Minister Defiant Over Asylum Children In Care

Home Office ministers are refusing to abandon their policy of threatening to take the children of rejected asylum seekers into care despite a critical internal report saying it has failed to encourage them to leave the country.

The immigration minister, Liam Byrne, admitted to MPs and peers on parliament’s joint human rights committee yesterday that the conclusions of an unpublished Home Office evaluation showed “it has not been a breakthrough policy in terms of achieving of its intended outcome”.

Mr Byrne also indicated that the dispersal of about 6,000 child asylum seekers living in south-east England throughout Britain is to be announced next week. He confirmed that dental x-ray tests are to be announced next Tuesday for new teenage asylum seekers to ensure they are below 18.

The policy of giving families of rejected asylum seekers the stark choice of taking a “voluntary” flight back home or losing all their welfare benefits and facing destitution and their children being taken into care sparked an outcry when it was proposed three years ago.

Mr Byrne told the committee that a pilot scheme in Croydon, Manchester and Leeds had involved 113 families of failed asylum seekers losing all their benefits. In five cases the children were taken into care as a result of the family being thrown into destitution.

The minister said the report had not been published, 18 months after the pilot scheme, because he wanted to talk to the immigration staff involved and to test the negative conclusions of the evaluation report.

Andrew Dismore, the committee chairman, told him that this was “Cathy Come Home territory for asylum seekers” and asked him to confirm whether “taking children away from their parents” was part of the government’s asylum policy.

Mr Byrne said he was reluctant to abandon the policy, saying that strong views had been put to him that “it may be something that could in some circumstances be important to have. I need to test those conclusions further.”