Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many applications for asylum in the UK were made by unaccompanied minors that arrived in the UK by their own means since 2016.

There were 9,512 applications for asylum made by unaccompanied children in the UK from 1 January 2016 to 31 March 2019. This information is pub-lished by the Home Office in its quarterly Immigration Statistics release. The latest edition can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/803159/asylum3-mar-2019-tables.ods. The exact method of entry for asylum applicants is not recorded in published statistics as it would require an examination of each individual case, which could only be carried out at disproportionate costs.

The UK recognises its humanitarian responsibilities towards unaccompanied asylum-seeking and refugee children. The Government is fully committed to the timely and efficient operation of the Dublin III Regulation including the provisions determining responsibility for examining the claims of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. The Regulation provides that unaccompanied asylum-seeking children are given information on the Dublin procedure by the State in which the child has lodged his or her application, the State in which they are present.

The Commission’s Regulation implementing Dublin III contains a specific leaflet with information for unaccompanied children pursuant to Article 4 of the Dublin III Regulation EU 604/2013, including that the authorities where the application has been lodged should be told as soon as possible if the child thinks they have family in another Dublin State.

As part of the Sandhurst Treaty, signed by the UK and France in January 2018, we have allocated £3.6 million 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). We are also funding access to the French asylum accommodation service, the provision of health services, psychological and legal support as well as the cost of transporting asylum seekers from reception centres to locations where their asylum claims are considered.