UK Borders Bill

My Lords, we are much indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Judd, for the detail with which he has supported the amendments. What I want to say depends largely on that, but I shall make a number of summary points. Those of us, of whom there will be many in this House, who have seen something of the inside of one or more detention centres will have rapidly formed the impression that these are no places for children and young people. On the whole they are simply not happy places; they are places of tension and anxiety. They are also places where rarely, if ever, are there separate facilities where young people can be assured of protection in all senses of that word. Young people and children are put in such places where there are often, if not always, inadequate educational facilities. In the light of what the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said about the length of time that children are in such places, it is clear that they are torn from their schools—if they are in school, as one hopes they will be—and torn from their friends. Those are serious matters. As the later amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, and others bring home, such detainees are not specifically protected by the Children Act or the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. All that would be serious enough, but then there is the experience of so many people with a great deal more knowledge at first hand than I have—and I have some. Whatever the good intentions of the Home Office and of many of those working in the system, it appears to be constantly shot through at best with a lack of imagination and, with awful frequency, serious degrees of inhumanity. Amendment No. 4 is most important; if it were to fail, Amendment No. 5 would be most important, too. Underlying Amendment No. 4 are some of the stories that one has heard at a range of points—in Grand Committee and in another meeting in this House called by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury; it was not part of this legislative process, but took place during it. We heard then, and I have heard elsewhere, tragic stories of parents separated from young children and young children separated from parents. Those stories and realities may arise out of the conviction that such places are not for very small children, which underlies elements of Amendment No. 4. For all those reasons, these are serious matters that the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, have brought to our attention.