May I ask the Minister a few questions, because I suspect that his response is going to proceed on the basis that the Hague conventions are sufficient? It is true that the biggest number of
abductions that come to our courts relate to Pakistan, the USA, Australia and then Poland. It would also be very sad if either we or the rest of the EU put ideology ahead of the welfare of children. Therefore, I want to know what the Minister’s prediction is as to the arrangements that might be made.
Overall, I feel that the amendment is perhaps too narrow. We have units in this country that study the effect of abduction: we have a permanent bureau, the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children and the International Child Abduction and Contact Unit, which can look not just at the European Community countries but at the others. We need a global view of the welfare of children and cross-border abduction, not just an EU view. How does the Minister think we can cope, given that the EU takes apparently 164 days to deal with returned children, whereas we manage to do it in 90 days? For a small child, a matter of a few months is extremely important.
Is the Minister satisfied that we can swiftly and properly sign up to the 2007 Hague convention, which at the moment we are a party to only through the EU? We need to, and we should be able to, join it in our own right. Those are the questions that I put to the Minister.