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Alternatives to Child Detention

My right hon. Friend has great experience as a constituency MP. He probably does more immigration casework than any constituency MP, and he has been doing it for 23 years. Added to that is his experience as the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee. He makes an excellent point: the delays help to create an intolerable situation for people trapped in the system. I am one of the longest-serving Members of the House present today, and I remember when detention centres were introduced. The House was told that they would be used only for short periods while we fast-tracked cases and deported people. Had the House been told that children, in particular, would be in these centres for months—there have even been cases of children being in them for nearly a year—it might have taken a very different attitude. A system that was meant to be used for short periods of detention while people's cases were fast-tracked has turned into one—I have visited the detention centres myself—in which people and their children are held in limbo. That is one of the things that make this practice so unacceptable. As I said, the detention of children is wrong in principle; it is wrong because it is an infringement of their liberty. It is also wrong because, in a way, we are making children and families suffer for the issues in our system, and the delays are very much part of that. We set a very poor example to other countries and other jurisdictions if we cannot construct a system in which it is not necessary to detain children. The purpose of the detention centres, apart from expediting removals, was to act as a deterrent. There has been a strong feeling over the past 13 years that the grimmer and more exacting we made the regime for asylum seekers and immigrants, the less likely they were to come here. However, people must recognise that, for better or worse, the push-factors behind people migrating and seeking asylum are very great, and the idea that turning the screw one more time will see numbers drop has proved false. We need to focus as never before on having an efficient and speedy system, because my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) and I have spent 23 years struggling with the delays. In the long run, we also have to deal with the circumstances in people's countries of origin that make them think, in their desperation, that they will chance their arm by coming to this country. After 23 years of immigration and asylum casework, I would add that we also need to deal with some of the so-called immigration and legal advisers who prey on our constituents and give them false advice and false hope. Often, it is not the would-be immigrants or asylum seekers who put themselves on the path of collision with the authorities, but the advice they get from people who are feeding off them and making money out of them, even though they have little money to spend. In the immediate term, we need to deal with the ongoing inefficiencies in the system and bear down on some of the lawyers and so-called immigration advisers. Although we are obviously very constrained, we also need, in the very long term, to create the right conditions in people's regions of origin so that it is not necessary for them to flee here. That is the way to deal with the system. Successive bodies and individuals have tried to get past Governments to deal with this issue. It was a particular preoccupation of a previous Children's Commissioner and it is a preoccupation of the chief inspector of prisons, Anne Owers, who did a comprehensive report on the issue two or three years ago. As I said, every reputable organisation that has looked at this has said that the detention of children is wrong in principle and detrimental to children in practice. Medical work has been done on the consequences of the stressful situation for children, and it is very alarming. I have said before, including to my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch, when she was a Minister: how can we, the politicians, agree to keep children in circumstances that would horrify us if they were proposed for our own children? It must be wrong to punish children for the alleged infractions of their parents. There must be a better way than that. The way, of course, as the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) said, is not to split families but to bear down on the aspects of the system—whether the advice that is given or the speed with which cases are dealt with—that lead to people being in such a plight. What has been happening is wrong. There must be a way forward that does not involve splitting up families. I have raised the issue time and again in the House and in questions, and I have visited detention centres, not because there are votes in worrying about the children in those centres but because I felt that what was happening was wrong, and that there must be a better way. It gives me no pleasure to say that it has taken a new Government to take a fresh look at the question. I hope they will not let the tribulations of office and its practical difficulties deflect them from ending what has been this country's shame: the detention of innocent children in detention centres.