Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she has received representations from Greater Manchester child and migrant rights organisation on concerns that children seeking asylum in the UK are at a higher risk of criminal exploitation, self-harm and dying by suicide; and what steps she is taking to resolve backlog of children seeking asylum.

The Home Office regularly receive representations from Greater Manchester child and migrants’ rights organisations on children seeking asylum in the UK.

The department most recently received a courtesy copy of an open letter dated 16 December 2021, from the Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit (GMIAU) in which 25 child and migrant rights organisations wrote to us and we replied to this on the 20 January 2022.

The department maintains a working relationship with GMIAU and other regional organisations through our strategic partnerships; including the Strategic Engagement Group (SEG) and National Asylum Stakeholder Forum (NASF), who continue to work collaboratively to ensure asylum claims from children and young people remains one of our top priorities.

The Home Office have established two dedicated case working Hubs for deciding children’s asylum claims which are now fully operational. The hubs have established improved focus on and greater control of children’s cases to build expertise, identify efficiencies and provide a consistency of decision making (and quicker outcomes) for our customers.

We continue to work collaboratively with Local Authorities nationally on the remote interview process for Accompanied and Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children and young people utilising digital interviewing video capabilities to complement in person interviews.

Since May 2021 we have increased Local Authority opt in for digital interviewing to 108 Local Authorities helping to speed up processes, reduce delays and the numbers of children and young people who have an outstanding claim.

We are continuing to recruit additional decision-makers who will be trained to process children’s asylum claims to further reduce the number outstanding.