Unregulated Accommodation: 16 to 17-year-olds

Mohammad Yasin Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and I will go on to call for exactly what he has just highlighted to the House.

Many of these homes also have adults up to the age of 25 in them, and we know that drug taking is prevalent in many of them. We know that a young man on bail for knifepoint robbery was placed in a home with 16-year-old girls. We know that two girls were placed alongside a male sex offender, and that one 17-year-old boy was murdered by another resident. The home had not told either sending local authority about an earlier fight between the two boys.

The impact on police forces of the number of missing person incidents from unregulated homes is significant. Police officer availability is an extremely precious resource to local communities. Quite rightly, a missing child is always a high priority for any police force. If there is a significant increase in the episodes of missing children in a police force area, that means that other vulnerable children and adults in the population area of that police force are left much more unprotected than they should be.

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing this important issue to the House for consideration. Does he agree that one of the major concerns is how 16 and 17-year-olds in care regularly go missing? Does he also agree that local authorities and the Department for Education should reform how data on the number of young children is collected, and that the figures should be made available and published on a quarterly basis?

[Andrew Selous]

More data is always good. I will come on to suggestions about what local authorities need to do.

In 2018, the top six locations for episodes of missing persons accounted for one quarter of the overall number of missing episodes in Bedfordshire. Of those 1,049 episodes, 779—three-quarters of the total—came from these unregulated settings. The Centre for the Study of Missing Persons at the University of Portsmouth estimates the average cost of investigating a missing person at £2,400. That is a financial cost to Bedfordshire police of around £1.9 million caused by these unregulated homes. It means that the officers involved cannot respond to other serious incidents. What makes the situation worse is that most of those children are being placed in this substandard provision in Bedfordshire by local authorities outside the county.