Matthew Pennycook
Main Page: Matthew Pennycook (Labour - Greenwich and Woolwich)Department Debates - View all Matthew Pennycook's debates with the Home Office
(8 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Amber Rudd
I would like to reassure my hon. Friend that the best way to assess age is by using experienced social workers. That is what we are doing in order to assess people’s age on the ground. Most of the young people we are talking to—children, minors, whatever we care to call them—are teenagers. We are prioritising those under 12, but most of them are teenagers and most are young boys. I still think that this is the right thing to do, and I ask my hon. Friend to reassure his constituents that we will always do the proper safeguarding checks to ensure that people are indeed who they say they are.
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
I commend the Home Secretary and her staff for the efforts they are making to accelerate the process of bringing unaccompanied minors, in particular, to this country. May I just press her on the challenges that local authorities are facing? My understanding is that local authorities that do not have sufficient foster places of their own are all calling the same limited number of independent agencies. Does she see a more central role for the Government in co-ordinating the availability of places in the independent sector?
Amber Rudd
The hon. Gentleman raises an important point, and if that were the case, it would not be a successful outcome. Our information is that a lot of the local authorities are choosing to work together, and we have a lot of examples of good practice in which four or five local authorities are getting together to make a joint offer rather than competing with each other.