Migrant children held 'too long' in detention, MPs say

[tericared]

 Many children whose parents are awaiting deportation from the UK are being held in immigration detention centres for too long, MPs have said.

The home affairs select committee said it was "not acceptable" that some were being detained for up to two months.

Chairman Keith Vaz said the children had "done nothing wrong" and should only ever be held as "a last resort".

The government said treating children with "care and compassion" was a priority for the UK Border Agency.

The committee's report says that nearly 1,000 children a year are detained in the UK while they and their families await removal from the country.

On average, they spend more than a fortnight in detention, although periods of up to 61 days are not uncommon, it says.

Earlier this year, children's commissioner for England Sir Al Aynsley-Green said the practice of holding children in detention should be ended altogether.

"It is not acceptable that we are detaining so many children for such long periods of time - these children have done nothing wrong, they should not be being punished," Mr Vaz said.

"It must always be absolutely the last resort to keep a child detained for any length of time."

The committee also called for reform of the asylum legal process and pointed out that 90% of appeals against deportation were never heard.

"The system must be cleaned up so that those who have been refused settlement in the UK are deported as soon as possible and only detained as a last resort," Mr Vaz said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8384860.stm

[amygray]

its sounds harsh when you first read it.. but.. parts of the story are missing..

are the children held in a jail or a facility with their parents?  Is the fact they are in the UK illegally the fault of the UK or thier parents?  is there a school, food, medical attention?  are they litterally locked up?  what is an acceptable to process and sort these sort of cases?

 

[survivorinohio]

I echo the previous poster.  Where, and how are they being held?

[tericared]

 

Mr Vaz referred to Yarl's Wood detention centre, in Bedfordshire, in particular, which has been heavily criticised in the past.

He said that despite some recent improvements, such as a purpose-built school, it remained "essentially a prison" and "no place for a child".

The committee said it was difficult to justify detaining families when they were very unlikely to abscond and in future the UK Border Agency should consider other alternatives such as electronic tagging

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The UK government's treatment of the children of asylum seekers in detention is "abusive" and "dehumanising", it has been claimed.

The chief executive of the Welsh Refugee Council said the government was in breach of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Mike Lewis said that children are often split from their parents.

But the UK Border Agency denied the claims and said it did not recognise the description of how it worked.

Referring to early morning removals of families from their homes, Mr Lewis said: "For us the trauma of that experience is pretty... I would use the word abusive actually, because I don't think its done from a child-centred way and shouldn't be happening in the UK."

We're not talking about 15 year olds. We're talking about three and four year olds, babies even.

"We've got stories of children who haven't been fed all day in this process.

"They then go into these places where they could be there for months while their claims are sorted out. I don't think you could make it any more dehumanising really".

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child stipulates that detention shall only be used as a last resort for the shortest appropriate period of time.

[tericared]

 

The Lancet says children there are "essentially imprisoned with little to do, and provided with inadequate education and health care".

Nick Lessof of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health advocacy committee told The Lancet that he saw two children with sickle-cell disease, who had both had a high fever, in Yarl's Wood in May this year.

The children's courses of penicillin had been stopped and they were unable to take fluids, yet they had not been admitted to hospital.