MP: Asylum children better off in Dungavel

A SCOTTISH MP has written to the immigration minister Damian Green asking the government to reverse its policy and allow the children of asylum seeker to be held in the Dungavel detention centre.

• Children join a protest against the use of Dungavel in the run-up to the G8 meeting at the Gleneagles Hotel in 2005. The coalition government ended child detention at the centre. Picture: Getty Images

Michael McCann, the newly elected Labour MP for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow, argues that the centre has been unfairly "demonised and caricatured" and has suggested that some children are now worse off as a result.

He has also attacked the Scottish legal establishment for what he believes is a misuse of judicial reviews, which delay cases by up to six months, when a deportation order has already been granted.

Mr McCann's intervention comes after the decision by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government to end child detention at the centre as a result of pressure from the Lib Dems.

Dungavel hit the headlines with the plight of Precious Mhango. The ten-year-old from Malawi was being held there with her mother, Florence, awaiting appeals against deportation.

But Mr McCann said the service and care provided by staff at Dungavel were "first class". He pointed out that families were always free to leave and return to their country of origin, but without such centres, children were forced to travel hundreds of miles and live in worse conditions.

"It is extremely difficult to manage the repatriation of a family without the potential for children to be forced to travel for long periods and face other discomforts," he said.

"In short, not having an option available to look after families in well-managed, well-controlled and sensitive environments, like Dungavel, has the potential to create even poorer conditions for children."

And Mr McCann blamed the situation partly on the legal community, which, he said, was using the judicial review system to delay deportation of those who needed to be returned and use this as a reason for their clients to stay.

"Such action gives false hope to those individuals that the legal profession purport to represent," the MP said."However, more than that, the interminable delays mean lawyers are now attempting to use the delays that they themselves have generated as a justification for allowing families with children to stay in this country permanently; claiming that children are, by dint of their length of stay in the UK, assimilated into the local environment."

A spokeswoman for the Law Society of Scotland said: "He seems to be criticising us for representing our clients and trying to prevent them being returned to countries where they may be tortured."

John Wilkes, chief executive of the Scottish Refugee Council, said Mr McCann had a point on the current situation, because the children are being transferred hundreds of miles to another detention centre in England.

But he argued that the answer was not to lock children up at all.

"We welcomed the commitment to end child detention that the coalition government made when it came to power earlier this year," Mr Wilkes said. "But we are still waiting to see how they will do this."