Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 26 January 2023 to Question 129806 on Asylum: Children, whether she plans to launch an inquiry into missing unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.

When any 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 involving the police and the local authority, who have a shared statutory responsibility to safeguard all children including missing migrant children in order to establish their whereabouts and to ensure that they are safe.

The MARS (Missing After Reasonable Steps) protocol is followed for any looked after child who goes missing from a care setting, including the unaccompanied asylum seeking children (UASC) hotels.

The Home Office and Department for Education (DfE) have established a UASC taskforce which was convened in November 2022 which has been meeting regularly. This multiagency taskforce includes representatives for the Home Office, DfE, Department of Levelling Up Housing and Communities (DLUCH), the Association of Directors if Children’s Services (ACDS) and the Local Government Association (LGA) to consider strategic and tactical solutions to the management of UASC. It is co-chaired by DfE Permanent Secretary, Susan Acland-Hood and Home Office Second Permanent Secretary, Patricia Hayes.

The Home Office will continue to address risks of young people going missing and work with partners to locate them if they do.