Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of defaulting to a claimant’s self-declared age where no independent verification is available on the provision of effective (a) safeguarding and (b) community safety.
Answered by Alex Norris - Minister of State (Home Office)
The age of a person arriving in the UK is normally established from the documents with which they have travelled, but many do not have any definitive documentary evidence to support their claimed age.
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 children to whom they could present a risk.
Where there is reason to doubt an individual’s claimed age, immigration officers are required to make an initial age decision to determine whether the individual should be treated as a child or an adult. This is an important first step to prevent individuals who are clearly an adult or child from being subjected unnecessarily to a more substantive age assessment and ensure individuals are routed to the correct adult or child process for assessing their asylum or immigration claim.
If there is doubt whether a claimant is an adult or child, they will be referred to a local authority’s Children’s Services Department who are then able to either undertake an age assessment themselves or can refer into the National Age Assessment Board for further consideration of their age in the interests of safeguarding. Regardless of age, where issues relating to safeguarding or community safety are raised, referrals will be made to the relevant authorities.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what safeguards are in place to ensure that recording an asylum claimant’s self-declared age does not place adults at risk of being accommodated with children.
Answered by Alex Norris - Minister of State (Home Office)
The age of a person arriving in the UK is normally established from the documents with which they have travelled, but many do not have any definitive documentary evidence to support their claimed age.
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 children to whom they could present a risk.
Where there is reason to doubt an individual’s claimed age, immigration officers are required to make an initial age decision to determine whether the individual should be treated as a child or an adult. This is an important first step to prevent individuals who are clearly an adult or child from being subjected unnecessarily to a more substantive age assessment and ensure individuals are routed to the correct adult or child process for assessing their asylum or immigration claim.
If there is doubt whether a claimant is an adult or child, they will be referred to a local authority’s Children’s Services Department who are then able to either undertake an age assessment themselves or can refer into the National Age Assessment Board for further consideration of their age in the interests of safeguarding. Regardless of age, where issues relating to safeguarding or community safety are raised, referrals will be made to the relevant authorities.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment she has made of fraud-related crime rates in the North East.
Answered by Dan Jarvis - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
The Home Office holds data on incidents of fraud reported to Action Fraud by Police Force Area (PFA), which is published each quarter by the ONS and is available at the following link: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/datasets/policeforceareadatatables.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate she has made of the number of life jackets recovered from small boat crossings since 4 July 2024; and what assessment she has made of the effectiveness of their disposal.
Answered by Alex Norris - Minister of State (Home Office)
The information requested is not centrally held, and could only be collected and verified for the purpose of answering this question at disproportionate cost.
The majority of life jackets seized arrive in very poor condition and may be damaged during the recovery process, and are disposed of by Border Force’s approved contractors and, where appropriate, any suitable materials are recycled.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what support is available for communities in the North East experiencing repeated incidents of arson.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Government is committed to tackling and preventing arson. We know the serious impact that arson can have on both individuals and the wider community.
We are committed to ensuring fire services have the resources they need to do their vital work and to keep the public safe from fires, including those caused by arson. Decisions on how their resources are best deployed to meet their core functions are a matter for each fire and rescue authority.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many times her Department has recorded an asylum claimant’s self-declared age as their official age in circumstances where their age could not be independently verified since June 2024.
Answered by Alex Norris - Minister of State (Home Office)
The requested information is not currently available from published statistics and could only be collated and verified for the purpose of answering this question at a disproportionate cost.
The Home Office publishes data on asylum in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on the number of raised and resolved age disputes is published in table Asy_D05 of the 'Age disputes detailed datasets'. Age disputes data for July 2024 onwards is not available due to ongoing work on a new case working system. Updated data will be included in a future edition of the Immigration System Statistics release.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether trends in levels of age-dispute cases have increased or decreased since June 2024.
Answered by Alex Norris - Minister of State (Home Office)
The requested information is not currently available from published statistics and could only be collated and verified for the purpose of answering this question at a disproportionate cost.
The Home Office publishes data on asylum in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on the number of raised and resolved age disputes is published in table Asy_D05 of the 'Age disputes detailed datasets'. Age disputes data for July 2024 onwards is not available due to ongoing work on a new case working system. Updated data will be included in a future edition of the Immigration System Statistics release.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment she has made of the adequacy of the process for the (a) collection, (b) storage and (c) disposal of life jackets recovered from small boat crossings.
Answered by Alex Norris - Minister of State (Home Office)
The majority of life jackets seized arrive in very poor condition and may be damaged during the recovery process, and are disposed of by Border Force’s approved contractors and, where appropriate, any suitable materials are recycled.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of the use of recovered life jackets on investigations into people smuggling networks.
Answered by Alex Norris - Minister of State (Home Office)
Due to sensitivities, we cannot go into detail on operational methods regarding investigations into people smuggling networks.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what progress she has made on expanding multi-agency safeguarding hubs across police forces in the North East.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Multi-agency working is critical to safeguarding children, and multi-agency safeguarding hubs (or ‘multi-agency front doors’) play an important role in the safeguarding system. However, the Government is going further to better protect children, including through the introduction of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill which is establishing multi-agency child protection teams and improving information sharing, including through a single unique identifier.