Coram Children’s Legal Centre welcomes the government scrapping child detention powers in the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, published today. Powers to detain children without time limit were brought in with the Illegal Migration Act 2023, though had not yet been commenced. They included allowing the government to lock up children arriving in the…
As Parliament debates the final stages of the Illegal Migration Bill, CCLC says: The Government must keep meaningful limits on child detention We know that locking up infants and children is wrong because we have abolished it once before. In 2011, a Conservative-led government made ending child detention a flagship policy. It was right to do…
The Illegal Migration Bill will be debated tonight during Committee stage in the House of Lords. Peers will debate the controversial reintroduction of child detention after it was ended over a decade ago in a landmark commitment by the Conservative-led Coalition government. Amendments to keep the existing limits on child detention have been tabled by…
Leading children’s organisations and charities have written to the Home Secretary to express concern at plans in the Illegal Migration Bill to reintroduce child detention. They have condemned the child detention proposals in the Bill as ‘immoral’ and in breach of international law. Reneging on ban on child detention The coalition government committed to end…
Recent case law highlights the potentially harmful consequences of asylum applicants having their ages disputed. A number of recent court cases have highlighted the risks that face young asylum seekers who, after arriving in the UK, are unable to show how old they are, because, for example, they lack the requisite identification documents. Judgments on…