We Didn't Break A Promise

Here is how the Liberal Democrats have mitigated what Nick Clegg called the "moral outrage" and "state-sponsored cruelty" of child imprisonment: they haven't. Yarl's Wood has been closed, but a new centre in Croydon is about to replace it; children will be held there for up to a month at a time, so naturally no plans to monitor their welfare have been made. Families imprisoned in the place will have no financial support, no access to legal representation and, instead of a school (which Yarl's Wood did provide), there will be a charmingly New Labour-sounding substitute called "age-related work packs". This is the sort of system which the Home Office calls an "open accommodation scheme".

Meanwhile, that famously humanitarian institution, the UK Border Agency, has started a scheme to deport people without informing them of their date of departure. Families will be given seventy-two hours' notice that they can be socially cleansed at any point in the next three weeks, apparently so that they will not cause unnecessary trouble by getting legal advice.

Since Nick Clegg became deputy Prime Minister, more than a hundred children have been incarcerated. Inexplicably, moral outrage is no longer much in evidence.