Lord Dubs
Main Page: Lord Dubs (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Dubs's debates with the Home Office
(1 year, 4 months ago)
Lords ChamberTo ask His Majesty’s Government how many people since January have (1) crossed the Channel irregularly by boat, and (2) claimed asylum having done so; and how many of these asylum claims are awaiting a decision.
An overall total of 11,279 people have arrived in the United Kingdom by small boat since January of this year to today’s date. From 1 March to 31 March, 3,362 asylum claims were raised from small boat arrivals, of which 3,306 are awaiting initial decision. The number of asylum claims made from arrivals from 1 April 2023 will be detailed in the next quarterly publication of statistics.
Can the Minister tell us how many of these people in the various categories were unaccompanied children? Is there any reason why unaccompanied children are barely mentioned in the impact assessment?
I will need to write to the noble Lord regarding the precise number of unaccompanied children in those statistics. We will be discussing the impact assessment in due course—to coin a phrase.