World News 27-11-2003 Asylum Kids Will Go Into Care who: Home Secretary David Blunkett what: Insists he is "no Herod" after announcing latest asylum plans where: House of Commons, LONDON when: Yesterday snippet: Home secretary David Blunkett will publish the final stage of asylum reforms today, says The Times, "including plans to put into care the children of failed applicants who refuse to leave the country on a free flight." Further reforms include the replacement of the existing two-tier appeal system with a single tier and a two-year jail sentence for asylum-seekers "who destroy their travel documents on their way to Britain." Carefully choosing The Guardian - the broadsheet most likely to criticise his plans - to defend himself, the home secretary insists that he has "no desire to take children from their parents and put them in care unless it is an absolute last resort. I did not come into politics to be the King Herod of the Labour party." While crackdowns on asylum seekers may be intended to "implement Tony Blair`s promise to `derail the legal aid gravy train`", it seems that Tony Blair`s promise to halve the number of asylum claims in a year has been achieved, says BBC News Online. There has been a "sustained fall in asylum claimants" since Mr Blair`s pledge last October, aided, the report adds, "by the closure of the controversial refugee camp at Sangatte in France earlier this year." Michael Howard launched a scathing attack of the government`s plan to separate children from their asylum-seeking parents, says an angry Mirror. He called the reforms "despicable" and accusing Mr Blair of "using the children of asylum-seekers as pawns." Sir Bill Morris, a former general secretary of the Transport and General Workers` Union and a campaigner on behalf of asylum-seekers, agrees, adding that "yet again we see the Government thrashing around seeking to appease Middle England by attacking some of the weakest people on our shores. Using children to blackmail their parents is plumbing the depths of morality." [... more]

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