Proposed use of force on families facing enforced deportation

The Home Office has been consulting on proposed changes to Family Returns: Reforming Asylum Support and Enforcing Family Returns, with proposals regarding families with children, adults and care leavers once they are appeals rights exhausted, leaving them destitute and homeless.

There are many reasons to be concerned about these proposals in particular the removal of support for families who are appeals rights exhausted and a change to the way local authorities (in England) should assess the need for social services support in an attempt to reduce the safeguards of Section 17 of the Children Act.

Our primary concern though is in the second part of the consultation with the discussion of how and when they will be allowed to use force on children to ensure enforced family deportations go ahead. This includes hand-cuffing children. Linked to these proposals is the renewed fear of the return of the detention of families, which was stopped under the Coalition Government over a decade ago.

We maintain that any public policy should be constructed on the fundamental principle of do to others as you would have them do to you. In this regard, these new proposals clearly fall. We want to see a humane and compassionate asylum and immigration policy without such proposals as the hand-cuffing of  children.