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British Deaths (France)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. Kevin Hughes.]
7.56 pm
Mr. Tim Collins (Westmorland and Lonsdale): This is a serious subject that involves many people around the country. I know that the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) hopes to catch your eye for a minute or two after my remarks, Mr. Deputy Speaker, so I shall truncate them to give him an opportunity to speak.
I welcome the Minister and congratulate him on his promotion. I recognise that he is new to his present duties, which he took over in tragic circumstances following the departure of his much missed predecessor. I hope that he will be able to consider what I say seriously and reflect on some of the points that are raised.
The first case that I should like to raise concerns the Allison family from my constituency. Mr. Clive Allison, the son of my constituents, disappeared on 25 April last year. He was working in Lyon and had been working in France for two years. He was 27 and worked at a bar. On the day he disappeared, the French police and the British consulate in Lyon were informed by English speaking and French friends of Mr. Allison that he had disappeared. Unfortunately, the British consulate did not notify his family in my constituency that he had disappeared. That is the first cause of their anxiety about the case.
The second cause of the family's anxiety is that when they were informed four days later, my constituent Mr. Jim Allison telephoned the local French police and spoke to an officer who slammed the phone down on him shortly into the conversation, even though he was naturally distressed because he had just learned that his son had disappeared. The British consulate suggested that it must have been because my constituent was speaking to the French police officer in schoolboy French. In fact, he was speaking to a policeman who was fluent in English.
The third incident in the chain of events is that when the friends of Mr. Clive Allison reported to the French police that he had disappeared, they were told that the French police were not prepared to mount a missing person's inquiry for him and that the friends would have to go round the local hospitals to see whether he had turned up in one of them.
The next stage in this tragic tale is that the body of Mr. Allison was fished out of the local river in Lyon on 4 May and taken to the Government medical institute in the town. It was not tagged for three days so, at one point,it was reported missing. The body was subsequently recovered.
When it was flown back to the UK aboard Air France, the accompanying paperwork disappeared. To this day, that paperwork has not been found. No direct apology has even been given by Air France to the family. Because of the absence of that paperwork, an entirely new post mortem had to be performed on the body when it arrived back in the UK.
The final stage in this tragic set of occurrences was that the inquest into the death was adjourned on 25 September because the coroner in Barrow-in-Furness needed some paperwork from the French authorities to complete
his inquiries. To this day, some eight months later, that paperwork has not been provided. In a letter fromMr. Ian Smith, the coroner at Barrow, he said that he shared the concerns of my constituent Mr. Jim Allison about the failure of the French authorities in this instance. He said:
Sadly, this is not an isolated case. The merest glimpse at some recently publicised stories in our national newspapers would indicate that there have been a number of other cases. Perhaps the most highly publicised is that of Caroline Dickinson, and I know that the hon. Member for North Cornwall will wish to speak about that later.
There was also the case of Roderick Henderson, who died after being kicked in the head in the Champs Elysees in October 1997. A report in The Daily Telegraph of the 15 July 1998 begins:
I do not approach this matter with the view that somehow France is a different country where different standards apply. I certainly do not approach the matter with any hostility towards our neighbouring country. Indeed, this past weekend, I greatly enjoyed with my family an expedition to Paris which, thanks to Eurostar, is a great deal easier and quicker to reach from my London home than my own constituency in the UK.
More and more British people are looking to spend time in France on holiday and on business. It is a neighbour, and it is important that we should have close relations with France and the clearest possible co-operation between the British and French authorities. That is why I tabled some parliamentary questions on the matter, and I was a little disappointed with some of the responses that I received.
I received a helpful letter in February from Baroness Symons, the Foreign Office Minister. She told me that the materials that had been sent by the coroner in October had been passed through the British consulate because coroners' requests have to go through the Foreign Office. They were passed to the consulate in November, and passed to the French authorities. The French authorities notified the British consul at the beginning of February that the papers had been retrieved from the archive and that the file was on the desk of the relevant person. The family were told that it could be four months before the paperwork would be processed and passed on to the coroner. It is now nearly four months since the beginning of February, and certainly no papers have arrived.
Mr. Jim Allison, Clive's father, has been a sufferer from multiple sclerosis for 17 years and he has said that the strain has meant that the past year has been much the worst for his condition. Additional stress on someone in those circumstances can make matters worse.
I was pleased that the written answers that I received suggest that the Government have been addressing some of the issues. There was a ministerial meeting last November to consider some of the generic, systemic issues. I welcome that, but I was also told, in a written answer on 31 March, that the Allison case was not discussed in detail at that meeting and is not on the agenda for any future scheduled meeting; nor had Ministers discussed French co-operation with British coroners.
The general conclusion was:
I do not for one moment pretend that there is any ingrained hostility to British people in the way in which the French authorities approach these cases--it is conceivable that they are equally inefficient in cases relating to their own citizens--but it is clear that British coroners do not feel that the French respond to their requests as rapidly and efficiently as they could, or anything like as rapidly and efficiently as coroners in other countries, including less developed countries such as Zambia. The coroner in Barrow said that coroners throughout the country thought the same.
I would be enormously grateful if the Minister took an interest in trying to get the French authorities to supply the papers to the coroner in Barrow. My constituents have now waited 13 months for a verdict on the cause of their son's death. The bureaucratic delay has made things worse for them and caused them further distress. I spoke to the father today. He said that the family do not want to sue. They are not interested in compensation, as they would regard it as blood money. They want justice and they want to know that their son can be laid to rest and the case can be closed so that they can begin to move on with their lives.
Will the Minister please address the issue of the possible systemic problem that seems to have occurred in relationships between British coroners and the French authorities? Ministers have already addressed those issues in meetings with their French counterparts. I would be grateful to know whether there are any plans for further meetings.
Mr. Paul Tyler (North Cornwall):
I congratulatethe hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Collins) on securing this debate, and I am grateful
As the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale said, Caroline Dickinson was a constituent of mine. I have worked closely with her parents, John and Sue Dickinson, to see whether we could not only help the French authorities to bring the culprit to justice, but learn some lessons to help others who may have faced similar appalling tragedies.
Caroline was a young student from Launceston college who went on a school trip to the hostel in Pleine Fougeres, where she was murdered. We still do not know who was responsible for that deed. The initial experience that I and her parents had--on both sides of the channel, but especially with the French authorities--was disastrously bad, but it has greatly improved in recent months. As a result of the activities of Baroness Symons, who took an active interest in this case--I took the parents, and other relatives who had been similarly bereaved, to see her--and of the previous Government, who similarly afforded us the opportunity to talk to them about some of the lessons to be learned, the attitude of the French authorities improved distinctly.
Unfortunately and all too often, the slow progress ofan inquiry requires the intervention of the British Government before it is approached with more dispatch and effectiveness. In the Dickinson case, the investigative team did not give proper attention to trying to bring the public in France into their confidence and it did not pursue the issue of DNA until it was persuaded to do so by my constituent, Mr. Dickinson. When the team took the opportunity to work with the British police, the investigation advanced dramatically.
I endorse the comments of the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale. When a tragedy occurs, it requires the proactive interest of the British Government at the outset. We should not wait for things to go wrong. That is proved by the fact that when the Government took an interest, there was an immediate improvement both in the flow of information to my constituents and in the urgency with which the investigation was pursued.
Attitudes to investigation procedures differ on either side of the channel. In this country, the police like to take the public into their confidence at the outset. The police try to give as much information as possible to the public and to gain as much information as they can using the media. That is not the French experience and, perhaps, informal steps could be taken, without trying to preach to them, to try to improve that situation.
"regrettably what is happening in this particular case is a reflection of what happens in most cases where a British subject dies in France and the body is repatriated and an inquest results . . . I frequently find a lack of thorough investigation and a considerable delay in sending what little information is available. By way of contrast I have dealt with deaths from China, Hong Kong and Zambia amongst others and have received good quality information within a reasonable time and the Chinese authorities had even translated into English."
My concern is that we are all citizens of the European Union. France is our nearest neighbouring member state of the EU, and it is important that the French authorities operate in circumstances relating to tragedies such as this at least as efficiently as countries such as Zambia or China.
"A coroner condemned the French authorities yesterday for erecting a 'brick wall of virtual silence' around the investigation"
of that murder.
"Co-operation is good; the French authorities have to comply with their own formalities."--[Official Report, 31 March 1999; Vol. 328, c. 693.]
The evidence of the Allison case and some other cases suggests that that may be too generous an assessment.
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