The prime minister shouldn’t wait to be forced to concede on locking up children

Editorial: The threat of the indefinite detention of minors in the Illegal Migration Bill must be removed

Indefinite detention is contrary to any civilised conception of fundamental human rights (Reuters)

British law currently allows unaccompanied children claiming asylum to be detained for a maximum of 24 hours, and asylum-seeking families with children for a maximum of 72 hours. Temporary detention is sometimes a regrettable necessity, and these limits are reasonable for any decent and effective system of processing claims for refugee status.

Sadly, the United Kingdom lacks such a system; but the solution to that is to make our system decent and effective, not to abolish the limits.

Indefinite detention is contrary to any civilised conception of fundamental human rights. Yet ministers have omitted any time limits on the detention of children in the Illegal Migration Bill that is presently before parliament.

Several Conservative MPs say that they intend to support amendments tabled by Tim Loughton – a Conservative with a conscience – to exclude children from the bill and therefore to maintain the existing time limits on detention.

David Davis, the civil libertarian and former cabinet minister, said he wanted the government to “go back to the existing restrictions” and added: “Unaccompanied children are particularly vulnerable and you have to take care. The tougher the overall policy, the more care with this there should be.”

Robert Buckland, the recent justice secretary, told The Independent: “We shouldn’t be locking children up – it’s not right.”

Yet Rishi Sunak, when he was asked about the bill by Caroline Nokes, a former immigration minister, at the liaison committee at the end of last month said he didn’t want to “incentivise people to bring children who wouldn’t otherwise come here”.

The prime minister said: “Otherwise you create an incentive for a criminal gang to bring a child with them when they otherwise wouldn’t be, and I don’t think that is a good thing.”

His answer did not make much sense. Criminal gangs would not benefit from any time limit on the detention of children unless gang members claimed to be related to them.

He has failed to persuade a number of his Commons colleagues, some of whom claim that they have the “35-40 votes” they need to defeat the government. If this is the case – and it would reflect well on the parliamentary Conservative Party if it is – then we can expect a rapid government retreat after the Easter recess.

Mr Sunak and Simon Hart, his chief whip, have so far been circumspect in dealing with rebellions from their own backbenchers, preferring to negotiate and compromise rather than risk embarrassing defeats.

Even if there are fewer potential rebels in the Commons than compassionate Conservatives claim, however, there is no prospect of the bill being passed by the House of Lords in its present form.

Indeed, Mr Sunak may have to make more concessions on other parts of the bill if it is to secure the support of the upper house of parliament. But the issue of the detention of children is a straightforward one, and a good place to start. The prime minister should accept the humane case for keeping the existing limits, and do so now, rather than being forced into it later.