‘Parallel to care system’ for unaccompanied children to be scrapped in asylum reforms

A “parallel to the care system” for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, under which they would be accommodated by ministers, is to be be scrapped by the government.

The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill would also remove provisions that would see unaccompanied young people whose age was disputed treated as adults if they refused a “scientific” age assessment without reasonable grounds.

In addition, the bill would scrap powers for immigration officials to detain children, with their families, and unaccompanied young people before their 18th birthday, for 28 days without bail, pending their removal from the country.

Policies to tackle small-boat crossings

All these measures were included in the Conservatives’ Illegal Migration Act 2023, through none has been implemented, as is true of the act’s core measure: a duty on the home secretary to remove anyone entering the UK without the right to do so or to remain, and without having come directly from a country in which their life and liberty was threatened.

This would have applied to unaccompanied children who met the other conditions when they turned 18.

The 2023 act was designed to deter people from crossing the Channel on small boats to seek asylum in the UK, though it was reliant on a deal with Rwanda to remove people to the East African country, which was never implemented and then scrapped by Labour on its election last July.

The current government has similar aims for its Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, which is designed to disrupt the work of organised gangs that arrange for people to cross into the UK. The bill was approved in principle by MPs in its first debate in the House of Commons this week.

‘Unlawful’ use of hotels to accommodate young people

The 2023 act was issued against the backdrop of a significant rise in the number of unaccompanied young people entering the country, with the number of them in the care system in England growing by 29% in 2022-23.

The inability of councils, particularly port authorities like Kent, to accommodate increasing numbers of asylum-seeking children led the Home Office to start housing them in hotels in July 2021, in what was designed to be a temporary measure.

In December 2021, it made its national transfer scheme (NTS) mandatory, requiring social services authorities with relatively few asylum-seeking children as a share of population to take in young people from areas with a higher share.

But despite a subsequent rise in the number of NTS transfers, the Home Office continued to use hotels until January 2024, a practice that sparked significant safeguarding concerns and whose routine use the High Court ruled unlawful in a judgment in July 2023.

Uncertainty over children’s rights

The 2023 act would have gotten round the unlawfulness of hotel placements by giving the home secretary the power to accommodate unaccompanied children, as well as the authority to direct councils to take children from such accommodation.

However, the government at the time said the home secretary would not be any child’s corporate parent and would therefore not have any duties to them under the Children Act 1989.

Instead, it would be for the council in whose area the accommodation was located to “consider its duties under the Children Act 1989”, though the then government did not specify whether such an authority would have such duties.

This created uncertainty over whether children in this position would have the right to provisions such as a care plan, an allocated social worker and an independent reviewing officer.

Charities welcome plan to scrap powers

Coram Children’s Legal Centre and anti-trafficking charity ECPAT UK welcomed Labour’s plan to repeal the provision, with the former saying this meant there would be “no parallel to the care system”.

Coram said that, by keeping unaccompanied children out of the care system, the power for the home secretary in the 2023 act would have “undermined the landmark Children Act 1989 and the care system that is there to protect all children”.

ECPAT UK, which mounted the successful High Court challenge to the Home Office’s use of hotels to accommodate unaccompanied children, said the practice “posed a grave risk to the safety and welfare of some of the most vulnerable children in our society, leading to hundreds of children going missing”.

Repeal of age assessment provisions 

The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill would also repeal provisions enabling ministers to make regulations that would result in unaccompanied young people who refused a ‘scientific’ age assessment without reasonable grounds being treated as adults.

Under the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, the government can specify scientific checks that may be used as part of age assessments. These have been set out in the Immigration (Age Assessments) Regulations 2024, which authorises the use of X-rays of teeth and hand and wrist bones, and MRI scans of the collarbone and knee bones.

Under the 2022 act, a decision maker would be able to make a negative inference about a claimant’s credibility from a refusal to comply with a request to undergo a scientific age assessment, without good reason. This provision is now in force.

The 2023 act went significantly further by allowing the government to stipulate that such a refusal by an unaccompanied person who was in the UK illegally – under the terms of the legislation – would lead to them being treated as an adult.

Charity urges further action on age assessments

ECPAT UK welcomed the planned repeal of this provision, but urged the government to go further by also removing age assessment measures from the 2022 act, which, it said “erode the rights of children and young people and must be dismantled to ensure full protection under UK law”. ECPAT UK is opposed to scientific checks being carried out as part of age assessments.

It is not clear how far these are taking place. Home Office guidance, last updated in November 2024, states that the department itself is not commissioning such checks, through its National Age Assessment Board (NAAB), which carries out age determinations alongside local authorities.

However, councils are permitted to use them. The Home Office guidance states that, there is “no method, scientific or social worker-led, that can predict age with precision and therefore, care must be taken when assessing what weight is appropriate to attach to any scientific assessments”.