Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he is taking to reduce the number of dangerous journeys being taken by unaccompanied child refugees with family in the UK.

The Government has a number of policies in place to prevent children from undertaking dangerous journeys to reach family in the UK – our family reunion policy, the Dublin Regulation, and the Mandate resettlement scheme.

This Government’s family reunion policy allows a partner and children under 18 of those granted protection in the UK to join them here, if they formed part of the family unit before the sponsor fled their country. Under this policy, we have granted visas to over 26,000 partners and children of those granted protection in the UK in the last five years – that is over 5,000 a year. There are also separate provisions in the Immigration Rules to allow extended family to sponsor children to come to the UK where there are serious and compelling circumstances.

We continue to meet our commitments to transfer unaccompanied children in another EU Member State with qualifying family in the UK, under the Dublin Regulation for the purpose of assessing their asylum claim. We accept all requests for transfer of an unaccompanied child’s asylum claims with qualifying family in the UK where transfer is in the child’s best interests.

On a specific point, as part of the Sandhurst Treaty, signed between the UK and France in January 2018, we committed to deploying a UK Asylum Liaison Officer to support the transfer of eligible children under section 67 and the Dublin Regulation. We also allocated £3.6 million specifically to fund the development of the Dublin process to support transfers of eligible children to the UK, including training for those working with unaccompanied children, family tracing and targeted information campaigns.

And lastly, the Mandate resettlement scheme resettles recognised refugees who have a close family member in the UK who is willing to accommodate them. The refugee must be a minor child, spouse, or parent or grandparent aged over 65 of someone in the UK who is willing to accommodate and support them.