Keighley MP Ann Cryer is right to be calling for more countries to sign up to proposals made at the Hague Convention to help to combat child abduction and, if abduction occurs, to help to see the child returned to its legal parent.

This measure is particularly important given the growth of marriages between people of different nationalities and sometimes different cultures. If one parent decides to abscond with the child and flee to another country, there could in some cases be no legal framework in place to enable the other parent to seek its return.

That is what was generally considered to have happened in the case of little Daniel Grimshaw, of Wrose. No firm evidence had come to light that Daniel was taken to Pakistan, but if he had been, then under the present set-up it would have been extremely difficult for his mother to get him back. Thankfully, that case had a happy ending. Others, though, do not - including the case of the mother left in Pakistan while her husband brought his daughter back to Britain.

It is important that Pakistan and Bangladesh be persuaded to sign up to the Hague and European child abduction conventions, designed to make it easier to get a child back to his or her legal parent. We wish Ann Cryer well in her campaign to get these two countries to acknowledge the legal rights of parents in other countries.

As she says, the rights of the child must be paramount where custody is concerned.

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