Jagtar Singh Johal

Debate between Martin Docherty-Hughes and Patrick Grady

Tuesday 27th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

I could not disagree, as I often say, with my hon. Friend. The gurdwaras not only in Scotland but across the whole of the UK share that concern about the ability of the Sikh diaspora to return to India and to engage freely. It is an issue for all of us as citizens, not just for those of a certain faith with clear relation to the Punjab. It is for any UK citizen travelling abroad to consider the support that they may be given once an issue arises.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

Like others, I have heard from a significant number of constituents about this case, particularly from those who attend the Guru Nanak Sikh temple in Otago Street, but also, as my hon. Friend says, from the wider community. There are concerns about the different approaches that the UK Government seem to take to citizens held in captivity in different countries. Does he agree that there must be consistency of approach from the Foreign Office, that all UK citizens who are held overseas must be treated with fairness and justice, and that, where there is a question of injustice, we must make efforts to ensure that people have the opportunity to return home?

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention; I think he might have read my speech and got to the end of it before me, because I was going to raise that point. I know that it is an issue not only for the all-party parliamentary group for British Sikhs—I see its redoubtable chair, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill), in her place—but for the all-party group on deaths abroad and consular services, the chair of which is my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell), who is on my party’s Front Bench at the moment.

UK Entry Visas

Debate between Martin Docherty-Hughes and Patrick Grady

Monday 19th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Patrick Grady]

Absolutely, and I will have some examples from my constituency in a couple of moments.

In the debate in June 2016 I listed example after example of delays and denials experienced by members of the Scotland Malawi Partnership. I declare an interest, because the partnership provides pro bono secretariat support to the all-party parliamentary group on Malawi, which I chair. The Minister may also know that in February, I and my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) had to raise an urgent case at business questions, because just days before they were due to fly to Scotland a group of Malawian schoolchildren and priests had been denied visas, which they had been assured would be granted, risking thousands of pounds that pupils and families in Scotland had raised to bring them over.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

On that point about members of religious faiths, in West Dunbartonshire we have St Margaret of Scotland hospice, run by the Sisters of Charity, who have hospices across the entirety of the UK from Hackney to my constituency. Does my hon. Friend agree that the problems facing us are affecting not only people of religious faith, such as them, but those in hospices across the UK trying to deliver social work, palliative care and frontline services?

[Patrick Grady]

Absolutely, and I would have thought that if anyone was going to honour their visa requirement to come here for a short period and then go back to their country of origin, it would be members of religious orders whose vows of obedience and stability mean that they need to remain where they are based.

Departments at the University of Glasgow frequently encounter difficulties in bringing over visiting academics. Last year, the Home Office denied a UK entry visa to Dr Nazmi al-Masri, the vice-president for external relations at the Islamic University of Gaza, despite the fact that he had a 30-year history of entering and returning from the United Kingdom, and that he was due to travel to support research programmes funded by the UK Government’s own research councils. The situation is perverse and the list goes on.

Examples emerge from all around the world on a weekly and sometimes daily basis. No fewer than 17 researchers were reported as being unable to attend the Women Leaders in Global Health Conference hosted by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine last week, which the organisers said was tantamount to discrimination and bad for science research in the UK, and means that they may have to consider hosting events overseas in the future. Pioneering anti-poaching female rangers from Zimbabwe were denied entry to collect humanitarian awards on 3 November. The Syrian journalist Humam Husari was granted entry, again to collect an award, only after high-profile complaints. Here in Parliament, on a weekly if not daily basis, events I have been to recently hosted by the Industry and Parliament Trust and various all-party groups all have similar stories which are heard frankly with embarrassment and cringing by the UK-based participants.