Robert Brown calls for Scotland to lead the way in European alert system for missing children

12.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Tue 2nd Jun 2009

Glasgow Liberal Democrat MSP Robert Brown has marked International Missing Children's Day (25th May) by proposing a Scottish Parliament motion calling for strong Europe-wide cooperation and a linked abduction alert system to bring about rapid European attention and activity when a child goes missing.

The "Amber Alert" system - which sees television and radio adverts, text messaging and international police notification instigated within minutes of a report filed on a missing child - is fully functional and viewed as successful in the United States.

Mr. Brown is calling for an abduction alert system of this type to be urgently established in Europe and adopted by Scotland and the UK.

A number of countries in the EU have also adopted the European free missing child alert hotline - 116 000, but the UK is yet to make this number operational for the public to use.

Around 9000 children go missing in Scotland every year.

In October 2007 the European Commission identified the need to develop cross-border mechanisms to combat child abduction and is currently working on a €1 million project to investigate this system.

Mr. Brown said:

"Statistics show that when a child goes missing, the first 48 hours are crucial. So improving communication and cooperation between member states and indeed between the Scottish and UK Governments is vital.

"Often these days the hunt for a missing child can have a European or international dimension, and we cannot over estimate how important it is to rapidly notify foreign police and international agencies and organisations.

We saw this very clearly in the high profile case of Madeline McCann where there were issues as to the speed of response on what may have been an international crime.

"For quick dissemination of important information about a child, we need cross border co-operation and there is no reason Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom should not be at the forefront of arrangements for this.

"I would like to see a system in place much like the US Amber Alert system where many agencies work swiftly in partnership to activate an urgent bulletin or announcement in serious child abduction cases.

"If we adopted the Amber Alert system, in a matter of minutes after a child has been reported missing to the police, all police forces would be alerted, television and radio programmes would be interrupted and pictures of the missing child would flash up on screens.

"Text messages would be sent to all subscribers, and Interpol, Europol and foreign police forces would be put on alert. The entire European Community could work together to find the child.

"Quite often, such activity has been enough in other countries to compel the abductor to hand over the child and happily, that has been the satisfactory conclusion in a number of cases.

"But sadly, Scotland and the UK and much of the rest of Europe have been slow off the mark to adopt pan European strategies to tackle child abduction, and as nations we often fail to work together quickly or effectively enough.

"That's why I am calling on the SNP government to work with Westminster as a matter of urgency - leading the way, ensuring that all missing children alert systems and cross-border cooperation policies - including the 116 000 European hotline - are operational as soon as possible, binding Scotland effectively into the European system.

"Only by working together can we make a worthwhile difference in the mechanisms for dealing with child abductions."

Ends

Notes for editors:

Motion

S3M-04245 Robert Brown (Glasgow) (Scottish Liberal Democrats): A Missing Children Alert System- That the Parliament supports the establishment of strong cross-Europe working to ensure that there are effective, linked "amber alert" systems in place to bring European-wide attention to missing children; understands that early action is critical in locating missing and abducted children and that the experience of those countries that have alert systems in place, such as the United States of America, is extremely positive; welcomes the formal adoption of the written declaration on Emergency Cooperation In Recovering Missing Children as a resolution of the European Parliament in April 2009 but regrets that European countries currently fail to cooperate effectively when recovering missing children and that progress has been slow, and calls on the Scottish Government to work proactively and constructively with the UK Government to ensure that all missing children alert systems and cross-border cooperation policies, including the 116 000 European hotline, are operational as soon as possible to bind the country effectively into the European system.