Syd Bolton, Solicitor, Children’s Legal Centre* *This is the text of the speech that Syd Bolton gave to the End Child Detention Now/Shpresa Keep Your Promise campaign launch, Oxford House, Bethnal Green, London, 26th March 2011. Thank you all for being part of this campaign and for inviting me to take part in this important [...]
Supporters of York-based End Child Detention Now launched their ‘Keep Your Promise’ postcard writing campaign on Saturday 5 February with help from local children who are urging David Cameron and Nick Clegg to honour their pledge to end the detention of children without delay. The group’s spokesperson Esme Madill explained that Children have continued to [...]
Simon Parker This article originally appeared in openDemocracy, 13 January 2011. In the High Court on Tuesday, Mr Justice Wyn Williams might have driven the last nail into the coffin of Britain’s infamous and long-running child immigration detention policy. The detaining of children for immigration purposes has been denounced as a ‘scandal’ and a ‘moral [...]
This article is reproduced by kind permission of Public Interest Lawyers Reetha Suppiah and Sakinat Bello and their young families are typical of the hundreds of recent victims of our immigration detention system. Over the course of their time in Britain, they have integrated into our society and formed significant ties to it. After years [...]
Clare Sambrook, this article first appeared in openDemocracy 11 January 2011. ‘Much of the delay in concluding asylum and other immigration cases stems from poor quality decision-making when the application is initially considered,’ says Keith Vaz, chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee whose latest report on the UK Border Agency’s work is published today. [...]
Clare Sambrook (This article originally appeared in openDemocracy on 31 December 2010) When Nick Clegg announced two weeks ago, ‘Today marks a big culture shift within our immigration system,’ I was struck by a vivid image of horses struggling to push carts. A big culture shift is exactly what is needed at the Home Office, but there [...]
The New Statesman reports on a BBC investigation that government pilots involving 113 families in London and the North-West had given families with children just two weeks to voluntarily leave the country. Two families who refused to comply were taken into detention and deported shortly after and two families accepted voluntary re-settlement packages. Significantly only [...]
On Tuesday 26 October, a judicial review challenge to the Government’s family detention policy reaches the High Court in London. The Claimants – two single mothers and their young children – are seeking an order declaring the Government’s family detention policy unlawful. In May 2010, the Coalition Government announced that it would end the detention [...]
The Bevins Prize was founded in memory of Tony Bevins, the first political editor of The Independent, who died in 2001 after a short illness, to recognise outstanding achievement in investigative reporting. For the first time in the history of the prize, a non-newspaper nominee, End Child Detention Now’s Clare Sambrook has made the shortlist [...]
Today the charity Medical Justice launches the most comprehensive report on the harm done to children held in immigration detention. The 84 page ‘State Sponsored Cruelty‘ report is based on the findings of 141 cases involving children detained between 2004 and April 2010. “We welcome the report from Medical Justice as it highlights again the [...]
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