Missing Asylum Seeking Unaccompanied Children

Lord German Excerpts

Monday 10th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I reassure the noble Lord that we take the welfare of children in our care very seriously. The point is that those children are held at the Kent intake unit for only as short a time as possible. Of course, the age of the children held at that unit can be anything up to 18 years old and, as this House knows from repeated answers, the majority of those passing through that unit are in the upper end of the available age bracket.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, in response to my noble friend’s question earlier, the Minister said that local authorities could carry out their responsibilities under Section 17 of the 1989 Act—but how on earth can they do that if the Home Office does not tell them where these children are located?

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

The Home Office does of course notify local authorities of the arrival of children. We have something called the national transfer scheme, of which the noble Lord is no doubt aware, which has seen 4,875 children transferred to local authorities with children’s services between 1 July 2021 and 31 March this year. That is over six times the number of transfers as in the same timeframe in previous years.