Welcoming the End of Child Detention at Yarl's Wood

Today's announcement that the family unit at Yarl's Wood immigration detention centre is closing with immediate effect is wonderful news. Locking up innocent children is an affront to our common humanity, and the fact that it has been happening in our Borough makes the matter even more raw for local residents here. I am delighted that the government is to take a more compassionate, human approach to the removal of families with no legal right to remain in this country, and I am especially pleased that this stain on our nation's character will no longer exist here in Bedford Borough.

Yarl's Wood is run by the UK Border Agency, and obviously not by the Council. However, the Council provided children's social care to families in the unit, and after being elected as Mayor I requested a visit to the centre to see the conditions in which the families lived. I have seen that Council staff and others dealing with the families did their very best for them, but very simply innocent young children should not be locked up, and evidence shows clearly that the practice is simply very damaging to the physical and emotional well being of children.

There are no families currently in the family unit at Yarl's Wood, but the confirmation of its formal closure and the end of child detention for immigration purposes in our Borough has not come a moment too soon, with the practice to cease across the country by May next year.