Nationality and Borders Bill

Debate between Baroness Neuberger and Lord Green of Deddington

Report stage
Tuesday 8th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, I have retabled my amendment in the light of the Minister’s reply in Committee. Judging by Hansard, there was a very good discussion, albeit at three in the morning. We need to be clear about what we are trying to achieve here. Surely it is, first, that adults should not easily claim to be children and get away with it, and, secondly, that where doubts about age remain, the claimants concerned should be kept separate from those who are clearly children.

One aspect which was not covered in Committee was the very considerable increase in claims from those who were falsely claiming to be children. The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, said that, in 2019, those found to be adults amounted to less than half the cases. I have in my pocket the Home Office table showing the outcome of these claims since 2006. The year which the noble Lord chose, 2019, was the lowest percentage in the last 10 years. We now have the percentage for adults in the last two years, and they were 43% and 66%, respectively. I will not provide more statistics, except to say that what is really important is the number of cases to which these percentages refer. In 2019, there were only 304 age-disputed cases; in 2021, there were 1,500—I repeat: 1,500. The whole scale is much greater and justifies the tightening of the criteria for which I am calling.

As to the test applied, the Minister said that our current threshold is that a person claiming asylum is declared to be an adult when

“their physical appearance and demeanour very strongly suggest that they are significantly over 18”.—[Official Report, 8/2/22; col. 1568.]

That is a pretty tight restriction. My amendment would adjust that to when

“their physical appearance and demeanour strongly suggest that they are over the age of 18.”

The change is to “strongly suggest”. I believe that this falls well within the Supreme Court judgment to which the Minister referred in his speech: BF (Eritrea). That judgment found that claimants could be treated as adults if two Home Office officials considered that the person looked significantly over 18. My amendment tightens the criteria, but that is what we need to do in the face of the significant exploitation of the present scheme.

My last point concerns the important and related issue of safeguarding those who are found to be children. Surely it is common prudence that doubtful applicants should, until their cases are resolved, be kept separate from those known to be genuine children. I look forward to an assurance from the Minister that arrangements are now envisaged which will achieve this result. I beg to move.

[Baroness Neuberger (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as chair of University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and of Whittington Health NHS Trust, and as chair of the Schwab & Westheimer Trust, charitable trusts set up to provide education for young asylum seekers.

I am speaking to Amendment 64A. When we last debated age assessments for young asylum seekers, in Committee, it was in the small hours of the morning, and the issues to which we should have given real attention did not get enough scrutiny. The issue had had precious little scrutiny in another place, because these provisions were brought in so late by the Government in the passage of the Bill. I am very grateful to the Government for the amount of information which they have provided recently, but there is still more to tease out. I hope, therefore, that noble Lords will understand why I and my colleagues—the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister and Lady Hamwee, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham—are putting forward this detailed amendment at Report. I am grateful to the Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, the British Dental Association, the British Red Cross, the UNHCR, the ADSS, the British Association of Social Workers and many others for their briefings and help.

There is widespread concern about age assessments among all the various voluntary and statutory agencies concerned with young asylum seekers, and among many medical, dental and scientific bodies. Because of the small family charity which I chair, I spend time with asylum-seeking young people who are desperate to get their lives back on track by getting an education. Most of those I meet are older than the children and young people presently under discussion and whose age might be disputed, but by no means all. From what they tell us, I know how traumatised they can be, and have been, not only by their experiences in their home countries and on their incredibly difficult journeys but by the processes they have been forced to go through once they have arrived in the UK, and the way in which they are often not believed—almost as if there is an assumption that they will not be telling the truth.

The fact that they might be asked for consent before they undergo an age- assessment process is neither here nor there. Refusing consent would undoubtedly be a black mark against them in a system which they already perceive as doubting their word. Many of them will not have paper evidence of their date of birth, precisely because of what they have been through. The idea that the Home Office will control these procedures, and insist on them, fills many of us with distinct unease as it almost certainly means that already traumatised young people who have been through terrible experiences to reach the UK will be forced to endure yet more traumatising experiences, possibly including intimate examinations which are hard, if not impossible, to justify.