Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that family reunion provisions for unaccompanied children are not restricted in the event that the UK ceases to be bound by the Dublin III regulation.

The UK strongly supports the principle of family unity and there are already legal routes for families to be reunited safely that are not dependent on our EU membership. The UK’s family reunion policy is generous; we have granted over 24,000 family reunion visas over the last five years. Further, children recognised by UNHCR as refugees can join close family members here in the UK through our Mandate resettlement scheme.

Unaccompanied children cannot make applications for family reunification under the Dublin Regulation. The Dublin Regulation is a mechanism to determine the Member State responsible for the consideration of an asylum claim; it is not, and never has been, a family reunification route in itself. The Immigration Rules provide for family reunion and allow extended family members to sponsor children where there are serious and compelling circumstances. The Immigration Rules are entirely separate from the Dublin Regulation, and will remain in force when the UK leaves the European Union.

We expect cooperation on asylum and migration with our European partners to continue after the UK leaves the EU, and will discuss the exact nature of this cooperation in the negotiations.