Clause 18 - Dependant: definition
Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill
2:45 pm
Ms Karen Buck (Regent's Park and Kensington North, Labour)
I am absolutely persuaded by extensive personal experience that a significant minority of asylum seekers and asylum-seeking children are disadvantaged by their experiences and what they have witnessed. I am thinking of children who have seen their parents tortured or killed, and children who have been in war zones or are traumatised and dislocated. It is also true that the children of certain asylum-seeking communities from war zones do not have a tradition of educational achievement. However, I do not substitute the argument that asylum-seeking children are a drain on our schools and communities for the equally glib and banal argument that all such children are on the gifted and talented register. It would be facile so to do.
The point is that all those children require the level of support that is appropriate to their needs, and that those children who require counselling and support will certainly do so for a great deal longer than the three, four or six months that they will spend in an accommodation centre or otherwise. That support will have to be continuing.