Bad
News from Scotland
14 August 2000
Mrs S Ferguson
Abbeytown
Cumbria
I am sorry for the delay in
forwarding to you, this letter from the Foreign
Office Minister. The enclosure
to which reference is made in the correspondence was missing and I have
been awaiting that coming through.
I hope this reply will bring you
up to date on the position, particularly the copy
of the letter that has been sent to your Brother
and his fellow prisoners.
I am sorry it is not possible to
send you a much more encouraging reply at this
stage.
Sincerely,
With best wishes.
DALE CAMPBELL-SAVOURS MP
Foreign & Commonwealth Office
3
August 2000
Dale Campbell-Savours Esq MP
House of Commons
London
SWlA OAA
Dear Dale
Thank
you for your letter of 31 May to Tony Blair on behalf of your
constituents Mrs. Sheila Ferguson of Abbeytown, Cumbria
and Mr Malcolm Mounsey of Aspatria, Cumbria.
They are concerned about their brother Mr Brian Mounsey
and other British prisoners in Thailand, and
enclose a letter from Mr Brian Mounsey and his
fellow prisoners. I am replying as Minister
responsible for consular matters and apologise for the
delay in doing so.
The prisoners raise concerns about their welfare, the
terms of the UK/Thailand Prisoner Transfer
Agreement (PTA), and our policy on clemency pleas.
I had already received a copy of the prisoners’
letter, and I enclose a copy of my reply. I hope
that my letter answers the questions raised in the
prisoners’ letter.
However, Mr Malcolm Mounsey also asks whether we could
amend the PTA so it is in line with other nations.
As far as we are aware, our PTA is in line with
that of other nations. The specific examples quoted
by the prisoners are these of the US and Australia.
The US have recently had to have talks with the Thais to
reassure them that the US wil1 stick to the terms of the
treaty. The Thais have been deeply concerned that the US has
not been abiding by these terms, and have instead released
prisoners too early. We do not want to jeopardise our PTA in
the same way.
The Australians do not have a PTA with Thailand, so there
is no comparison with our position.
I can only add my reassurance that we do take extremely
seriously the welfare of British nationals in prison overseas
and that we are doing everything possible to help them.
(Handwritten note: We will continue to do all we possibly
can to help. Yours sincerely Patricia Scotland)
BARONESS SCOTLAND QC
3
August 2000
Foreign & Commonwealth Office
The
British Nationals Incarcerated in Thailand
c/o
Mr Brian Mounsey
Bangkwang
Prison
Bangkok
Dear
All,
Thank you for your letter of 18 April to the Prime
Minister. I have
been asked to reply as the Minister responsible for consular
matters.
I should first like to apologise for the delay in
replying to you, but your letter took a little
while to reach us, and I wanted to give as full an
answer as possible to the many points you raise.
Your letter highlights many questions that we have been
trying to find answers to here at the Foreign
Office. We have set up
a Unit specifically to look at our policy on British prisoners
overseas. We are trying to
find the fairest effective policy on transfers and
all the other issues that the letter raises.
Your letter is a helpful contribution to our work, and I am
grateful to you for writing.
Let me take each of the key issues you raise in turn -
your welfare, the Prisoner Transfer Agreement, and
clemency pleas.
I can assure you that we do care very much about the
welfare of British prisoners overseas. We want to do everything we can
to look after your health, and protect your rights.
This is as true for drug offenders as it is for anyone else,
there is no question of our discriminating against drug
offenders.
We take the protection of the human rights of UK
nationals prison overseas very seriously. We will always intervene on
prisoners behalf to object to abuses by the local authorities
and to urge them to take steps to ensure that they
are not repeated. If one of our
nationals, for example, had been beaten up by the
police after arrest, we would protest in the
strongest terms and do our utmost to ensure that the local
authorities understood that we would not tolerate such human
rights abuses.
We know that conditions in prisons in Thailand are
difficult. We
regularly make our concerns known to the Thai authorities,
including their shortcomings with regards to the UN minimum
standards. More importantly,
we are also trying to help the Thais to deal with
this issue, particularly with regard to healthcare.
We have recently been trying to improve health-care
awareness in Thai prisons by sponsoring a regular
dialogue between Dr Biswas, a British prison health
expert, and the prison health authorities in
Thailand. As part of this dialogue, Dr
Biswas will visit Bangkok later this summer to undertake a
clinical attachment to the prison. We
are paying for his visit.
We are also working closely with Prisoners Abroad in
Thailand, and together we intend to trial a volunteer prison
visiting scheme in Bangkok this year.
This should give you better communication
with the outside world.
I know that most of your concerns centre on the operation
of the UK-Thailand Prisoner Transfer Agreement.
The way it operates means that even on
transfer British prisoners still have to serve
their full sentence (subject to UK parole). I understand why this is such a
cause of concern, given the length of some Thai
sentences. We have looked carefully
at the problem, and at your concerns, but we do not
believe the present arrangement can be improved.
This is for these key reasons.
First, the Thais are adamant that their sentences should be
respected even on transfer. This is the basis of all prisoner
transfer agreements, including the UK-Thai one.
We know that the Thais have reacted badly to other
countries choosing to release transferred prisoners
early. They have
suspended their agreements with several countries because of
this, and are holding back from signing further agreements.
The USA even had to send a delegation to Thailand to explain
why they release prisoners so soon.
We want to keep the option of transfer open
to all British nationals in prison in Thailand.
We feel that other countries have forfeited this option
as a result of their policy of releasing people early.
We do not want to make the same mistake.
I should add that I fully accept sentences imposed by
Thai Courts are sometimes much harsher than those
which might have been imposed by a UK Court.
But this is entirely for the Thais to
decide. They have adopted this
approach to prevent the endemic problem of drugs
dealing and trafficking in their country.
They impose harsh sentences on foreign and Thai nationals alike.
Second, the Home Office have made clear that there must be a
single system of parole for all prisoners in UK prisons,
whether they have been sentenced in the UK or overseas.
We are aware that certain other countries have parole
laws which enable them to release their transferred
prisoners earlier than we do.
But no matter whether a prisoner is repatriated
from Thailand, or was convicted and sentenced in the
UK, UK parole rules are applied to all prisoners in the UK.
A prisoner has to serve half of their sentence before
becoming eligible for parole. Any
changes to UK parole laws would need to apply
consistently to all prisoners and would be a matter
for the Home Office to decide.
Third, the Home Office have also made clear that it would not
be possible to calculate ‘equivalent’
sentences for crimes committed overseas. Judges get
considerably more discretion than in many countries
on the sentences they hand out. For example, the maximum
sentence available here for smuggling a class A
drug is life imprisonment. British
life sentences do not carry a maximum or minimum
tariff - they can be any length up to and including
natural life. The Australian
system, under which a Judicial Commission advises the
Australian Government on a suitable ‘equivalent’
sentence for its nationals convicted overseas,
simply would not be possible in the UK.
Nor would the US system, in which judges are
given little discretion, but instead sentence according to
a grid imposed by statute. Because
of this, working out ‘equivalent’
sentences is easy.
I should also point out that the ‘equivalent’
sentences adopted by the Australian authorities do
not apply to transferring prisoners. Australia
has no prisoner transfer agreement with Thailand.
If it did, the Thais would insist that it
followed the same principle as ours (and all the others)
- namely that Thai sentences are respected even after transfer.
The third of these points explains why we cannot adopt
your suggestion of supporting all clemency appeals for those
who have served longer in Thailand than the equivalent
sentence for the same offence committed in the UK would be.
In the same way that we cannot re-calculate parole and
sentences due to the lack of ‘equivalent’
sentences, we cannot support clemency appeals
solely on the grounds of excessively long life
sentences. As the Home Office have
made clear to us, there is no mechanism under UK law for
determining what an ‘excessive’
sentence might be, especially given that British
life sentences carry no maximum tariff.
Nonetheless, we will continue to support clemency pleas
on
compassionate grounds - such as where a prisoner is
terminally ill, or when a close relative is terminally ill and their death will
leave children or
elderly relatives with no one to care for them.
I am afraid that all this means we cannot re-shape our
policy along the lines you suggest. You raised
three key suggestions, none of which are viable:
1)
Re-negotiating the UK-Thailand Prisoner Transfer Agreement
is not an option. It is already
based on exactly the same principles as Thailand’s
agreements with other countries.
2)
Relaxing parole requirements is a matter for the Home
Office, who have made clear that this is not an option.
3)
Supporting Royal Pardon Petitions for those prisoners who
have served the sentence which would have been imposed on
them in the UK is also impossible, given that the impossibility
of determining what that sentence would have been.
I hope that this helps to explain our policy on transfers
and clemency.
I know these are not the answers you were looking for.
We keep our policy under constant review, and if there
are ways we can make it fairer then we will do so.
I am grateful to you for your letter, and I
hope my response wil1 not dissuade you from
continuing to raise your concerns with us.
We want to do our best by you.
(Handwritten note: With very best wishes, yours
sincerely, Patricia Scotland)
BARONESS SCOTLAND QC