That’s The Guardian’s headline on this story:
Nick Clegg is seeking cabinet approval for his plans to secure an end to the practice of detaining children in immigration removal centres, with government sources suggesting he wants to see no children in detention by the spring…
Clegg will promise a timetable before Christmas for ending the practice, but he will say he is unable to announce a final deadline as the policy is wending its way through the cabinet home affairs committee.
He is also said to be limited by the pace of working out humane alternatives to locking up families with children who are liable for removal. A pilot scheme experimenting with means of deporting families with children that do not involve detention does not finish until the end of the year and Clegg is under pressure from the UK Border Agency to prove he has other methods for such deportations.
You can read the full story here.
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12 Comments
It will be a big relief when this finally happens, it has taken far too long.
The problem in the meantime is that the detentions are still happening and are still inhumane.
It would be better to put more pressure on the decision makers on this issue by stopping the detentions in the meantime so that they decide what the new policy should be.
It is worth pointing out to the credit of the Lib Dems that it is only their intervention that makes a change of policy possible. The combined vote of the other parties could easily stop this policy in it’s tracks.
Mark – surely someone on LDV needs to accept that this has already been promised on multiple occassions by the Lib Dems as being achieved. That people are ignoring this story now speaks volumes for how badly the Party message is being communicated at present.
… with government sources suggesting he wants to see no children in detention by the spring…
I thought we’d just been told there were no children in detention as of now.
So it has to “wend” its way through a cabinet committee? That’s a rather laughable excuse, considering the indecent haste with which the government is railroading through poorly thought-out wholesale reforms of higher education and health. How hard can it be?
And what on earth does a “timetable” without a “final deadline” mean? Not a timetable at all, by the sound of it!
A timetable without a deadline is like a fees promise you don’t intend to keep.
Yet more capitulation to the Conservatives thinly coated in platitudes and spin.
About bloomin’ time. Labour should never have allowed children to be held in detention in the first place – and it seems to be that the UK Border Agency are likely to be the problem.
“Clegg is under pressure from the UK Border Agency to prove he has other methods for such deportations” – why? Surely it’s up the the Border Agency to act on the politicians’ instructions, not the other way round? How useless are they???
“wending it’s way” = delete unread message.
There’s still time for a fair and progressive u turn.
Workhouses to re-open in the spring…?
@KL: Surely it’s up the the Border Agency to act on the politicians’ instructions, not the other way round? How useless are they???
Answer: very useless! The UKBA is in danger of doing serious damage to the UK’s reputation abroad, just as the USA’s security hysteria and onerous immigration process (by immigration in this sense I mean just getting through the border at the airport) is damaging their reputation and reducing the number of bright postgraduates coming to their universities. When UK universities are facing a very tight funding situation the last thing they need is to lose out on paying students and potential future researchers and lecturers from abroad.
In any case, I have a suggestion: if you are preparing to deport someone why not tag them rather than imprison them? It’s much cheaper for the taxpayer and much less traumatic for any children (or indeed adults) involved.
We must remember that if someone has been refused asylum or other residency they are given a deadline to leave the country. Until that deadline is reached they are not yet breaking any laws, so detaining them to prevent them from breaking the law (when you don’t even know whether they plan to or not) seems highly unjust to me. In my mind detention should be reserved for people who have already failed to turn up for deportation and had to be chased up.
This prevaricating spin doesn’t chime with what Nick wrote before the election does it?
Holding hundreds of children in immigration detention centres is “state-sponsored cruelty”, says Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg. In an open letter to Gordon Brown, he says the practice is indefensible and causes children mental distress. He also accuses the government of trying to “cover up” the practice by not releasing figures of children held.
In an open letter in the Daily Mail, Mr Clegg urges the prime minister to put an end to the practice.
He writes: “One of the best ways to judge the moral compass of a nation is how we treat children – all children. “There is now concrete evidence that the very young children who find themselves locked up even though they’ve done nothing wrong are suffering weight loss, post-traumatic stress disorder and long lasting mental distress.
This attempt to cover up such a morally reprehensible practice only makes matters worse
“How on earth can your government justify what is in effect state-sponsored cruelty?”
Mr Clegg says while Britain must keep track of adults seeking asylum it is “simply indefensible to do so at the cost of the mental and physical wellbeing of very young children”. He accuses the government of consistently refusing to give total figures of the number of children detained. “This attempt to cover up such a morally reprehensible practice only makes matters worse,” writes Mr Clegg.
Before I give a big cheer, I will wait until all of this is finalised and the alternative policy is revealed. Let’s hope that the alternative policy is not more ‘dawn raiding’, as such a policy is equal morally repugnant, and not to mention illiberal.
I absolutely agree with Niklas about the UK Border Agency and deportation. The Cabinet home affairs committee needs to put this near the top of its agenda to ensure this inhumane practice is ended ASAP.
Oh now that’s just rubbish. You know full well that it will be years before the university and health plans are put into practice – a date of 2012 has been floated but not yet fixed.