Lawyers challenge coalition

The case has been brought by Public Interest Lawyers on behalf of two single mothers and their children who were detained in Yarl's Wood last year.

Public Interest Lawyers have argued that the government's family detention policy breaches UN and EU law.

In May the coalition announced that it would end the detention of children for immigration purposes, with Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg describing the practice as a moral outrage.

Yet children continue to be held at Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre for indeterminate periods in prison-like conditions causing campaigners to question the government's commitment to ending the practice.

Public Interest Lawyers stated that in February Malaysian national Reetha Suppiah, Nigerian national Sakinat Bello and their children were seized by UK Border Agency officers in dawn raids. They and their children were loaded into vans and driven to Yarl's Wood in "a state of confusion and distress."

Ms Suppiah and her two boys, aged one and 11, were detained for 17 days. Ms Bello and her two-year-old daughter were held for 12 days before being released.

Both families had been reporting regularly to the immigration authorities prior to their detention.

Upon arrival at Yarl's Wood, all of the children allegedly became sick, suffering from diarrhoea and vomiting. It is further claimed that the welfare needs of the families were not assessed prior to the decision and that the detention experience has had a profoundly traumatic effect upon them.

Public Interest Lawyers spokesman Jim Duffy said: "Our clients' experiences and the broad expert consensus point to a practice that is inhumane, destructive and unnecessary. Child detention has to end now."

Liberty legal officer Emma Norton, who is intervening in the casem, said: "This has gone on too long and we look to the courts to put an end to it this week.

"Prison is no place for a child and defending such an unsavoury position is no place for the new government."

Liberty has obtained information under the Freedom of Information Act which shows that in 2009 alone, 1065 children were held in immigration detention. The longest period a child was held in 2009 was 158 days and the average period of detention was two weeks.