the child's interest, in the child remaining with the parent who had abducted the child.
"the effective exercise of rights of access"
and continues:
"The Central Authorities are bound by the obligations of co-operation which are set forth in Article 7 to promote the peaceful enjoyment of access rights . . . The Central Authorities shall take steps to remove, as far as possible, all obstacles to the exercise of such rights."
12 Jun 1996 : Column 274
There is clear evidence in individual cases that those clear rights of access, especially for the parent who does not have possession of the child--invariably the parent from whom the child has been abducted--are not being properly fulfilled. Given that such rights concern the only point of contact that the parent has, it is essential that there are effective rights of access as stated clearly in article 21.
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