Clause 18 - Dependant: definition
Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill
2:30 pm
Ms Karen Buck (Regent's Park and Kensington North, Labour)
I beg to move amendment No. 103, in page 11, line 5, at end add—
'(c) is over 18 years of age'.
The amendment would exclude children under 18 and their families from accommodation centres and thus ensure that the children would retain the right to be educated in mainstream schools. The provision of other services is relevant to the amendment, but education is central. The Bill requires children who are placed in accommodation centres to be educated there, but it is appropriate to ensure their right to be educated in mainstream education by requiring them to be provided for within the dispersal system and outwith the accommodation centres.
Important issues of principle are involved. The case has been made powerfully and eloquently by some of the children's organisations that the children of asylum seekers should be treated as children first and asylum seekers second. Although I strongly believe in that principle, I do not want to address that issue now because we will return to it later in the Bill. Instead, I shall explore the practicalities and try to persuade Ministers to think again about the possibility of providing for children of asylum seekers in mainstream schools.
I have three points, the first of which is that we should focus on numbers. In that respect, the debate has become rather clouded in the past few weeks. We must think about whether it is right for children to be educated in accommodation centres, or whether they would benefit from being educated in mainstream schools. We must consider whether children being educated alongside the children of asylum seekers are damaged by that experience.