Joint Committee on Human Rights says treatment of child migrants has grown worse during current Parliament

In a new report published today, Parliament's Joint Committee on Human Rights welcomed the progress made by the Government in recognising children's rights in law and policy but says that more still needs to be done.

You can read the report here.

Image credit: UK GovernmentThe report included an examination of the treatment of migrant children, and the Committee said that while it welcomed the reduction in the number of migrant children held in immigration detention, it was disappointed that "so little other progress appears to have been made by the Government since we reported on the human rights of unaccompanied migrant children and young people in the UK back in June 2013."

Indeed, the Committee said the treatment of child migrants is "an area where, despite some improvements, if anything the situation has grown worse overall during this Parliament."

The report continued: "The government must ensure that the best interests of the child are paramount in immigration matters and work with other departments to ensure that the needs such children are met and their rights safeguarded. The UNHCR evidence that guidance for Home Office and UKVI staff is not good enough and training patchy must be acted upon."

You can read the section on migrant children here.

The report also looked at the effect of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders (LASPO) Act and the introduction of the residence test for legal aid.

The Committee noted that its earlier serious concerns over the discriminatory nature of the residence test were justified when the High Court struck down the residence test as both illegal and discriminatory in July 2014.

The report stated: "Legal aid, and the proposal to introduce the residence test in particular, was cited by all the NGO witnesses from whom we heard, and from the outgoing Children's Commissioner, as being one of the areas of policy development most flagrantly in contravention of the UNCRC [United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child]. One of the groups most affected was trafficked children. Natalie Williams of the Children's Society suggested that one of the main reasons was that the Home Office, a department that does not have a good record for promoting the best interests of children in this policy area, was sole decision-maker in making claims for trafficked children."

The Joint Committee on Human Rights strongly criticised the Government's reforms to legal aid, saying they have been "a significant black mark on its human rights record during the second half of this Parliament."

Ahead of May's election, the report called on a new Government to look again at these reforms and to "undo some of the harm they have caused to children."