Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many unaccompanied asylum-seeking children have been transferred to each local authority in Wales in each month since the National Transfer Scheme became mandatory.

Ministers made the decision to mandate participation in the National Transfer Scheme (NTS) and directed local authorities in Wales to participate on 14 December 2021.

Mandatory NTS transfers began 14 December 2021, with any transfers since 23 November 2021 counting towards local authorities' allocations under the mandated scheme.

NTS data is published at RASI (Resettlement, Asylum Support and Integration) data: Q1 2023 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

The National Transfer Scheme has seen 4,388 children transferred to local authorities between 1 October 2021 and 31 March 2023. Of the 4,388 children transferred in this period, 223 were transferred to local authorities in Wales. It is not possible to split the data into different local authority areas within Wales.

As the data is published quarterly, it is also not possible to split out the number of transfers from a specific date mid quarter. Therefore, some of the 223 children quoted may have been transferred under the voluntary scheme in the weeks prior to when the NTS was mandated (between 1 October 2021 and 23 November 2021).