Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Murray of Blidworth on 26 September (HL10118), whether the live operational databases referred to in that answer have a field for inputting the child's age; and if so, when the age is initially entered, how the age is initially determined, and how, when, and by whom, it is quality assured.

The majority of those arriving in the UK illegally do not have valid documentary evidence of their age and some may misrepresent their age whether intentionally or not. There are clear safeguarding issues which arise if a child is inadvertently treated as an adult, and equally if an adult is wrongly accepted as a child and placed in accommodation with younger children to whom they could present a risk.

Where a new arrival does not have genuine documentary evidence of their age and their claimed age is doubted, an initial age decision is conducted as a first step to prevent individuals who are clearly an adult or child from being subjected unnecessarily to a more substantive age assessment and ensure that new arrivals are routed into the correct accommodation and processes for assessing their immigration claim. Most of these initial decisions on age are conducted at the Western Jet Foil, Dover on those who arrive via small boat, although the policy applies nationally and across modes to help establish age where new arrivals are first encountered.

The ‘Assessing Age’ guidance details the Home Office’s age assessment policy for immigration purposes. Where doubt remains and an individual cannot be assessed to be significantly over 18, they will be treated as a child for immigration purposes and referred to a local authority for further consideration on their age, usually in the form of a ‘Merton compliant’ age assessment. This typically involves two qualified social workers undertaking a series of interviews with the young person and considering any other information relevant to their age.