Kevin Brennan
Main Page: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)Department Debates - View all Kevin Brennan's debates with the Home Office
Child Refugees: Age Checks
Kevin Brennan Excerpts(8 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Goodwill
It is a matter of great concern that criminal gangs, particularly people traffickers, are in the camps. The best way to curtail the actions of those criminal gangs is to dismantle the camp and disperse the people around the country, where they are less able to be targeted. I am pleased that the Home Office, working with our French counterparts, has succeeded in making a number of arrests where people trafficking is going on, and we will continue to keep up the pressure.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
My constituent, Norman Vetter, sent me an extract this morning from the British Medical Journal, which states:
“Medical estimation of age is still inaccurate and the results are unreliable.”
It goes on to say:
“Age estimations have standard deviations of more than 12 months and are limited by intraindividual discrepancies, racial differences, and poor inter-rater reliability”,
and concludes:
“Ethically, it is hard to justify treating someone as an adult based on such unreliable data.”
Does the Minister agree?
Mr Goodwill
The hon. Gentleman is right. All the august medical and dental bodies that I quoted made it clear that medical or dental evidence cannot be used as a way of determining age. My own wisdom teeth did not come down until quite late in life. In many cases, those young people have not enjoyed the same nutrition as we have, so their stage of growth may vary. I underline the fact that all the evidence indicates that we cannot use medical or dental data. If the determination of age is necessary, there is the Merton process, which requires referral by two social workers and takes about 28 days. That method is used by social services throughout the country where an accurate determination of age is needed. That could not be done within the available time, even if we could do it on French territory.