Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many migrants entering the country illegally claimed to be children since 5 July 2024; how many and what proportion of those migrants were subsequently assessed to be (a) under and (b) over 18; and whether those migrants were assessed using scientific age assessments.

The Home Office publishes quarterly statistics on detected irregular arrivals to the UK in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. Quarterly data on detected irregular arrivals by age group is published in table Irr_D01 of the ‘Irregular migration to the UK detailed datasets’. The latest data is up to the end of September 2024, with data up to December 2024 to be published on 27 February 2025.

The Home Office also publishes data on asylum in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on age disputes raised and resolved is published in table Asy_D05 of the ‘Asylum applications, initial decisions and resettlement detailed datasets’. The latest data relates to year ending June 2024.

Accurately assessing an individual's age remains an incredibly complex and difficult task, and current methods and procedures for doing so are set out in detail in the Home Office's Assessing Age guidance, which is publicly available here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/672e169e4f7608e424ffdab1/Assessing+age.pdf(opens in a new tab).

The effectiveness of these and other potential methods and procedures for age assessment are kept under regular review, and any future changes will be updated in the usual way. On the issue of scientific age assessments, I will write to the Rt Hon Member to address in more detail the question he has raised.