Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to her oral contribution of 9 February 2017 on unaccompanied child refugees, Official Report, columns 637-652, what the evidential basis is for her determination that the need for the scheme arising from the Dubs assessment has ceased.

Under the Immigration Act we made a commitment to transfer a specified number of unac-companied refugee children to the UK. On February 8, the Government announced that we will transfer the specified number of 350 children to the UK under section 67 of the Immigra-tion Act following consultation with local authorities on capacity. This includes the more than 200 children already transferred under section 67 from France as part of the UK’s support for the Calais camp clearance.

The Government has a clear strategy for addressing the migration crisis; we invest signifi-cantly in upstream interventions and we resettle the most vulnerable directly from the affected regions, including children. It is right to focus our efforts on resettling refugees from the region, and thereby avoiding perilous journeys to Europe, particularly by the most vulnerable children. That is why we have committed to resettle 20,000 Syrian nationals through the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme and 3,000 of the most vulnerable children and family members under the Vulnerable Children’s Resettlement Scheme over the course of this Parliament.

We will continue to meet our obligations under the Dublin Regulation. Furthermore, the UK has established a £10 million Refugee Children’s Fund to support the needs of vulnerable refugee and migrant children arriving in Europe.