UK Borders Bill

I would be more than happy to look at those discrepancies and to spend as much time with the hon. Gentleman as is required to try to get to the bottom of that matter. I was talking about the need to maintain contact arrangements with children, particularly when they do not have the right to be here. While honouring our commitment not to send children home when, in our view, the reception arrangements are not appropriate, it is important that we make arrangements to send them home as soon as it is safe to do so. I now come to the debate about section 11 of the Children Act 2004, which was where the hon. Member for Ashford started. This is an important area and we have spent some time reviewing it over the last 12 months. The nub of the problem is that the section 11 duty is not a simple duty. There are two parts to it. On the one hand there is a duty to safeguard the child, but on the other there is a duty to promote the child’s well-being. The Department for Education and Skills guidance that comes with the duty is clear. It says that the duty is to make arrangements to ensure that"““children are growing up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care””." It also mentions:"““undertaking that role so as to enable those children to have optimum life chances and to enter adulthood successfully””." The analogy with the police is helpful, because the police do not seek to deport people back to third world countries. Although our advice is that, legally, we would win the cases—I am sure that the refugee children’s organisations have gone to some good lawyers to solicit advice and ascertain that there are no barriers to the Home Secretary setting removal directions—unfortunately, that is only part of the story. My great fear is that there would be a licence for judicial review to multiply. One can easily see that lawyers could file judicial reviews challenging decisions and arguing about a Home Office decision to deport somebody back to the Democratic Republic of the Congo or parts of south-east Asia. I think that lawyers would question how that would be consistent with the duty to enable those children to have optimum life chances and enter adulthood successfully. Judicial review presents a serious problem: between January and March this year we received an average of 79 judicial reviews a week challenging enforcement activity. Some 94 per cent. were refused permission at the paper stage; none the less, one ongoing case has been running for 12 months and is on its second judicial review. Another case has been running for 14 months and is on its fourth judicial review, while a further case has been running for seven months and is on its third judicial review. People often try to exploit the judicial review process as a last-minute barrier to removal. I fear that the change to section 11 proposed by the hon. Member for Ashford would simply multiply those barriers.