MHAIRI BLACK
Bereaved families .. have to fight to get even the most basic facts about their loved ones
TONIGHT an important and moving documentary, Killed Abroad, will air on BBC1 about the tragic deaths of Kirsty Maxwell and Craig Mallon – two Scots who died in suspicious circumstances on holiday.
The programme will look at the circumstances of the deaths and the impact they have had on their families, who are still desperately looking for answers and feel badly let down by authorities in the UK and abroad.
Kirsty, who fell to her death from a 10th floor apartment in Benidorm in April 2017, was 27. She was a constituent of my SNP colleague Hannah Bardell, the MP for Livingston, who has been campaigning to radically improve the support provided to bereaved families whose loved ones have died abroad.
In May 2012, 26-year-old Craig, from Coatbridge, also died abroad. He had travelled to Lloret de Mar in Spain for his brother’s stag weekend but was killed on the day he arrived after a single punch to the head. As with Kirsty, Craig’s family still do not know the full truth about his death – and six years on his killer has not been identified.
The death of a family member can be traumatic in any situation but families whose loved ones are killed abroad often face additional stress and anxiety because of the barriers they face – especially where the person has been murdered or died in suspicious circumstances.
As part of her campaign, Hannah set up a cross-party group of MPs at Westminster earlier this year to press the UK Government to do more to help these grieving families. The all-party parliamentary group on deaths abroad and consular services, have taken evidence from more than 40 UK families – and while each family have faced a different set of issues, the message from almost all of them is that the support provided by the UK Government is completely inadequate.
That’s why I support Hannah’s call for the UK Government to conduct an urgent review of the gaps and failings in support and to improve the funding and resources made available to families in their search for truth and justice.
Bereaved families in a state of shock and grief often have to fight to get even the most basic facts about their loved ones’ deaths and they face huge costs and barriers in doing so.
These situations can be very complex but there are many practical ways in which more support must be given to families in their time of need – from introducing a single point of contact so that families don’t have to deal with multiple agencies to providing help with repatriating the body of their loved one, and offering support with translation services and legal representation to ensuring frontline consular services have the training and resources they need.
The families of Kirsty and Craig have been brave in speaking out – it is time the UK Government listened and took meaningful action.