LONDON: British ministers are close to a decision on the introduction of compulsory HIV and TB health screening tests for asylum seekers and migrants travelling to the UK.

The health screening programme would form part of the asylum clampdown to be confirmed in this week’s Queen’s speech to parliament. The clampdown includes a plan to warn rejected asylum families that they face losing all welfare benefits and their children being taken into care if they do not accept a paid flight home.

The measure was announced by the home secretary, David Blunkett, three weeks ago with his “amnesty” to allow 15,000 asylum families, who have been waiting more than three years for their claims to be resolved, to stay in Britain. The immigration minister, Beverley Hughes, said last week that the threat to take children into care was designed as a deterrent. Children would be separated from their parents for only a very short period, if at all, before they decided to leave the country as a family.

She dismissed fears that parents might simply disappear and leave their children in care as “very unlikely”.

A working party on imported infections and immigration has been considering the options for health screening since January. It is expected to publish its recommendations soon. The government has a pilot scheme screening asylum seekers at an induction centre in Dover, the port closest to the continent.

The Conservatives want arrivals to have blood tests and chest x-rays to prevent the spread of viruses such as Sars, HIV and tuberculosis.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.