End Child Detention Now calls for permanent halt to detention in government review
Immigration Minister Damian Green’s invitation to submit evidence to the government’s review of child immigration detention ended on 1 July 2010. End Child Detention Now’s submission can be read in full here. Please visit the Review page for submissions from other organisations and concerned individuals – more will be added as we receive them. A summary of ECDN’s submission follows:
Summary of End Child Detention Now’s Submission to the Home Office/Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Fund Review into ENDING THE DETENTION OF CHILDREN FOR IMMIGRATION PURPOSES.
We are conscious that a number of other agencies and organisations have direct experience of working with detained asylum seeker families, so in what follows we reprise the key evidence that has been presented in the last twelve months on the significant harm that even short periods of detention can have on children and young people.
We agree with Dr Julian Huppert, MP for Cambridge, in the recent House of Commons debate on alternatives to child detention when he said,
‘The main alternative that I can think of to detaining 1,000 children a year is not to detain them’.
That must be our starting point. It is for the UKBA and the other national and local government bodies along with relevant charities, voluntary agencies and campaign organisations to develop humane alternatives that keep this objective at the front of all the review’s deliberations.
We argue that the lack of adequate legal representation for families who wish to make an asylum claim or appeal against a refusal of asylum lies and the long delays in resolving cases lies at the root of the problem. Another issue is the lack of contact with families or information on assisted voluntary return prior to the issuance of removal notices.
We note the absence of a ‘children’s rights first’ culture within the UKBA, despite the provisions of Section 55 of the 2009 Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act and the appointment of a Children’s Champion. This problem has been exacerbated by an institutional culture within the Home Office, the UKBA and among previous ministers of state that the maintenance of a detention regime is an essential deterrent against those who may make unfounded asylum claims in future.
End Child Detention Now believes that all those involved in considering alternative arrangements to detention must agree a clear distinction between the need to ensure the welfare and best interests of the child and the UK government’s legitimate objective in maintaining an effective asylum and immigration policy.
As Sir Al Aynsley-Green has stated, this requires a change of mindset from a culture of ‘deny, detain, deport’ to one which removes the adversarial aspect of case management, grants leave to remain to those who require the United Kingdom’s protection and supports and compassionately facilitates the return of those who do not.
