Asylum-seeking Children: Hotel Accommodation

Tahir Ali Excerpts

Wednesday 7th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Tahir Ali (Birmingham, Hall Green) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I thank the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) for securing this debate. I find it outrageous that, since July 2021, more than 400 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children have gone missing from Home Office hotels. I could stand here and say that Government Members are so and so, but no, I will not do that, because this is about the children. This is about children, who matter more than anyone else in this country.

We have a responsibility as corporate parents, as did local authorities, and it is incumbent on us all to recognise that the system in place is not fit for purpose and that we must do all that we can to protect the children from going missing. One child missing is one too many.

However, instead of urgently intervening, the Government announced in January that 200 of those 400-plus children were still missing. That number came down to 186. What it is today, I do not know, but I would guess that it is far more than the 200 reported earlier in the year, not less than that.

What has gone wrong fundamentally? That is what we need to look at. We have had announcement after announcement, but the reality is different from what the Government and Ministers have being saying regarding not only refugees and asylum seekers but—most importantly, the issue being debated today—unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.

Do we treat them as if they matter less than the children of this country? Are they second class to them? Are they third class to them? If they are not, this is a serious issue that no other parent figure would get away with. If 200 parents were responsible for this issue, action would be taken against them, but where is the action that is needed regarding those responsible? We can pass the buck all we like, but the fact is that these children have gone missing on our watch. We must take responsibility for that.

Rather than shift blame from one place to another Department, to another institution, to local government, to the Home Office, to Ministers, we need to work together. Whether that urgent work is through the Select Committee process or another mechanism, it must be done to ensure that we do not have any more children going missing and that children are not denied fundamental protections but are afforded the opportunity of safeguarding, which is central to all this.

This is a plea today for us all to come together on this issue and put the politics to one side. We must look at the interests of the children, stand behind them, and say that enough is enough.

As the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith said earlier, I believe that some of the staff at these hotels are not even DBS checked. How can we allow basic fundamentals like that to slip through the net? The staff working at the hotels where the children are living, and going missing, are not even DBS checked. Can the Minister confirm whether that is true? Honestly, would we allow any of our children to stay in such places for even a minute, let alone days, weeks or months on end? These children are our children—that is all I have to say.