Business of the House

Philip Davies Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. As usual, a very large number of hon. and right hon. Members are seeking to catch my eye. As colleagues will know, my normal practice is to call everybody on these occasions, but there are exceptions. Today, there is a statement on community pharmacy to follow, and there are two very heavily subscribed debates to take place under the auspices of the Backbench Business Committee. Therefore, it may not be possible to call everyone today, but if I am to have any chance of doing so, there is a premium upon brevity, which will be brilliantly exemplified by Mr Philip Davies.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

May we have a statement urgently from the Government about the farce of allowing the child refugees into the country? The Home Office has admitted that two thirds of successful applicants as child refugees are actually adults. Today, Jack Straw has said that we need to do better on age checks, as the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne), did when he was the Immigration Minister. That is a serious concern to many of our constituents. May we have an urgent statement on what the Government are going to do to make sure that the child refugees are actually children?

[Mr Lidington]

We do work closely with the French authorities to ensure that all those applying to the UK do actually qualify under the Dublin arrangements, which include the requirement for children to be under 18. We have to carry out the checks in a way that complies with High Court judgments on the matter. As my hon. Friend knows, the British Dental Association has taken the view that to carry out X-rays of claimants’ teeth would not be a reliable indicator of age, as well as being, in its view, unethical.