The Home Office has rejected comparisons of its asylum education plans with the South African system during the apartheid era.

In a hard hitting report into David Blunkett's Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill, MPs and peers say there are arguably 14 different grounds for it violating the European Convention on Human Rights.

The harshest criticism comes for plans to educate the children of asylum seekers inside new accommodation camps, rather than in local schools.

"It gives rise to troubling echoes of historical educational regimes in some other countries where children were educated separately on the basis of race or colour, under the now discredited pretence that the separate provision was equal," says the report.

"Separate education on the basis of ethnicity or national origins breeds and entrenches social and educational inequality, and inhibits or even deters integration."

Safe countries

A Home Office spokeswoman said they rejected comparisons of the asylum education plans with the apartheid era, Nazi Germany or the Balkans regime.

"Everything that is in the Bill we are satisfied is compatible with European law," she said.

Rebel Labour MPs who opposed the plans to exclude refugee children from normal schools were furious when they were denied a chance to vote against the Bill due to a lack of Parliamentary time.

Ministers have also been warned that plans to remove some asylum seekers to "safe" third countries risks violating human rights laws.

The bill proposes that failed applicants be removed without delay to a safe third country, from where they could appeal against the decison.

Furious with Home Office

But MPs and Lords on the Joint Committee on Human Rights say asylum seekers must be able to challenge the government's right to remove them before an "independent and impartial tribunal".

Committee members were furious that delays by the Home Office meant they were unable to complete their report while the Bill was still being considered by the Commons.

"It is essential for departments to comply with deadlines for their replies to our questions if we are to report in time for both Houses to be in possession of our considered views when they examine Bills.

"This is particularly important when a Bill has substantial human rights implications," said the report.

Committee member Norman Baker MP, who is also a Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said: "It shows yet again the Home Secretary is keen to press forward proposals without thinking through the implications."