On August 10, 2003 the Scottish Nationalist Party MEP and constitutional lawyer, Sir Neil MacCormick, accused the British government of breaching human rights by detaining a Kurdish woman and her four children for a year before deporting the family to Germany. Detention of a child, according to the UN convention on human rights, should only be applied as a measure of last resort, for the shortest possible time period. Sir MacCornick hopes that this legal action will pressure the government to change policy on treating vulnerable peoples.
