There is nothing quite like cruelty towards children to stir public anger, and there has been nothing quite so institutionally cruel in Scotland as Dungavel detention centre’s handling of its young detainees.
Grim tales of babies being finger-printed, denied food, their desperate mothers being punished for smuggling in meagre rations to quieten them, losing their allowances, and being put on suicide watch have jerked Scots out of their complacency on the refugee issue and led to calls for immediate action. But instead of resounding condemnation from the famously bleeding-hearted Scottish executive, there has only been a resounding “no comment”. The first minister seems almost afraid of incriminating himself.
As Jack McConnell keeps reminding us, the problem is that his hands are tied. Dungavel may be sited in Lanarkshire but it is a UK operation — immigration policy being a matter reserved for Westminster. If a private security firm such as Premier Detention Services wishes to impose a penal regime on children on our doorstep it is not our business but David Blunkett’s and the Home Office’s.
Legally, McConnell is right, of course, but something here is clearly wrong. His position is becoming untenable. Impatience with his straight-bat approach to all questions on the matter is growing. The number of children held in Dungavel reached a record high of 23 last week, until seven were deported. It is the only one of Britain’s four removal centres regularly to hold children for extended periods. Milk for babies is kept in a locked room; one mother went on a hunger strike in protest. It’s like Tenko, say critics.
Hysteria is creeping in but, still, this is not the Scotland that Scots hoped to get out of devolution, and an outcry is understandable. Pressure has come from the Church of Scotland and the Catholic church, from union leaders, Muslim groups and, most tellingly, from Anne Owers, the chief inspector of prisons in England, who recommended that children should only be kept in places like Dungavel in exceptional circumstances, and then only for a few days.
There is special concern over the fact that children in the centre are being denied the adequate schooling available to other children their age.
Yet none of this should become an argument, as the Nationalists would like, for a separate Scottish immigration policy and locally policed border controls. At first minister’s questions on Thursday, McConnell stuck rigidly to his “fifth amendment” defence on Dungavel, but he also spoke of the “proud record” his ministers have “in supporting the refugees and asylum seekers who live in Scotland and our communities”.
Although policy is decided in London, he has made plain his desire to encourage more immigrants to come to Scotland. While the home secretary talked of halving the 110,000 asylum seekers who sought refuge in England last year, McConnell was hoping to recruit “new Scots” who could fill the skilled jobs left vacant by a decreasing population. While the Bishop of Paisley demanded we welcome the “strangers in our midst”, McConnell was formulating practical strategies to do just that.
He is careful not to distance his views on immigration from new Labour’s, but he clearly has his own ideas, just as he does on matters that are devolved. The Labour agenda in Scotland is different from Westminster’s. There will be no foundation hospitals here, no university top-up fees, teachers have been awarded bumper pay rises, and the elderly will have their care paid for.
The government at Holyrood is of an altogether rosier hue than the one in Westminster, its legislative programme more radical. Yet it is prepared to be called uncaring on a subject that is indisputably close to Labour’s and McConnell’s heart.
At least McConnell has had the good grace to look uncomfortable all week, uneasy at being urged to stray beyond his remit into reserved issues. But saying nothing and blaming devolution, which in effect he is doing, is beginning to reek of moral cowardice. And it is not just the first minister. Every member of his cabinet has trotted out the same terse statement on Dungavel — admirable testament to their loyalty but highly damaging to their humanitarian credentials, both collective and individual.
Hiding behind legal responsibilities may safeguard Edinburgh’s loyalty to London but among the voters in Scotland it won’t wash.
Even those who don’t support McConnell’s campaign to make Scotland “a welcoming place for people of all cultures, nationalities and backgrounds”, will be alarmed at the “house of horror” headlines and the growing public clamour.
The executive’s silence is amplified by the surround-sound opposition. The SNP spent question time baiting the first minister. And Rosie Kane, for the Socialist sensationalists, has not been slow to take the moral high ground, offering her own form of asylum (her two-bedroom tenement) to a mother and baby from Cameroon. It was Rosie, “armed only with compassion and courage”, who secured the woman’s release, cried Tommy Sheridan, forgetting, in his euphoria, the hard-working human rights lawyer. It was also Rosie, remember, who flew a mercy mission to Germany on behalf of the Kurdish Ay family, deported in the summer after spending more than a year in Dungavel.
The European Commissioner for Human Rights is now involved, after being asked by the nationalist MEP Sir Neil MacCormick to investigate violations at Dungavel, and so is the Scottish Refugee Council, which has censured the incarceration of children. It warns that processing asylum claims will become a “bureaucratic nightmare” following a decision, taken in London, to close Glasgow’s immigration office, where 25 foreigners arrive each week to apply for asylum. They will have to go to Merseyside in future.
It is hard to believe that in this maelstrom there is no contact between the executive and London, that the implications of asylum policy for Scotland are not discussed, as they have been in the past. Can’t one of McConnell’s 11 special advisers pick up a phone to one of Blunkett’s? Even better, can’t Iain Gray, the recently appointed £65,000-a-year adviser to Alistair Darling, whose brief is “liaison”, liaise — then make a statement? The devolution settlement did not mean Scottish ministers had to stop commenting on issues because they were reserved. There was a debate on war with Iraq, although defence policy is decided at Westminster. When the boxer and convicted rapist Mike Tyson was given a visa to visit Scotland three years ago there was uproar, memorably from Margaret Curran, now the communities minister, who, funnily enough, has taken the vow of silence over Dungavel.
These speak-no-evils throw up their hands in dismay when broached about the D-word, apparently terrified to open their mouths lest they betray their outrage over their own impotence. While Rosie seizes the high ground, McConnell, who has a genuinely far-sighted approach to immigration, looks increasingly hostile and his mute ministers look increasingly choked as they bite their tongues.
If only somebody would say something. Why can’t the executive condemn the way the detainees are being treated at Dungavel without condemning the fact that they are being detained? After all, few would dispute the need to detain asylum seekers while their case is considered.
McConnell may insist on respecting Westminster’s authority but the fine print of the devolution deal will be lost on most of the electorate. So long as Dungavel is on Scottish soil, Scotland’s shame will not be reserved.
