Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many asylum applications they disputed on the grounds of having little or no evidence of an asylum seeker's claimed age in (1) 1991, (2) 2010, and (3) 2018.

The Home Office publishes data on asylum applications in the ‘Immigration Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on the number of asylum applications that had an age dispute raised are published in table Asy_D05 of the asylum and resettlement detailed datasets. The table below is given from the published data.

Age disputes raised for asylum applicants between 2006 and 2020

Notes:

1. An age dispute case refers to an applicant who does not have credible documentary or other persuasive evidence to demonstrate their age claimed,

2. 'Age disputes raised' relates to the number of age assessment requests raised for a main asylum applicant in a year. Figures to the period when the age dispute was raised, which may differ from the period the asylum application was received.

3. Age dispute figures for years before 2010 can be found in as_10 of the old format asylum data tables volume 3.

Data on age disputes prior to 2006 is not readily available.

Information on how to use dataset Asy_D05 can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of the workbook. The latest data relate up to December 2020. Additionally, the Home Office publishes a high-level overview of the data in the ‘summary tables’. The ‘contents’ sheet contains an overview of all available data on asylum and resettlement.

Information on future Home Office statistical release dates can be found in the ‘Research and statistics calendar’.