During a Parliamentary debate Diane Abbott, the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, said: “It makes a mockery of our children’s rights legislation that children in immigration detention continue to be held in such numbers for so long and in such conditions.”
The UK Government has a reservation to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child that can allow immigrants to be treated differently from other children. Abbott described this as “shameful”.
Responding to the debate Meg Hillier, under-secretary of state at the Home Office, said the government is working to improve conditions for children in immigration centres.
She added: “It is not the government’s intention to separate children from their parents, and that is why, sadly, children go into detention more often than we like.”
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