Counselling in the canteen

Griffiths: Personal safety in a public place

By Jackie Storer BBC News Online political staff

Shoppers bustle past pushing their trolleys laden with the week's groceries.

The chatter is of nappies, frozen veg and "what shall we eat tonight?"

It surprises me how much people will say about their personal life and their personal problems in other people's earshot

Jane Griffiths
Labour MP

Yet beyond this typical Friday night supermarket scene and behind the magazine racks in the cafe at Reading's Tesco Extra, another kind of conversation is taking place.

Sitting at one of the tables sipping from a large white cup is Jane Griffiths, Labour MP for Reading East, dishing out a little cappuccino counselling.

The canteen, with its garish red walls, is a regular haunt for Ms Griffiths.

Canteen constituency

It is here, beneath posters advertising the supermarket's latest offer, that she holds her constituency surgery.

While many people are uncorking their first bottle of wine of the night and looking forward to the weekend, Ms Griffiths listens to complaints about planning applications, unfair dismissal and typically, appeals by asylum seekers to stay in the UK.

Her constituents, an earnest bunch, assume hopeful looks as they take up tables in the cafe. They could be anyone else - just taking a break from the week's chores.

Ms Griffiths and her constituency assistant Julia Hanson-Abbott do not have to wait long for their first arrival.

Soon after the clock strikes 6.30pm, the inhabitant of the closest table rises to join the pair.

Desperate

He is bespectacled, clean-shaven, wearing a leather jacket and shiny shoes, holding a large white envelope full of documents and a letter bearing a parliamentary crest from Ms Griffiths.

The former businessman explains that he has escaped from Iraq and desperately wants his wife and three children - the youngest of whom he has never met - to join him.

Ms Hanson-Abbott scribbles away as Abdullah, not his real name, says he is on a hit list for his involvement in the Iraqi National Congress's bid to topple Saddam Hussein.

It was too dangerous to stay so he escaped to Iran, he says, walking for days to Turkey, where for $6,000 he managed to get a place aboard a lorry to make the gruelling trip to England.

I see so many people who are at the end of their tether and whose hearts are broken

Jane Griffiths
Labour MP

His eyes fill with tears, his despair heightened by threatened US-led attacks on his homeland.

Ms Griffiths says: "Hearing his story is heartbreaking. He is living on benefits and he is paying £10 a week to his family in Iraq.

"He says: 'I just have bread and tea - that's enough for me'.

"With the situation vis-a-vis Iraq, I don't know how his family is going to get out.

"He is very, very worried and he wants to get his family out before anything happens.

Refused asylum

"The volatile situation is going to mean any border troops are going to be possibly more trigger happy."

Ms Griffiths said in similar situations she would contact the Home Office, but in Abdullah's case, she plans to speak to a minister.

Griffiths is helped by assistant Julie Hanson-Abbott

Moments later, a couple from Sierra Leone move timidly towards Ms Griffiths table, asking for help to keep the wife in the UK.

The pair wed in their homeland before the husband came here in 1999 with leave to remain until 2005.

"There was a serious conflict around that time, but because the wife came over to join him in September last, she was refused asylum because the situation in Sierra Leone has changed," said Ms Griffiths.

"She was deemed not to be in danger, but it seems to me a bit cruel to say she has got to go back.

Harsh choices

"If they are prepared to work and make a life here, I'd just say, 'why not?'.

"I don't know what will happen. It will all take a while - that is the problem with immigration and asylum cases.

"Sometimes years have gone by and people are living here, made a life here and maybe had a child or more. The prospect of leaving all that is harsh."

I would never do a surgery by myself - not ever

Jane Griffiths
Labour MP

From asylum, Ms Griffiths moves on to deal with a planning issue involving a large development of houses that residents from adjacent properties are not happy about.

"I don't have any influence over council planning committees, nor should I and there is very little I can do.

"I can write, supporting the residents' concerns, but if I did it all the time, it wouldn't carry any weight at all."

Ms Griffiths, who recently advertised herself on the side of Reading buses, says she tries to hold her six surgeries a month in places where people are - like council offices, libraries, pubs, cafes and in a Pakistani community centre with an interpreter.

"I try not to sit in an office with people queuing up behind a door to see me," she says.

Advice is also on offer at Tesco Extra in Reading

As she looks around the Tesco cafe, she points out: "It is quite public here.

"It surprises me how much people will say about their personal life and their personal problems in other people's earshot."

Another reason for choosing a public place is personal safety.

The attack on Cheltenham MP Nigel Jones and the murder of his assistant Andrew Pennington by Robert Ashman in January 2000, shook the Westminster community.

'Intractable problems'

"That really brought it home to me," said Ms Griffiths. "I would never do a surgery by myself. Not ever."

There is an MP's way through the process which other people don't have

Jane Griffiths MP

The MP admits she finds herself as much a counsellor as politician.

"Sometimes people just have intractable problems that no-one can help with," she said.

"I see so many people who are at the end of their tether and whose hearts are broken.

"Sometimes they have housing problems and technically that are in the wrong; they've made a mistake or made a bad judgement, but the humanity of it means they need some help and I can make something happen.

"What I tend to be able to help with is if they are held in a queue and it goes on and on. I can speed that up.

"That is a great help to people who are in limbo - they have no passport, they don't know whether they are going to be deported.

Awkward situation

"There is an MP's way through the process which other people don't have."

Asked about her worst case, Ms Griffiths thinks hard and remembers a woman who was resident in the UK, but who wanted her partner to join her from Jamaica.

"It turned out he had a string of convictions for armed robbery and drug dealing and she didn't know anything about that," she said.

"It put me in a difficult position. Do I tell her?"

Ms Griffiths does not say exactly how the matter was resolved, but she adds: "She was informed. He did turn up again and was arrested and put in prison."