The government has reduced the rights of child refugees to a Brexit bargaining chip

Editorial: Lord Dubs and the campaigning groups defending these migrants should take this all the way to the Supreme Court if they have to

New Conservative MPs will not want their first political act in the House of Commons to be a revolt against the man who got them elected: Boris Johnson (EPA)

It is sometimes said that the greatness of a nation can be judged by how it treats its weakest members. If so, then Boris Johnson’s Britain is rapidly shrivelling into a moral pygmy, to match its new, post-Brexit status in economics and diplomacy.

There are few, if any, situations more helpless and pitiful than being a child refugee. There are many of them to be found in the squalid camps in northern France, Greece and elsewhere. Some, and not some overwhelming number, have mums, dads and other relatives who are legally settled in Britain. The British government acknowledges this. It restates its lofty belief in the noble cause of reuniting families. It promises that something will be done, in some other draft legislation at some undefined point in the future.

In the meantime, the government whips have practised their usual dark arts to take out of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill a clause that would have guaranteed the rights of those children to escape abuse and poverty, and come home to their families. And so what little hope there remained that these mere infants – not criminals, scroungers or terrorists – could find asylum in the UK, dissipated. They are, albeit some miles way, members of British society, and the government has let them down by abdicating its responsibilities towards them, and indeed their parents and guardians resident in the UK.

It is a depressing story and with some grim echoes of the past. Lord Dubs led the campaign to make sure that the welfare of these children would be protected in law. He himself arrived in Britain as a Jewish refugee from Czechoslovakia shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. The Kindertransport was a famously inspiring example of what could be done, albeit the British (and others) also left many more Jewish people, adults and children, to their fates. The situation with the refugee children from the Middle East today is not a perfect analogy – but the conditions they are living under are grim; they can hardly be counted as safe and secure, and their human rights are plainly being violated.

Until recently, the case for rescuing these children had in fact been accepted. Under Theresa May’s government and indeed Mr Johnson’s initial minority administration, the relevant clause had been accepted into the Withdrawal Agreement Bill. Now, after the general election, it has been taken out. The attempt, by the House of Lords, to reinsert it, together with other reassurances for EU citizens living in Britain, is poised to be overturned.

It is hardly a coincidence. With a thumping effective majority of 87, the government can do as it wishes. With so many new Tory MPs and so early in a parliament, it is easy to quell humanitarian rebellions – if, indeed, any were being plotted, which seems doubtful. New Conservative MPs will not want their first political act in the House of Commons to be a revolt against the man who got them elected: Mr Johnson. The suspicion is that the inconvenience child refugees cause the French authorities and the EU generally means that the UK can cynically leverage them in the course of the difficult trade and political negotiations ahead. The British did not have to do this – they were, after all, heading for a swift resolution – and have actively chosen to do so.

Still, the fact remains that it shows a side to the government that is repulsive. As Lord Dubs argues, it is wrong, just morally wrong, to use children as bargaining chips in some argument about tariffs and fishing rights. But we are in a world where Brexit is not going to go away, and will be exerting its malign influence over national affairs for some considerable time.

Many, in truth, will suffer the effects of losing their jobs, homes and families during the economic hardship that will surely follow Brexit, whatever the ultimate opportunities might turn out to be. But the human beings who will suffer most are the children in the camps, separated deliberately and needlessly from their families by the British government for a negligible negotiating advantage.

The fight for their human rights must not end, and Lord Dubs and the campaigning groups should take their case under human rights law to the Supreme Court if they have to, before the government neuters our independent judiciary. The government seems to be turning out to be a rather spiteful, callus and nasty piece of work.