40 MPs call on government to stop child detention in first week – Letter to Guardian – Why does UKBA continue to ignore Dubs report? – Former refugee children launch hand prints campaign in East London
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A great boost to the end child detention now campaign came with the news that in the first five days more than 40 MPs have signed or pledged to sign the House of Commons early day motion sponsored by Chris Mullin – including new signatures from John Austin, Norman Baker, Colin Breed, Annette Brooke, Ronnie Campbell, Martin Caton, Harry Cohen, Jeremy Corbyn, Dai Davies, Janet Dean, Andrew Dismore, Jim Dobbin, David Drew, Mike Hancock, Nick Harvey, Lady Hermon, David Heyes, Mark Hunter, Glenda Jackson, Gerald Kaufman, John Leech, Chris McCafferty, John McDonnell, Alun Michael, Bob Russell, Alan Simpson, Andy Slaughter and Rudi Vis. ECDN sends grateful thanks to every one of you and also to John Grogan, Simon Hughes, Sir Alan Beith and Clare Short for agreeing to sign too…
These are the letters that ECDN sent to the Guardian and the Independent in response to the UK Border Agency’s claim that the UKBA treats the children it detains in a fair and compassionate way and denying that because the Bail for Immigration Detainees report on the harmful health effects of detention is ‘more than three years old’ it should be discounted. The Home Office has not commissioned and can produce no independent academic research that is able to disprove the medical findings from BID. Neither has it commissioned any independent reports on the effectiveness of alternatives to detention in place in other EU and Commonwealth countries which have been carefully considered by Lord Alf Dubs, the current Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow MP and Evan Harris MP for the All Party Parliamentary Groups on Children and Refugees published more than three years ago.
Meanwhile in a number of schools across East London the Shpresa project will be collecting former refugee children’s hand prints to send to the Prime Minister asking him to end child detention. If you work with refugee children or young people who you think might like to be involved in the hand prints campaign please contact us.
