Today OurKingdom publishes Clare Sambrook’s damning indictment of the UK Border Agency’s systematic failure to protect some of the most vulnerable children in Britain – children whose parents have survived imprisonment, torture and rape in the countries they have fled only to find themselves under lock and key for failing to persuade the Home Office [...]
G4S who manage the Pease Pottage ‘pre-departure accommodation centre’ where families are forcibly held for up to a week prior to enforced removal by the UK Border Agency have refused to allow Santa to deliver Christmas gifts to the children held behind the 2.5m security fence. The Eastbourne branch of the Lush cosmetic chain had [...]
ESMÉ MADILL & SIMON PARKER, THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN OPENDEMOCRACY ON 27 SEPTEMBER 2011 Last week, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg told his fellow Liberal Democrats at the party’s conference in Birmingham to “hold your heads up and look our critics squarely in the eye”. Among the many things that Liberal Democrats can be [...]
TOM SANDERSON, THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN OPENDEMOCRACY ON 26 SEPTEMBER 2011. The companies managing UK immigration have come in for criticism once again, in new research — ‘Is that what you call good service?’ — by pressure group Ethical Consumer. The report scrutinises the environmental and ethical records of twenty of the companies now [...]
Alida Alisis, this article originally appeared in openDemocracy on 8 August 2011. Back in March, almost a year after the government had promised to end what Nick Clegg called the “shameful practice” of locking up asylum seeking families in conditions known to harm their mental health, Barnardo’s stunned children’s advocates by revealing that it had [...]
Croydon No Borders are organising a demonstration against the opening of a new family immigration prison (euphemistically referred to by the Home Office as ‘pre-departure accommodation’) on Saturday 30th July, 1pm at Muster Green park, Hayward’s Heath. Hayward’s Heath is where Mid Sussex District Council, the local authority which approved planning permission for the new [...]
Two new reports published last week contain damning criticisms of the immigration services provided by private security company G4S. We are nearing the completion of the new ‘pre-departure accommodation’ facility near Pease Pottage, and the commencement of detention for many more asylum seekers including children and families. In the meantime however, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of [...]
I’d firstly like to thank the Shpresa Programme for inviting me to address you all today. My name is Tom Sanderson and I’m here to represent the campaign group End Child Detention Now. To start with I’d like to tell you a bit about our campaign which began in 2009. Since then we have been [...]
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. [...]
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