UK Borders Bill

My Lords, it may be necessary to detain families from time to time in the interests of an effective immigration system. I support the amendment because of my experience in having visited Yarl’s Wood on a couple of occasions. The last time I visited that centre, I spoke to a 16 year-old who had been detained there for five months with her eight year-old sister. A mother I spoke to said that she and her two children had been detained for two months. The Minister pointed out in a letter today something that we hear repeatedly, when he says, "““that the vast majority of families with children spend 7 days or less in detention””." I welcome that, but clearly from the figures given by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, numbers of children stay in detention for considerable lengths of time. I was struck when speaking to the 16 year-old girl how bitterly she felt about being detained in this way. She had committed no crime. What sense of the adult world does a young person have if they are detained for five months without any conviction or without having committed a crime, even in the most civilised and sanitised of settings? I recognise the challenges faced by the Government but wholeheartedly support Amendment No. 4, which would put a definite limit on the time that children can be held in such settings.