Unaccompanied Asylum-seeking Children

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the SNP spokesperson.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

It is completely unacceptable that vulnerable young people who need care and support continue to vanish under the Home Office’s watch. The Children’s Commissioner for England made her concerns clear on the safeguarding of these young people. Has the Minister met the Children’s Commissioner for England? Has he considered an equivalent to the Scottish Guardianship Service, which provides personalised and sustained support to unaccompanied refugee children? Would that be a useful model to keep young people safe?

Sussex police say 76 children are unaccounted for in this case. The Minister said that 440 children had gone missing and that 200 remained unaccounted for across the UK. Is he certain of those figures, and will he provide regular updates to the House on the number of children missing and still unaccounted for? Will he end the practice of putting children in hotels, a practice that many stakeholders and whistleblowers have repeatedly flagged as dangerous and putting children at risk?

[Robert Jenrick]

I want to end the practice of putting children in hotels, but the key to that is stopping people crossing the channel in the first place. If we continue to have tens of thousands of people, including very significant numbers of minors, crossing the channel every year, I am afraid that there is no choice but to accommodate people for a short period of time in hotels before they can flow into better accommodation within local authorities.

The hon. Lady and others across the House should appreciate that this is a national emergency. It is part of a global migration crisis, and we need to take the most robust action we can to deter people from making the journey, or I am afraid that we will find this problem magnified in the years to come. That is why we have taken the steps that we have in the recent past; that is why the Prime Minister set out his plan at the end of last year; and that is why we will shortly be bringing forward legislation, which I hope the hon. Lady and her colleagues will support.

I will certainly look into the Scottish guardianship model that the hon. Lady raises, but as I have said many times, it remains true that as a proportion of its population Scotland takes far fewer unaccompanied asylum-seeking children than England. One practical step that she could take would be to encourage the SNP Government and local authorities in Scotland to play a fuller part in ensuring that these young people are given the care and attention they deserve.