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Christopher Traynor

I am not able to comment on the other case that my hon. Friend raised. Incidentally, my right hon. Friend asked whether I would be happy to meet the family, Ministers and other hon. Members, and of course I am more than happy to do so, not least because there is probably further work that we can do to advance this issue. I will mention later some of the work that the embassy has done in Paris in the last couple of weeks, which may help us move in the right direction. It is always difficult to force the police authorities in another country to do something that they do not want to do, especially if our authorities have criticised the work that it has done, because sometimes that authority will respond, saying, "We think we've done our job and there it is. We're the legitimate authority in this country, not you, so you can't tell us what to do." So it is always difficult. Consular staff, who spend much of their time dealing with complicated issues, including child abductions, rapes and deaths in suspicious circumstances, are conscious always of the complexities of the relationship between police authorities in this country and those in another country. Last week our embassy in Paris spoke to the deputy public prosecutor of Bobigny, the Paris suburb where Christopher Traynor's case is being considered, who said that the French police could interview Monsieur Nesmon if a formal request was made by the UK authorities. However, the FCO is not, in their view, the correct authority. The request would have to come from Merseyside police, which so far has been reluctant to do so, on the basis that this was a French investigation. Sometimes one police department does not like to criticise the work of another one in another country, because it does not like being criticised back, and Merseyside police feels that it has no real, hard evidence that Christopher's death was anything other than natural. However, the FCO consular staff will go back to Merseyside police on this, because if the authorities in France are saying that they would look at the matter again if Merseyside police asked them to do so, it would be odd for us not to do that.