Priti Patel’s new immigration plans are a ‘nasty cruel attack’ on children’s rights

A group of child rights academics have condemned the government’s New Plan for Immigration and said they are “appalled” by the proposals.

The home secretary unveiled new measures last month, which would see refugees who come to Britain through unauthorised routes denied an automatic right to asylum and instead forcibly removed to safe countries they passed through on their way to the UK.

Priti Patel said the objectives of the plan are to increase the fairness and efficacy of the asylum system to better protect asylum seekers, as well as deter illegal entry and “break” criminal trafficking networks.

But the proposals have been widely criticised by academics and charities working with refugees, as well as UNHCR. Earlier this week, EU countries said they will not strike bilateral agreements with the UK to facilitate the deportation of refugees to Europe.

In an open letter, backed by 12 child rights researchers, have described the proposals as a “nasty and cruel attack on the legitimate and universally recognised right to seek and enjoy asylum, and on children’s rights”.

The letter’s author is Dr Ruth Brittle, a researcher on immigration and child rights at Nottingham Law School. In it, she outlines the main areas that the proposals “directly interfere” with children’s rights and said it fails “to acknowledge the rights of children in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC)”, which the UK ratified in 1991.

“There is no acknowledgement of the risks facing unaccompanied children in the ‘New Plan’, just an assumption that because children arrive via these routes, they or their families are somehow complicit in the smuggling/trafficking,” she wrote.

“Closing down safe and legal routes or disrupting the irregular routes to the UK does not stop children seeking asylum from making the journey, it forces them to look for more perilous routes, placing them at much greater risk of harm.”

The letter also points towards the closure of the Dublin Regulation route after Brexit as having had a “devastating impact on unaccompanied and separated children currently in Europe”.

The Dublin Regulation provided a framework through which asylum seekers who had travelled through safe EU nations before reaching Britain could be returned to those countries. However, when the UK officially left the EU, no alternative route was created, leaving thousands of asylum seekers in limbo.

“These were the only legal routes for most unaccompanied and separated children to reach the UK,” wrote the researchers. “This leaves many children and young people stranded in Europe with no choice but to undertake dangerous journeys to reach the UK.

Dr Brittle said that Boris Johnson’s ‘Global Britain’ mantra “rings hollow” as the policy “intentionally conflates the UK’s obligations to protect people fleeing persecution with the narrow and short-sighted policy aims of keeping immigration to the bare minimum”.

Ms Patel’s plans have been also been criticised by former Home Office chiefs, including ex-home secretary Lord David Blunkett, who warned that it was “not feasible”.

Lord Blunkett told The Independent that the plans will only push more asylum seekers into the undocumented population and increase delays in the asylum system.

“There isn’t a crisis, and to pretend there is does everybody a disservice,” he said. “You may have a successful party political hit in pressing buttons for those who remain concerned about immigration, but it won’t in practice be implementable.”

The ‘New Plan for Immigration’ is open for consultation until 6 May. The Independent has contacted the Home Office for comment.