The funeral of my constituent David Wilson took place today.

I got to know David and his wife Tracey very well after he was wrongly imprisoned in a Greek jail in 2003.

David was jailed after 19 Iraqi Kurds were found in the back of his lorry at a Greek port. Despite each of the Iraqi Kurds signing a statement saying they entered David’s lorry without his knowledge, he was jailed for 11 years.

As David was totally innocent, he was eventually acquitted on appeal, but not before suffering the horrendous ordeal of months in prison far from his family and the permanent loss of his lorry and livelihood.

David never recovered from his ordeal and tragically took his own life last week. My thoughts are obviously with his family who also suffered greatly because of this great injustice.

It is now crucial to ensure something like this never happens again.

David would not have gone through the ordeal that led to his death if the EU’s Framework decision on procedural rights in criminal proceedings for people charged in other Member States had already been in force.

This proposal would guarantee that anyone facing criminal charges abroad has access to their country’s consular services and are given a qualified interpreter and legal advice.

Both were lacking in David’s case. He was charged and sentenced within 24 hours under a fast-track procedure that he accepted under duress, with a local shopkeeper as interpreter and without advice from the British embassy or sufficient legal advice.

This proposed EU law would prevent others from having to go through what David did. It should be wholeheartedly supported and governments should get a move on in at last agreeing this proposal which has been on their table for a few years now, held up by the need for unanimity among the governments of 25 countries. Britain should support the European Commission’s proposal to speed up consideration of this matter, as the House of Lords has suggested.