Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what plans she has for undertaking age verification checks for asylum seekers to be accommodated at the MOD Wethersfield site; and if she will publish details of the age verification process.

There is already an established procedure in place at Western Jet Foil for performing age assessment on all new arrivals as part of screening.

The initial age decision, based on physical appearance and demeanour, is conducted as soon as practicable. It serves as a first step to ensure individuals are routed into the correct process and avoids unnecessarily subjecting individuals who are clearly adults or clearly children to a comprehensive Merton-compliant age assessment. The threshold is set deliberately high in recognition of the difficulty in assessing an individual’s age based on physical appearance and demeanour.

If doubt remains about whether the claimant is an adult or a child, they are referred for further consideration of their age and treated as a child for immigration purposes until further assessment of their age has been completed. We have placed specific mitigations for large sites which sets the threshold deliberately higher than for other contingency accommodation to ensure the impact on the local community is as minimal as possible