My Lords, I speak in support of Amendments 59, 63, 64 and 67 which, as has been demonstrated, have strong support from all quarters of this Chamber. It was the intention of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham to speak to these amendments but he is unable to be in the Chamber tonight.
I believe that the strength of opposition to any change in the current detention limits for both accompanied and unaccompanied children is because it is one of the most alarming and unedifying provisions in the Bill. Ministers have set out what they see as the need to detain children for immigration purposes in order to ensure that we do not inadvertently create incentives for people smugglers to target vulnerable individuals. Were this the case, then there would be a case for considering some sort of remedy. However, yet again we have been provided with no evidence that this is the case.
Building an asylum system with deterrence diffused throughout, as described by His Majesty’s Government, has led to this inappropriate proposal to restart detaining children, potentially for an unlimited period. As the noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik, said, it was a Government led by the party currently in office who took the brave decision to end the routine detention of children. That was against significant departmental pressure to retain the practice. How have we arrived, just 10 years later, at the conclusion that the well-being and welfare of children can now be sacrificed in consequence of the need to control migration?
In a rare admission to an evidential base for policy, on Monday the Minister referred to most persons deemed children in these categories being around the ages of 16 and 17. I accept his assertion on this point. However, as was said then, some children as young as 10 are involved.
The noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik, elegantly set out the impacts of detention of children. Studies show that the inescapable institutional nature of detention is traumatic for children and detrimental to the child’s physical and mental development. The Government are fully aware of the damaging impact of detention on children. I quote from one small section of the Home Office’s Assessing Age guidance, published only this March:
“Failure to adhere to the legal powers and policy on detaining children can have very significant consequences, for example … detention can be extremely frightening for a child, with their perception of what they might experience potentially informed by previous negative experiences of detention”.
It needs to be said explicitly that the Government will be sanctioning an intolerable level of emotional distress for the most vulnerable children. Understandably, a child will ask themselves, “What must be wrong with me to have been subjected to such conditions?”.
The Prime Minister stated that the Government’s objective behind the Bill is not the detention of children. None the less, that is what the Bill does. Given the Prime Minister’s just objective, why has the 2014 requirement that child detention be for the shortest time possible been expressly removed? In the year to March 2023, more than 8,000 children entered the UK who would meet Clause 2 conditions and who therefore could be detained indefinitely. In the first three years of the Bill’s operation, this may mean that up to 25,000 children will be deprived of their liberty. Should the deterrent effect of the Bill—about which we currently have no modelling whatever—fail, surely the 2014 requirement must be retained.
The Home Secretary bears a legal duty to safeguard children. Home Office guidance makes clear that this duty requires a demonstration of fair treatment that meets the same standard that a British child would receive. Would we tolerate the Bill’s proposals for our own children or grandchildren?
I welcome the amendments made in this area in the other place, but they do not go far enough. Legislating for the option to place limits on detention and for these limits not to be specified in the Bill is simply not adequate. It is an area that cannot remain entirely at the discretion of a Secretary of State, and children must have a means of challenging the lawfulness of a decision. Also, there have been no equivalent provisions for children within families. Why is one child different from another? Children will be detained after they have fled unimaginable horrors at home or been trafficked against their will. Children will be born in detention and others will have their futures shaped by it. It is the hope on these Benches that we are better than this and know what is right, having banished this immoral practice before. It will take real courageous leadership to change course, but we must. There is concern among my brother and sister bishops about the state of the nation’s soul if we tread so easily down this path.