Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she is taking steps to ensure that children asylum seekers are not abducted from the hotels they are temporarily housed in.

The Home Office has no power to hold asylum seekers, including under 18s, in hotels or any temporary accommodation if they wish to leave.

To minimise the risk of a minor going missing, records of those leaving and returning to the hotel are kept and monitored. Support workers accompany children off site on activities and social excursions, or where specific vulnerabilities are identified.

We have robust safeguarding procedures in place to ensure all unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in temporary hotel accommodation are as safe and supported as possible whilst we seek urgent placements with a local authority. Young people are supported by team leaders and support workers who are on site 24 hours a day. Further care is provided in hotels by teams of social workers and nurses.

When a young person goes missing the ‘missing persons protocol’ is followed and led by our directly engaged social workers. A multi-agency, missing persons protocol is mobilised alongside the police and local authorities, to establish their whereabouts and ensure that they are safe.

The number of all missing asylum seekers are not available in a reportable format and to provide the information could only be done at disproportionate cost.

In 2022 there were 411 missing episodes from Home Office UASC Hotels. The young person was subsequently located for 218 of these 411 missing episodes.

Of the minors that are still missing; they breakdown as: 87% Albanians. The other 13% are Afghanistan (6%), Egypt (3%) and the remaining 6% are from India, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey and Vietnam. 14 were under 16 when they went missing and one was a female.