The Herald: Council joins calls for Dungavel rethinkSCOTLAND'S largest council yesterday added its weight to calls for the reform of Dungavel detention centre. In an uncomfortable move for the Scottish Executive and Westminster, Labour-run Glasgow City Council called for a root-and-branch review of the use of the former Lanarkshire prison for housing asylum seekers and their children. Charlie Gordon, council leader, said locking up children at the centre was "morally wrong"...
In a motion to a full meeting of the council, Keith Baldassara, Scottish Socialist, called for Dungavel to be closed and all its asylum seekers released into the community.
He praised Glasgow for housing some 11,000 asylum seekers under the Home Office dispersal programme, and educating thousands of their children in mainstream schools. He said Dungavel was the opposite of such an enlightened model and "no civilised society can accept that children are detained there. (It) is a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights."
