Decency, Liberty, Morality

Those charming people at the UK Border Agency are bringing New Labour's policy of jailing children to the most New Labour end conceivable: they're going to give families two weeks in which to take appropriate measures for leaving the the country "voluntarily", and then they're going to kick them out within another two weeks. Some lucky families will be spared the stress and trauma of awaiting the day of doom, because the UK Border Agency considers itself free of any obligation to inform them when that day might be. Two pilot schemes are already in operation, although the UK Border Agency has made a small concession to anti-Britishness by informing participants of the honour granted them, when they report to their inquisitors at the sanctimonickered Reliance House. The briefing paper setting out the policy, drafted by the agency's head of humanitarian solutions, constitutes the fulfilment of a pledge to "restore a sense of decency and liberty to the way we conduct ourselves", made by the Vice-Prime-Minister, Nick Clegg, who called New Labour's child imprisonment policy a "moral outrage". Oddly enough, although the Refugee Council was able to scrape together a statement when the document was leaked to Socialist Worker, the Liberal Democrats appear to have been struck dumb again.