Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to reports that 39 unaccompanied Albanian refugee children have been reported as missing by Kent County Council, what steps they are taking to locate those children.

The government takes the matter of any child going missing very seriously. Statutory guidance is in place, which details the responsibilities of local authorities and their partners, to prevent children going missing and to gather and share information and intelligence to reduce this risk. The guidance applies to all children going missing, whether this is from the family home or from care and includes unaccompanied refugee children.