Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many children abducted by a member of their family were taken overseas in the last five years.

The Government is not notified of every case when a child is removed overseas by a relative, therefore we cannot provide accurate figures for abducted children. There are a number of steps that left behind parents can take if their child is taken overseas without their consent and we urge parents to contact the relevant desk officer in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Consular Directorate country casework teams who can provide further assistance.

The UK lobbies countries that are not signatories of the 1980 Hague Convention to sign it. If a child is removed to a country that is a signatory of the Hague Convention there are systems in place to help secure the child’s return. Cases involving non-Hague convention signatories are much harder to resolve and parents often face lengthy and expensive court proceedings abroad to try to facilitate their return.