Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he is taking to ensure that unaccompanied child refugees will continue to be transferred under the Dubs scheme in the next twelve months.

We remain fully committed to fulfilling our commitments under section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016. Over 220 children were transferred to the UK under section 67 when the Calais camp was cleared in late 2016. Since then we have been making further progress with participating States to refer and transfer more eligible children to move closer to the commitment to transfer 480 children.

Relocation of eligible children to the UK is dependent on the availability of appropriate local authority care placements. The Home Office recognises the highly valuable work that local authorities undertake in supporting unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) which is why we have significantly increased the funding paid as a contribution to their costs. It is hoped that this will enable more local authorities to feel able to offer placements for vulnerable UASC, and we will be working with them and partners to encourage this.