Home Office data indicates that historically, while many asylum claims were initially refused, those that were appealed were later accepted. But now the Home Office  proposes doing away with the existing minimal safeguards for refused asylum seekers, imposing stringent new time limits on Home Office support; raising the bar of proof for continuing it; and removing people’s right to appeal support decisions.

The Home Office also wants to restrict the support that local authorities can give to families with children and to children leaving care amongst this group. Its proposals would tie the hands of local officials, undermining their ability to make their own decisions and creating a two-tiered approach where the enforced destitution of children is acceptable and even mandated, while child hardship from other causes still imposes local duties to intervene. 

NI law mandates that all NI authorities work together to ensure the wellbeing of children. While the Home Office consultation document says the proposed changes “do not apply to local authorities in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland” (para. 25) – yet, at any rate -- this precedent, once set in England, would undermine child protection throughout the UK.  

The proposals would result in even greater levels of child poverty, homelessness and destitution than those currently seen, in contravention of the best interests of the child (article 3.1 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child), the principle of non-discrimin,ation (article 2.2 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights) and other core tenets of international law.

The Home Office failed to publish any Equality or Children’s Impact Assessment of the proposals. PPR fears that, in terms of impact, enforced destitution is more likely to drive families (and unaccompanied children leaving care) underground or into exploitative situations than it is to make them choose to return to the unsafe country-of-origin conditions they fled in the first place (the Home Office’s stated aim).

Even more disturbingly, the same consultation includes plans to permit the use of physical force against children during enforced removals -- directly harming children and their families and eroding child welfare standards across the UK.

Currently, Home Office policy allows physical force to be used in the event that it is necessary to avoid harm to a child or someone else; but it does not permit physical intervention to make a child comply with removal. The Home Office apparently feels constrained by this. It wants wider scope to use physical force against children, for instance in the event of ‘non-compliance’ such as a child ‘holding on’ to a family member (para. 40).

If senior Home Office officials feel its officers need scope to handcuff, lay hands on or use violence against children – including by actively pulling them away from their parents or other family -- in order to achieve its aims, something is seriously wrong with those aims.

PPR’s full consultation response is available here.