Earlier this month, a four-hour parliamentary debate on the illegal migration bill produced the expected majority (63) to secure a second reading. But during that debate there was a potentially misleading clarification from the home secretary. Claiming that the opposition had mischaracterised the bill’s proposals, Suella Braverman carefully noted that the government would not be detaining children. Or rather, for those who listened carefully, it would not be detaining unaccompanied children.
Good. But although unaccompanied children may not be detained, other children will be. The government is proposing to change the status of children and family groups in the UK asylum system. And in doing so it will overturn 12 years of established cross-party consensus in the UK that we are not a country that detains children and families for solely administrative immigration purposes. This policy was agreed by senior Conservatives still sitting in parliament. To overturn it would be a deeply, deeply regressive act.
I am particularly sensitive to this detail because in 2010-11 I was part of a large campaign, and then a small policy team working closely with the government, that helped negotiate the change of policy, and eventually law. Much is rightly being written about the impact of this bill, which, as the UN states, “would amount to an asylum ban”. But my focus is on what will happen to that single agreement that has lasted just 12 years. I am left feeling that campaigning on just and dignified refugee and asylum provision is a gruelling process that can achieve real breakthroughs, but it requires a near-permanent vigilance and readiness to fight over and over again for the small things you thought you had already won. All progress is fragile.
The commitment to end the detention of children and families was formalised in policy in 2010, and quadruple-locked into primary legislation in 2014. Prior to 2010, the UK had been gradually increasing the number of children and families it routinely detained. Yarls Wood detention centre had held more than 1,000 children and families in 2009; one child was held for more than 150 days. Britain compared poorly with its European neighbours, which had moved to alternatives to detention for children and families just as we were insisting it was a necessary part of creating a hostile environment.
But what is remarkable in the case of the detention of children and families is that an organised group of civil society actors managed to change this, and it is worth noting how.
In the lead-up to the 2010 general election, campaigners for immigration reform knew that public opinion on the question of adults seeking asylum was tricky (but not impossible) to shift. But they also knew that public opinion on the treatment of children and families was different, that the government could not claim to represent public opinion in ratcheting up the use of child detention, and so refugee sector and community organising groups went out and tested that theory. They built grassroots coalitions in constituencies across the country. Local constituents asked politicians to sign a sanctuary pledge promising that they would end the practice if elected. Hundreds of parliamentary candidates across parties signed. In Cambridge, even the Ukip candidate signed.
Initially, David Cameron refused to sign and instructed his frontbench to do the same. However, Cameron crumbled when placed on a stage in Westminster Central Hall in front of 2,500 members of Citizens UK. A brave young Syrian woman (a refugee from a previous round of Assad repression) stood on stage and told Cameron what it had been like to be detained as a child, woken through the night each night by security staff charged with shining torches into her eyes. She told him that the effects of detention do not wear off, they are lasting. Telling her personal story, she told Cameron what every researcher, myself included, who has worked with those who have been detained knows. Detention is a form of imprisonment that causes a unique kind of trauma that endures. For this reason, it is almost always a disproportionate act by a liberal state, if any other alternative exists. In a completely unexpected move, Cameron relented on stage and pledged that he would work with community groups to find a solution.
When that solution came, more than a year later, it was hard won. It required long and complex negotiations with the coalition government and with Home Office civil servants (I know, because I was the vice-chair of the group making recommendations). The legal provision that emerged was imperfect: a small number of family groups might be detained for a few hours if they arrived without any claim made at ports; and, with permission of a specially formulated group of experts, family groups who were being deported or removed after legal processes had been exhausted could be held in pre-departure accommodation in transit to an airport.
But there could be no routine detention of children in large adult centres or prison facilities for reasons of administrative convenience or as part of a hostile environment policy messaging. Theresa May, David Cameron and Nick Clegg celebrated this achievement. This is what we are about to reverse.
This proposed policy shift is happening at a moment when those who work on advocacy within the refugee sector are already under huge strain: responding to the trafficking of children from hotels, and the impact of huge delays in processing asylum claims and increasing levels of asylum destitution.
So far, the proposed bill has drawn fierce words from Christian and Jewish leaders, from refugee groups and from human rights organisations. The archbishop of York described the bill as “cruelty without purpose”.
I doubt that this will trouble the government at all. With the prospect of a general election in the offing, it will be used to argue for their no-nonsense approach to bleeding heart liberals, and to make Labour squirm.
But public opinion on migration is more nuanced than Westminster often understands. The Gary Lineker controversy proved that. In 2010, it turned out that public opinion was more complex than imagined; that the British public did not especially desire the detention of children in their name. This was a point they were willing to make to their MPs and to ministers. If that view still holds, it is a point they will need to make again.
Anna Rowlands holds the St Hilda chair in Catholic social thought and practice at Durham University and has advised ministers on detention policy
