What we think

It is difficult to believe that any civilised country would condone taking a four-year-old child, on her birthday, away from the home she had known all her life and place her and her family in a detention centre to await deportation.

The treatment of the Aksu family, which we report today, is not just morally repugnant but it also appears to be in breach of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which states that children should only be detained as a measure of last resort.

Peter Kessler of the UN refugee agency has spoken out strongly against such measures in the past. "Children seeking asylum should not be kept in detention,'' he told this newspaper recently.

It is arguable that the present policy is at least preferable to dawn raids, which were rightly condemned as unacceptable in Scotland.

The families of asylum seekers are now asked to report to an immigration office, where they are kept until they are moved to a detention centre. It remains the case, however, that children are being detained in conditions similar to a prison.

The treatment of asylum seekers in Scotland has been condemned by the United Nations refugee agency, the UN's High Commission on Human Rights, Amnesty International, Scotland's Commissioner for Children and by opposition MSPs. It has also provoked protests from communities which are unhappy at seeing neighbours taken from them.

But, despite all the protests, children are still being locked up.

We need to ask exactly what purpose the present policy is meant to serve. Asylum seekers with children are not likely to abscond. How would they feed their families with no government benefits and unable to work?

It is a fact that not all asylum seekers will be able to settle in Britain permanently - although we have pointed out before that the ability to cope with immigration varies north and south of the border.

But more effort needs to be made to devise a more humane system of dealing with those families whose applications for asylum are turned down. The policy of detaining asylum seekers after they have been living in the country for years, when their children have been born here, is simply not acceptable.

Britain signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child it is time it started to abide by its principles.

A sign that justice will prevail?

It does not quite feel correct that this newspaper should feel even slightly encouraged that a court has been granted an injunction which prevents the publication or broadcast of information which might be in the public's interest to know.

But then, Scotland Yard's cash-for-honours investigation is no ordinary case, involving as it does allegations that those at the very heart of Britain's government may have broken the law and exchanged honours for cash that would be used to persuade the country of its right to another term in office.

The injunction, requested by the Metropolitan Police, points to evidence they want to see protected and untainted. The injunction against the BBC, granted in the Royal Courts of Justice in unusual circumstances, underlines the likelihood the police believe their inquiry has enough strength to result in a charge or charges being brought and a successful prosecution being the end result.

There should, of course, be no presumption of guilt before a trial process has concluded. But if there is to be justice at the end of this long police investigation, the case evidence should be examined in a court of law rather than by two individuals who sit in the very government that has been under examination, namely attorney general Lord Goldsmith and lord chancellor Lord Falconer.

In assisting the Met and obtaining an injunction against the BBC's broadcasting of new details on the inquiry, Lord Goldsmith insists he was acting independently of the government. Good. He should now continue to act independently and rule himself out of making the final judgement on whether the Met's case should mean key persons or an individual facing prosecution.

If Goldsmith has indeed acted in the public interest, and the injunction gives police the time they believe they need to investigate new details, that evidence and the circumstances in which it was obtained will be examined in court. But it would not be in the public interest for Goldsmith to be handed a file by the Met or the Crown Prosecution Service and to then take a closed-door decision which ultimately could protect those Goldsmith serves alongside in the government.

No public interest would be served by this clandestine version of justice. So we hope this is a signal by Goldsmith that he has realised his responsibility lies in ensuring the law is allowed to take its course, openly, and where evidence is examined in court and not judged by a Blair-appointed star chamber.