Take action - your PPC now has no excuse not to sign the Sanctuary Pledge!

So we have scored a great victory - but we cannot be complacent. We must secure that victory. We will not rest until we actually see the number of detained children falling. We will hold those party leaders to account for the promises they made to act on child detention at the CITIZENS UK Assembly.

You can help secure this victory by making sure that as many PPCs as possible sign up to the Sanctuary Pledge and agree to meet with you six months after they are elected. So if you have any Lib Dem, Labour or Conservative candidates who have a chance of winning and who haven't signed the Sanctuary Pledge, then you should contact them urgently by phone if you have already dealt with them, or by email if not, sharing with them the support expressed by Cameron, Clegg and Brown (exact quotes available here) and encouraging them to sign too. A deathbed conversion is better than no conversion at all!

There are already of dozens of PPCs from all of the major parties, including ministers and frontbenchers from all those parties, signed up to the Sanctuary Pledge list. There is now no excuse for not signing the Sanctuary Pledge! So please contact your PPCs today!

Calling them direct is best, but you can also use this excellent tool from our Sanctuary Pledge partners, Church Action on Poverty, to contact all your local PPCs. Even if they are too busy to discuss it now, then try to bag a meeting for post-election.

Make sure you let us know what they say in response!

Three party leaders promise action on child detention... & Gordon Brown formally endorses the Sanctuary Pledge!

Monday was a truly historic day for CITIZENS, for the Sanctuary Pledge campaign, and for all of us who are fighting to secure for justice for people fleeing persecution and to rebuild public support for sanctuary.

At the CITIZENS UK General Election Assembly in London yesterday, 300 Sanctuary Pledge supporters joined over 2,000 leaders from London Citizens to present a People's Manifesto to David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown. The Sanctuary Pledge, and particularly its call for an end to child detention, was a key part of the People's Manifesto.

So what did the party leaders say?

Nick Clegg stated clearly that he wants to end child detention - "Let us put an end to the locking up of small innocent children. How can we consider ourselves a civilised country and lock up kids?".

David Cameron said he would set up a working party to review child detention which CITIZENS UK would be part of: "I absolutely share your concern about sanctuary. It is not acceptable what happens at the moment [child detention], not acceptable at all, and we will look at it. I will make sure that you are part of that process."

Gordon Brown did not address the issue directly in his speech, which focused on the economic agenda. When questioned, he said: "I want no child in our nation to suffer or be abandoned. I will look at the issue of child detention again." Many people were not happy that he was not pushed further on this.

However, we suspect that this was largely to do with the lack of time available and a desire to focus on the economic agenda. We now have a letter from Mr Brown, in which he says: "I am happy to endorse the Sanctuary Pledge and will encourage all Labour candidates in the coming election to also support it." I hope we will all help him out with that process!

Thanks to the Sanctuary Pledge team in Hackney South and Shoreditch who met Home Office minister, Meg Hillier, last week. At that meeting we gained a commitment from her that Labour will set up a national working party that will look to find practical solutions that will mean no child needs to be detained. She assured us that CITIZENS will be part of that group.

So whoever wins the election next week, and whoever become PM, we know that they have responded positively to the Sanctuary Pledge, we know that they have promised action on child detention, and we know that CITIZENS will be involved in working with government to develop those policies.

This is your victory. Without the power of citizens putting pressure on their local candidates and asking them to sign the Sanctuary Pledge, this would not have happened.

Watch PPCs from all parties in Cambridge queue up to praise the Sanctuary Pledge team

You can now watch the recording of a recent hustings in Cambridge where the Prospective Parliamentary Candidates from all parties are falling over themselves to express their support for the Sanctuary Pledge, and to congratulate the Sanctuary Pledge team.

Watch the debate here.

Well done to Anna Rowlands and her team!

Half-way there in Hall Green

Respect and Labour candidates have enthusiastically signed up to the Sanctuary Pledge in Birmingham's Hall Green constituency, where Labour holds the advantage in the notional 2005 election results. Agreeing with the Pledge entirely, Salma Yaqoob and Roger Godsiff signed up in meetings with the local delegation - a team led by Sarah Teversham of St. Mary's Church, Moseley, and RESTORE, a Birmingham Churches Together undertaking for people seeking sanctuary.

Meanwhile, Tory and Lib Dem candidates are still to reply to initial letters, although the Pledge will be raised as an issue in the upcoming hustings.

Accountability meetings for after the election will also be arranged at the hustings.

"You use whatever power you've got"

Some major gains have been reported today from the London constituency of Ilford South. Phil Butcher, Director of the Commission for Justice and Social Responsibility at the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brentwood, leads a team representing over 2000 people from Catholic and Baptist churches as well as the local Albanian community.

In a difficult constituency which has previously had some BNP presence, Toby Boutle* (Cons) Mike Gapes (Lab) Wilson Chowdhry (Greens) have all readily and without reservation signed the Pledge. We have yet to hear back from the Lib-Dems who have not yet responded to our mails.

By contrast reports from the nearby Brentwood and Ongar constituency, led by Davina Bolt, suggest that Conservative candidate and former MP Eric Pickles has been reluctant to sign.

Asked to give advice to struggling delegations, Revd Butcher stated: "ensure that you have your power base; use whatever power you've got; and don't give up". He added that working on the Sanctuary Pledge has enabled him to "focus on some of the key issues" of relevance to the community.

An accountability meeting has been arranged with Mike Gapes.

* We would like to apologise to Mr Boutle and issue a retraction of comments previously posted in this article that wrongly suggested that he was avoiding discussion of this issue. We are delighted that he has signed the Sanctuary Pledge and are happy to apologise for our error.

"The most organised group I've ever been lobbied by"

This is the first of a series of daily reports from Sanctuary Pledge delegations across the country.

Civil society leaders in Nottingham East today reported "marvellous" gains in their campaign to sign PPCs up to the Sanctuary Pledge, with all three of the main contenders - Labour, Lib Dem and Conservative - agreeing to the 5-point agenda.

The large delegation is led by Revd Karen Rooms of St. Ann with Emmanuel Church, and includes Dr Musharraf Hussain, Chair of the Christian-Muslim Forum and local imam; Richard Hawthorne of Nottingham's Interfaith Council; and members of Faiths in Action, the Eritrean community, the Pakistani Christian community, and local Anglican, Quaker and Methodist churches - covering at least 1400 people in the constituency altogether.

Liberal Democrat candidate and Borough Councillor for North Keyworth Sam Boote called the team "the best organised group I've ever been lobbied by".

The hard work culminated at the hustings at which Chris Leslie (former MP and Labour candidate), Ewan Lamont (Conservative), Sam Boote and independent candidate Benjamin Barton signed a large version of the Pledge.

Commenting that it has been "great to see people enthused and wired" about the Sanctuary Pledge, Revd Rooms advises struggling delegations to share out responsibility - to allow different members of the team to become experts on different parts of the ask so that they can respond effectively to challenges. She also says: "Trust the process [...] Get as broad a delegation as you can".

Accountability meetings have been set for after the Election. We look forward to seeing how the candidates' commitment translates into action.

Time to end the detention of children is now

By Dr Austen Ivereigh

Each year the UK Border Agency (UKBA) detains around 1,000 children in immigration removal centres (IRCs). The reason: their parent or parents have been identified for forced removal from the UK.

They range in age from babies to older teenagers, but are mostly in the age range of 10-12 years. Most have spent many years in the UK while their parents’ case for asylum has been processed, and speak with British accents after being educated at British schools.

They have committed no crime. Yet suddenly they are arrested and imprisoned – for weeks at a time, out of sight of the press and the courts. Some spend only a few days in detention at Yarl’s Wood in Bedfordshire, the main IRC with family facilities; others many weeks, or even months. The average is 15 days – described as “unacceptable” by the children’s commissioner for England, Sir Al Aynsley-Green. When they are released, less than half of them are put on a plane back to their parents’ country; most go back to where they were before they were detained. Many are detained more than once.

Mark Easton, the BBC home affairs editor, wrote in April 2009: “What sort of country sends a dozen uniformed officers to haul innocent sleeping children out of their beds; gives them just a few minutes to pack what belongings they can grab; pushes them into stinking caged vans; drives them for hours while refusing them the chance to go to the lavatory so that they wet themselves and locks them up sometimes for weeks or months without the prospect of release and without adequate health services? My country, apparently.”

Almost every child who is detained suffers some injury to their health, physical and mental. Being arrested, transported and locked up is, in itself, traumatic: they recall with horror being woken early in the morning by uniformed officers breaking down the front door, told they have just minutes to pack their most essential belongings, then watching their parents being handcuffed. “Children, even the youngest, are deeply affected and traumatised by these events,”

Sir Al reported in 2008. “Many of them have recurring nightmares about them, and they often demonstrate changes in behaviour. They can become persistently withdrawn, cling to their parents, refuse food or wet the bed. Children's best interests appear to me to be entirely invisible during the arrest and escorting process.” Many of these children have put down roots in Britain after many years, and are torn from their friends and belongings. “I speak to these children in places like Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre,” Sir Al wrote, “and they answer my questions in regional British accents acquired over many years of integration into our communities and schools. It seems positively cruel to rip up the hopes and aspirations of these young people, who have become settled and enjoy close ties with friends, teachers and neighbours, due to the historic problems of managing the asylum system inefficiently.”

The children’s commissioner wrote a report on Yarl’s Wood in 2009, noting certain improvements but calling for the practice of child detention to end. “We stand by our contention that arrest and detention are inherently damaging to children, and that Yarl’s Wood is no place for a child”.

The health profession has been queueing up in recent years to denounce the practice. A coalition of royal medical colleges said in a joint report in December 2009 that mental health problems, self-harm and even suicide are some of the consequences of detaining children. They say that the practice exposes children to “significant harm”, a term used to trigger child protection policies.

The Guardian, New Statesman and the Observer have long called for the practice to end. Petitions have been signed and parliamentary motions tabled. Faith and civic leaders and many NGOs have called for an end to the detention of children, which is incompatible with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and is at odds with the Government’s own statutory commitment to safeguarding the welfare of children.

There is a consensus that the practice must end.

The Government says that it doesn’t want to lock up children but sees no alternative. "If people refuse to go home then detention becomes a necessity,” the immigration minister, Phil Woolas, told the BBC last year. “We don't want to split up families, so we hold children with their parents.”But this assumes that families who have reached the end of their claim process do “refuse to go home”. On the whole, they don’t.

The real purpose of locking up families is to make the removals process more efficient. Bureaucratic considerations are being put before human dignity. Sweden and Australia are among the countries which have now put an end to the practice without in any way undermining the removals process. (Swedish law retains the right to detain children, but for a maximum of three days). In Canada and Australia, schemes in place make detention very unusual - -and compliance with removals are around 90%. When a group of MPs looked into the matter in 2006, they found no evidence that families with children would be less likely to allow themselves to be removed, and concluded that “the most obvious alternative to detention is simply not to detain”. There is a strong case that children who have spent many years in the UK and have been educated in British schools should be given the right to remain in the UK. In August 2004, the Home Office made Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) available to families who had at least one child under 18 in the UK on 2 October 2000 or 24 October 2003, and whose principal applicant had lodged their asylum claim before 2 October 2000. The rationale driving the one-off exercise was both moral and pragmatic: where families have been in the UK for a substantial period of time, their children are likely to have integrated into UK society, may have little or no meaningful links with their country of origin and removal would have a significant impact on their well-being. Claims are now processed much faster and people returned to their countries more quickly. But many of those children who are detained are part of an administrative backlog, the product of the breakdown in the Home Office’s ability to process claims around 2001-2003. They should be given ILR on a similar basis to the 2004 initiative.

In those very rare cases where the Home Office could, hypothetically, demonstrate that there was a significant risk of absconding, there are still alternatives to detention: a bail scheme, for example, where the family seeking sanctuary might agree to live at a certain address, with friends agreeing to act as surety.

As a last resort, electronic tagging of the parents is at least preferable to detaining their children.
The time to end this shameful practice is NOW