Model letter to Tony Baldry MP and/or to new Home Secretary and Secretary of State

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Date

Dear Tony Baldry MP or Home Secretary and Secretary of State,

I am writing to ask you to urge the new government to initiate a complete re-think of the inhumane, expensive and ineffective policy of immigration detention.

Both partners in the new government have emphasised the need to make a break with the former government's increasing encroachments on civil liberties. This is a chance to act on that basis while at the same time reducing government expenditure on a largely discredited policy.

I welcome the government's announcement that it will end the detention of children. However, this will be of little value if, for example, parents are detained and their children are taken into 'local authority care', or if the families are kept in conditions that still amount to imprisonment or severe curtailment of liberty.

I regret to hear that a new wing is to be opened in July 2010 at Harmondsworth detention centre near Heathrow, making it the biggest in Europe.

I ask you to cancel the project for a new 800-bed detention centre at Piddington near Bicester in Oxfordshire, which if it goes ahead would mean the UK had the two largest in Europe.

The following have called on the UK to halt expansion of immigration detention, and actively to pursue alternatives to detention:

• The Human Rights Commissioner of the Council of Europe, Thomas Hammerberg
• The Joint Committee on Human Rights of the UK Houses of Parliament
• The Centre For Social Justice headed up by Mr Iain Duncan Smith
• The Independent Asylum Commission

What steps is the government taking to pursue alternatives to detention?

I look forward to hearing your response.

Yours sincerely,

Signed:

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