Politicians are economical with the truth. So it's no surprise that less than a year after children's minister Margaret Hodge insisted that taking children from their parents was not the intention of proposals for failed asylum seekers, this is exactly what is happening.

Under the Asylum and Immigration Act 2004, asylum seekers whose claims fail have 14 days to return home voluntarily or comply with deportation. If they don't they are denied financial support and accommodation. Their children can be taken into care as their parents are destitute. But it is the government that makes them destitute in the first place.

Babies have now been taken from their mothers shortly after birth and put into foster care. Is it really in the best interests of children to be taken from their mothers at this critical bonding period because their parents are perceived to be in the wrong?

It's a shameful policy made even worse by an uneasy feeling that children are being used as bargaining tools to force their parents to leave the country more quickly so that their families can be reunited.