My Lords, I shall speak briefly in support of the amendment, which I hope the Minister will be able to respond to
positively, given that it has been revised to take account of concerns that he raised in Committee about its wording, as the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, said.
I want to come back to the question of children. I welcome the publication last week of the factsheet on the Bill’s impact on children—better late than never—although it was only by chance that I found out about it, even though I had raised a number of concerns in Committee about the Bill’s failure to protect children. That point was made strongly by children’s organisations such as the Children’s Society. The factsheet, not surprisingly, echoes what the Minister said in Committee about guidance setting out how decision-makers will exercise their discretion with regard to children and more generally on a case-by-case basis.
However, as the Children’s Society warns:
“Assurances that children will be looked after in guidance are not sufficient. Guidance and case-by-case determinations do not provide the legal protection children desperately need. As highlighted in the recent inspection report of Asylum Casework, guidance is often neither followed nor implemented by Home Office caseworkers. Home Office staff themselves stressed ‘they did not have time to consider each case on its own merits, contrary to the guidance they receive’. Leaving decisions that will have a profound impact on a young person’s life to case-by-case determination can trigger further trauma for young and vulnerable claimants.”
Moreover, when the factsheet states:
“The best interests of the child are a primary consideration in every decision taken in respect of the child”,
forgive me if I am sceptical, given that the Court of Appeal last year ruled that the Home Office had failed to take account of the child’s best interests when setting the fee for citizenship registration—an issue to which we will return on day three.
Therefore, I am afraid that I am not reassured by what has been said about guidance and a case-by-case approach. Can the Minister tell us when that guidance will be published? Will organisations working with children seeking asylum be consulted on it? What opportunity will there be for Parliament to consider and provide views on the guidance? I realise that those questions may need to be referred to the Home Office but, if so, I should be grateful if the Minister would undertake to pass them on and request that the Home Office writes to me with the answers.