Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

I support the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, and my noble friend who, unfortunately, is unable to be present. In preparing for the amendment, I was surprised to learn that the Home Office does not collect detailed statistics on children who have been in detention and have been either voluntarily or forcibly returned. Under the Freedom of Information Act, it is apparently possible to obtain a general table headed: ""Removals, voluntary departures and assisted returns of asylum applicants, by country of nationality, age and sex, 2007"." The table shows that at least 105 children under 18, including 45 under 14, were removed in 2007 alone. These included children from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan. These children are not dependent on relatives’ claims but are pursuing their own freestanding asylum claims, which surely strengthens the argument. Apparently it is not possible to be given more details of what has happened to those children—such as how long they were detained and whether they were removed forcibly or went voluntarily—except, in the famous phrase, "at disproportionate cost". I take issue with "disproportionate cost" being used again and again when people are trying to get at the truth. Nobody wants to overcharge the taxpayer but we are talking about children on their own. Bearing in mind the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, surely it is important to track their movements and work out how they left the United Kingdom, even if we do not follow them all the way back home. As the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, reminded us, Article 3 of the convention provides that the Government must always have regard to, ""the best interests of the child"." Article 2 states that all children are entitled to that protection irrespective of their legal status or any other matter—something which the Government forget. The collection of statistics on their detention and removal should be a necessary prerequisite for their interests to be properly assessed and protected. Therefore, I strongly urge the Government not to hide behind the phrase "disproportionate cost" but to remember that we need to put disproportionate energy into helping children who are in distress or in detention. It is apposite that today the Does Every Child Matter? report was published by Refugee and Migrant Justice, formerly the Refugee Legal Centre, because it shows that despite government claims that every child matters, children seeking asylum are still denied the basic protection enjoyed by all other children in the UK.