Immigration: Detention of Children at Heathrow

Lord Avebury Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Avebury]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their response to the Report of the Independent Monitoring Board on the non-residential short term holding facilities at London Heathrow Airport for the year February 2011 to January 2012 on the “degrading and disgraceful” conditions in which children are being detained at Heathrow.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Henley)]

My Lords, we take very seriously the findings of the Independent Monitoring Board and are working with our partners, including BAA, to address them. We will respond to the report fully in due course.

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, does my noble kinsman agree that keeping a child in these disgraceful conditions, in one case for 31 hours and 50 minutes, is inconsistent with the coalition’s commitment to end the detention of children and possibly with our obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child? Will my noble kinsman therefore consider appointing a joint inquiry by the chief inspector of the UKBA and the Children’s Commissioner into the conditions and length of detention at all the United Kingdom ports of entry by sea or by air?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I remind my noble kinsman that the holding rooms we are talking about are designed to hold people for relatively short amounts of time—a few hours in the main and up to 24 hours in extreme circumstances. We accept some of the criticisms that we have received from the Independent Monitoring Board and we hope that where it looks as though people, particularly with children, are going to be held for a long time, the relevant staff will make use of other available facilities, such as Tinsley House. However, I think that even my noble kinsman, and most Members of the House, would accept that where we are dealing with people who are going to be returned to another country, they have to be kept somewhere relatively secure, whether or not they have children with them, to make sure that they can be sent back, as appropriate, after their decision has been dealt with.