
Last night I attended the annual meeting of the British Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines at which the British Embassy explained current government policies and decisions regarding the issuance of passorts and visas.
The British Consul, Joanne Finnamore-Crorkin (JFC) was the presenter of the changes regarding the issuing of British passports. Interestingly she said that by 2011 all British passports will be issued in London, and the current 88 locations around the world where passports are currently being issued, will be closed. By the end of 2009, the 88 locations are being regionalised so that only 20 centres will be able to issue passorts as an interim measure.
The policy as regards permission by parents to the issuing of passport to children had also clarified to me in a phone call the previous day from JFC. The reasons that the permission of both parents was required was not 'security' as the junior staff had stated to me previously, but as part of the British Government's ''international agreements on child abduction''.
There has been, it appears, a move on the part of many countries 'around the world' to attempt to stop the growing problem of international abduction by parents.
The leaflet supplied to me by the Consulate mentions only the Hague Convention which are old and well etsbalished. The new rules that JFC mentioned to me and others, are in fact not made in Britain, as the Embassy tries to infer. They are EU Rules, the true source of which, as usual, is carefully disguised by the British Government and presented as British.
At least JFC's explanation makes a little more sense than the notion that security was somehow threatened by giving a passport to a baby. But as with all do-gooder regimes, brought in to prevent one wrong, in this case that of child abduction, there are as with this new measure, unintended consequences, where even greater damage is being done. Families are now being needlessly severed from each other across the globe.
I was able to correct one wrong notion that JFC had about Philippines child custody. It is not the law that children aged up to seven automatically go to the mother, as she believed. There is a presumption that up to the age of seven the child will go to the mother, if the parents are not married, but the decision will be taken based on the interests of the child at every stage, not based on the presumption alone. Likewise, after the age of seven the presumption is that the child will go to the father.
The British Embassy now has a policy of not giving a passport to a British registered child if one parent does not agree, until the age of 16. It is worth mentioning that British citizenship cannot be obtained in the first place without the consent of both parents. So a parent can agree to British citizenship one minute, and effectively revoke it the next, in the sense that a passport can be denied until the child is effectively adult.
One has to ask if this is an entirely wise approach to be taking.
In my case payment of money (to the mother) would have secured the passport had I known in advance that the rule changes were coming in. But as I was told that a passport was a mere formality once British citizenship had been obtained, I did not give obtaining a passport for my son top priority a year ago.
The situation now is that I cannot take my son to the UK. I would not easily obtain a Philippine passport, and even if I did, the British Visa Section has the same policy as to obtaining the permission of the mother.
For every potential child abduction prevented, there will be dozens or hundreds of other cases like that of my son, where there is no intention to carry out an international abduction, but there is the notion that he is entitled to meet his blood relatives, and that his human rights are being denied to him.
I hope he reads this when he is older, and, if I am not around, can see why he was cut off from his British family.
Surely the situation could be handled in other ways.
If I was intending to abduct my son I would surely have gone ahead and secured his passport at an earlier stage. If the government wishes to prevent an abduction, is the withholding of a passport the only way such a thing can be achieved? Surely, other methods could be used, such as the withdrawal of my passport if my son were not to be returned to the Philippines as agreed prior to travel.
Or alternatively the removal of my passport and the issuing of a temporary travel document to me, and my son, my passport to be returned to me only if I return to the Philippines as agreed.
Or the depositing of money, or both etc etc.
That way my mother need not suffer the sadness of not meeting her grandson, and there is a strong enough incentive to prevent me from breaking my word.
Who Can Resolve The Situation?
The trouble with Britain signing up to blanket policy decision taken at international level i.e The EU, is that new policies are rarely thought through down to the detail. Sledgehammer methods sound very attractive to law-makers far removed from the reality of life and the real situations that people face.
In Britain they get enacted without scrutiny from Parliament anyway, as MPs are bypassed these days, and it is only when real people start to suffer the consequences of badly thought-out rules that the protest and questioning process begins. Tragically then it can be many years before the injustices caused by stupid rules are undone. Let's hope that with the British Government's craven acceptance of international demands as regards child abduction, the rules can be altered soon.
In my son's case, he will inherit a sizeable business (100 employees) in the UK eventually, but will never meet his future employees as a child which they don't like much, let alone the British relatives that his decisions might affect as regards family property. There are many consequences to blanket and devastating measures such as the refusal to issue a passport.
Now if Britain would quit the EU as David Cameron occasionally seems to be suggesting, then we could get back to a democratic process of government where such issues as this might be resolved intelligently and not by the sledgehammer of bureaucratic high-mindedness. The loss of democracy in Britain is why I left the country in the first place, and it is no surprise to find the same stupidity emanating from London ruling across the globe.
Joanne Finnamore Crorkin is a highly intelligent and capable Consul. It is a shame that she has to apply such ill-thought-out measures as blanket passport refusal agreed at international level. I am convinced that Britain alone could solve the problems of child abduction without cutting families off from each other across the globe.
David Cameron, this is another one for you to take on, I think.








