Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 3 February to Question 132334 on Asylum: Children, if he will make an assessment of the feasibility of collecting data on the number of (a) missing children and (b) days each child has been missing in a reportable format for any future incidents of unaccompanied asylum seeking children going missing.

Any child going missing is extremely serious, and we closely work with the police and local authorities to seek to urgently locate them and ensure they are safe.

We are clear that we must end the use of hotels as soon as possible. The National Transfer scheme (NTS) has seen 3,148 children transferred to local authorities with children’s services between 1 July 2021 and 30 September 2022. This compares to 739 children transferred in the same time period in the previous year.

We are providing local authorities with children’s services with £15,000 for every eligible young person they take into their care from a dedicated UASC hotel, or the Reception and Safe Care Service in Kent, by the end of February 2023.

We have robust safeguarding, welfare and security procedures in place to ensure UASC in hotels are as safe and supported as possible as we seek urgent placements with a local authority.