UK Borders Bill

moved Amendment No. 27: 27: Before Clause 16, insert the following new Clause— ““Applicability of Convention on the Rights of the Child After section 4(1) of the Immigration Act 1971 (c. 77) (administration of control) insert— ““(1A) In the exercise of their powers under subsection (1) it is unlawful for immigration officers or the Secretary of State to act in a way which is incompatible with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. (1B) Subsection (1A) does not apply to the making of a deportation order under section 5 (procedure for, and further provisions as to, deportation).””.”” The noble Lord said: The Refugee Children’s Consortium, which speaks for 23 children’s organisations, and with which the Children’s Commissioner, UNICEF, the UNHCR and the British Red Cross have observer status, endorsed the demand by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child that the UK withdraw its general reservation on immigration and citizenship. In Amendment No. 27, we invite the Committee to take a step in that direction by bringing the BIA within the scope of the convention, while explicitly preserving the right of the Secretary of State to deport a child under the immigration Acts. This saving is not necessary legally, in our opinion, because Article 22 of the CRC provides that states must, "““take appropriate measures to ensure that””," an asylum-seeking child, "““receive appropriate protection and humanitarian assistance in the enjoyment of applicable rights set forth in the present Convention””." If there were any doubt about whether a failed asylum seeker who was a child could be deported, and there had been no case before the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Government could have sought clarification from the committee. But I am sure that states parties which are already parties to the convention routinely remove children, and do it as humanely as possible as none of them has been in trouble for any breach of the convention. I am open to correction by the Minister. I am equally sure that if the only concern were about removals, the Government would have been able to draft a much more limited reservation than the one we have to observe at present. As we heard at our first sitting, the Government are desperate to avoid any commitment to the welfare of the child by the BIA, whereas we believe that in accordance with Article 3 of the CRC, the best interests of the child should be the primary consideration. We are particularly concerned with current procedures in connection with immigration control that are clearly breaches of the convention. I shall give a couple of examples with which the noble Lord may be familiar. The first concerns the separation of breastfeeding mothers from their infants, on which I have corresponded with three Home Office Ministers—Mr Tony McNulty, Mr Liam Byrne, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland. After the first case of Mrs N, Mr McNulty instructed senior officials to conduct a review in April 2006. On 18 May last year, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, told me that the review had been completed and amendments were being made to the operational enforcement manual. I have not been able to identify those changes, and I would be grateful if the Minister would let me know what they were. Mr Byrne wrote to me on 12 July 2006, saying that correct procedures had not been followed and that all staff had been reminded that families should be separated only on the authority of an assistant director, a procedure that is not a judicial review and therefore not compliant with Article 9 of the convention. A month later, I wrote to Mr Byrne about a second case, that of Mrs P, who had been detained when she went on a routine signing-on in April 2006 and separated from her breastfeeding infant for two days. The review which had been conducted on the case of Mrs N had not looked at whether there were any similar cases at that time, although I had asked for that to be done, and we still do not know whether there were any. On 27 August last year, I wrote to Mr Byrne, reminding him that I was awaiting a reply to my letter of 12 July. He replied on 12 September saying that the IND had no record that Mrs P had told the immigration staff that she was lactating. That was plainly untrue. Not only had Mrs P told the officer repeatedly that she was breastfeeding her little boy, but it became obvious because her breasts were leaking—a fact remarked on by other officers. I wrote again with details of the events that had taken place at Communications House. In his reply of 23 October, the Minister finally admitted that Mrs P had told the officers that she was ““feeding baby””, but the interviewing officer said that he had not understood that she meant breastfeeding. The Minister also admitted that Communications House denied her the facility of making a telephone call to the carer of her baby, who thought that Mrs P would be gone for a couple of hours and was no doubt getting desperate. Mr Byrne said that the official concerned had been retrained, and that specific guidance was being developed in relation to breastfeeding mothers and parents of young children, including a requirement that breastfeeding infants should not be separated from their mothers unless compelling and exceptional circumstances indicated that it might be appropriate. He said that the same would apply to any young children. I was unable to find that guidance on the Home Office website, and would be grateful if the noble Lord would give the reference, for the satisfaction of the Committee this afternoon. In spite of the assurances that I had been given in both those cases, a third case has arisen—as the Minister is aware, I hope—that of Mrs Janipher Maseko, whose name I can mention because the case is already in the public domain. She was said to have come to the end of her asylum application after she had just been delivered of her son, Collin, in Hillingdon Hospital. She lost her accommodation and the support that she had been receiving, and was taken into custody by the police when she was found sleeping rough on 9 May. At the time, Collin was two weeks old and his sister Chantelle was one year old. They were placed in foster care while Janipher, after spending four days in police custody without a shower, was taken to Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre. The two babies were not restored to her until 23 May, and that took the combined efforts of two MPs and a Peer, the professor of midwifery at King’s, Cristel Amiss of the Black Women’s Rape Action Project, Helen Butler of the La Leche League, Patti Rundall of Baby Milk Action, and the redoubtable Morgan Gallagher of Nursing Matters. The Minister has now instructed the children’s champion for the BIA to investigate the circumstances and make recommendations, but how can we have any confidence in the process when investigations into the previous two cases failed to prevent a recurrence? I hope that Members of the Committee will forgive me for going into some detail on this problem but I hope that it will convince them that, if this sort of thing can happen, there is an urgent need to bring the BIA within the scope of the CRC. The convention provides a critical standard against which the UK’s treatment of refugee children must be assessed, and should be used by the Government as their guiding principle on all matters relating to refugee and asylum-seeking children. In October 2002, the committee said that the Government should, "““address thoroughly the particular situation of children in the ongoing reform of the immigration and asylum system to bring it in line with the principles and provisions of the Convention””." The Government have stated that the reservation does not prevent them having regard to the convention in the care and protection of child asylum seekers. We challenge that assertion, on the basis of our knowledge of cases such as those mentioned, and because the reservation allows the UK to pass immigration laws without reference to the convention. It allows the UK to detain children in places such as Yarl’s Wood, contrary to the advice of the JCHR and in the face of repeated criticism by the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Anne Owers. A new handbook by Bail for Immigration Detainees—no doubt we can go into it in greater detail on the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and others—concludes that, "““urgent changes are needed to safeguard children against the worst excesses of current detention policy and practice””." The honourable Member for Hendon, chair of the JCHR, goes further in his press release accompanying the committee’s report on asylum seekers. He says that asylum-seeking children should never be detained, and that the treatment of asylum seekers in some cases, particularly the policy of enforced destitution—we will discuss that later—reaches the human rights threshold of inhuman and degrading treatment. These situations will continue to arise as long as there is no underlying principle governing the treatment of asylum-seeking children. Now that we have a new Government, it is time for a fresh start. There could be no better indication of a radical change in the child-hostile asylum policies of the past than for the Minister to say this afternoon that the Government will consider withdrawing their reservation on the CRC, as the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has urged. I beg to move.