Nursery World - Children should not be punished in order to control their parents

Our weekly columnist Beatrix Campbell says children should not be punished in order to control their parents Something about the Children Act principle of 'the best interests of the child' eludes this Government. So fixated is it on a macho performance over immigration that it is locking up child asylum seekers, subjecting them to dawn raids and even putting them in handcuffs.

Something about the Children Act principle of 'the best interests of the child' eludes this Government. So fixated is it on a macho performance over immigration that it is locking up child asylum seekers, subjecting them to dawn raids and even putting them in handcuffs.

Sixteen immigration officials swooped at dawn on a family of asylum seekers from Kosovo in Glasgow, and handcuffed one of the children. Their action provoked Children's Commissioner Kathleen Marshall to protest. The children's schoolfriends protested too, and so did the Scottish Parliament, which will lobby the Home Office on the treatment of child asylum seekers.

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