Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many asylum seekers absconded from asylum hotels (a) nationally and (b) in Norwich North constituency in the latest period for which data is available; how many and what proportion of these people were unaccompanied minors; and what steps her Department is taking to locate them.

The Home Office has no power to hold asylum seekers, including children, in hotels or any temporary accommodation if they wish to leave.

The Home Office does not publish a breakdown of statistics which disaggregates the number of adult asylum seekers leaving hotels. These figures are not available in a reportable format and to provide the information could only be done at disproportionate cost. We do record the number of unaccompanied asylum children (UASC) leaving UASC hotels on an episodic, rather than on an individual, basis as some children have left their accommodation more than once. There have been 408 episodes of unaccompanied children leaving their UASC hotel accommodation since July 2021.

There are no hotels in Norwich North being used as temporary accommodation for unaccompanied asylum seeking children.