Andrew Gwynne
Main Page: Andrew Gwynne (Labour - Denton and Reddish)Department Debates - View all Andrew Gwynne's debates with the Home Office
Unaccompanied Asylum-seeking Children
Andrew Gwynne Excerpts(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Robert Jenrick
The hon. Lady makes an important point, and of course I will do that. The evidence from the ICIBI’s report of October 2022 is that the young people it spoke to said that their needs were being catered for and that they felt they were happy, safe and treated with respect. Of course, I will do everything I can to satisfy myself that the arrangements are appropriate.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
In his answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams), the Minister basically said that local authorities have corporate parental responsibility for these children in hotels. If that is the case, I am afraid that the Home Office package for local government is woefully inadequate, as he will know from his days as Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government. It is his current Department’s duty to protect these children as refugees, so will he tell the House today how many National Crime Agency officers are working on the serious issues of child trafficking and disappearance from hotels?
Robert Jenrick
To clarify, I did not say that we expect the local authorities that host these hotels to provide such services. I said that while individuals are in bridging hotels, there may be a technical and legal position, but the Home Office appreciates the pressure on those local authorities due to having a hotel, which we do not want to be a permanent fixture. That is why we are putting in place all this support to meet the needs of individuals and the local authority’s associated costs.
I met the NCA only last week. This is now one of its most significant priorities, and a very large number of its personnel are engaged in tackling organised immigration crime, including people trafficking and modern slavery.