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Charities called on the Lords this week to block the government's plans to withdraw support from asylum-seeking families and potentially take their children into care.

As Community Care went to press, an amendment removing the proposals from the Asylum and Immigration (treatment of claimants etc) Bill was being debated and voted on in the House of Lords.

The Refugee Children's Con-sortium, which includes Barnardo's and the Children's Society, said that if the proposals became law there would be a repeat of the chaos seen in asylum cases of people from the EU accession states. The charities also want the government to stop detaining children under immigration act powers.


An amendment setting up independent assessments of the needs of detained children is also being debated. Chief inspector of prisons Anne Owers recommended such assessments in her report on Dungavel Immigration Removal Centre last year. The charity Bail for Immigration Detainees said that, despite this, the government failed to take any "concrete action" so far.