The immigration minister condemned for ordering staff to paint over cartoon wall murals at an asylum reception centre claims they were removed because they were not “age-appropriate”.
Robert Jenrick was accused of “losing sight of humanity” with his intervention at the Kent Intake Unit, where unaccompanied child asylum seekers are processed after arriving on small boats.
He defended the move when questioned repeatedly by MPs in the House of Commons on Tuesday, saying the unit was still “high quality” and offered “appropriate support”.
“The cohort of unaccompanied children who passed through last year were largely teenagers and we didn’t feel the site was age-appropriate, but it does contain a range of support for children and infants,” Mr Jenrick said.
“Nothing about the decoration of sites changes the fundamentals that if someone comes to the UK we will treat them with decency and compassion at all times.”
Yvette Cooper, Labour’s shadow home secretary, said that painting over the cartoons of Mickey Mouse and other Disney characters would not “deter” small boats, and accused the minister of trampling over “common decency towards vulnerable children”.
The i newspaper reported that several Conservative MPs were appalled by the order, which was initially resisted by staff but carried out by outside contractors last Tuesday.
On the same visit, Mr Jenrick reportedly called for colourful welcome signs to be taken down to make clear the unit was a “law enforcement environment” and “not a welcome centre”.
The Freedom From Torture charity accused the government of “losing sight of its humanity”, while Labour MP Stella Creasy compared the minister to a “cartoon villain”.
The murals were photographed as part of a watchdog inspection that said the Kent Intake Unit was “mainly used for unaccompanied children who arrive at the coast to be supervised, identified, interviewed and issued with immigration documents”.
A report published by HM Inspectorate of Prisons last month said they were detained in windowless “holding rooms”, adding: “The unit was newly built and rooms were in good condition, warm and brightly lit, although there were no windows.”
Immigration minister Robert Jenrick was criticised for the decision in parliament (Aaron Chown/PA)
The Kent Intake Unit will continue to process children under the government’s Illegal Migration Bill, which aims to see all adult small boat migrants detained and deported.
Mr Jenrick, who has previously visited Rwanda and given lessons to government lawyers, told parliament that most unaccompanied children will not be forcibly removed from the UK until they turn 18.
The immigration minister defended the government’s bill against a slew of critical interventions by senior Conservatives and opposition MPs, following 20 defeats in the House of Lords.
Former prime minister Theresa May, ex-Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith and previous justice secretary Robert Buckland were among those raising concern about the proposed treatment of modern slavery victims, and lack of safe and legal alternatives for asylum seekers reaching the UK.
Mr Duncan Smith said the government was “cutting off their nose to spite their face” by deporting trafficking victims, making it less likely they will support the prosecution of gangs, while Ms May said the bill would “enable more slave drivers to operate and consign more people to slavery”.
Meanwhile Conservative MP Tom Hunt, who is a member of the ring-wing Common Sense Group of Tories, urged the government to have a “plan B” after the Court of Appeal ruled the Rwanda deal unlawful, adding: “I hope that, when it comes to that Supreme Court judgment, the Rwanda plan will get the green light.
“However, the government need to plan for the eventuality that that might not happen. There needs to be a plan B, we cannot put all our eggs in the Rwanda basket.”
But the government was on track to win all Commons votes on Tuesday evening – throwing out the Lords amendments while passing ministers’ own concessions on the detention of children and pregnant women.
In a major climbdown announced on Monday night, the government agreed not to detain and deport small boat migrants who arrived after the bill was announced until March, moving the threshold to when it becomes law – sparing more than 10,000 migrants who crossed the Channel in the interim.
But the concessions fall far short of those demanded by the House of Lords, and the changes backed by MPs’ will now go back to peers in a protracted process known as “ping-pong”.
More votes will take place if the House of Lords insists on its amendments, threatening the government’s hopes to pass the Illegal Migration Bill before parliament’s summer recess begins on 20 July.
Labour’s shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock said the amendments would have “mitigated the most egregious excesses of the bill”.
“It will only make a terrible situation worse – it will simply grow the backlog and increase the cost,” he told MPs.
“The bill says the government will detain and remove every asylum seeker coming to the UK via irregular route – where on earth is the home secretary going to detain them?
”And with the Rwanda deal in tatters, where will she remove them to?“
