Slavery: Children

(asked on 18th July 2022) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential effect of provisions in the Nationality and Borders Bill relating to an age identification scheme on the treatment of child victims of trafficking and modern slavery.


Answered by
Amanda Solloway Portrait
Amanda Solloway
Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
This question was answered on 21st July 2022

The Government is committed to protecting vulnerable children, including child victims of trafficking and modern slavery. Our age assessment process seeks to balance the needs of vulnerable children whilst preventing adults abusing the system and the age assessment reforms within the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 will further improve the accuracy of age assessment outcomes, minimising the risk that a person will be incorrectly treated as either an adult or a child.

In accordance with Section 51 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, if the Home Office is not certain of a person’s age, but has reasonable grounds to believe that they may be under 18, they will be treated as a child until an assessment of their age is carried out by a local authority or their age is otherwise determined.

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