Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she plans to introduce dental x-rays to help to determine the age of undocumented migrants; and if she will make a statement.

Assessing someone’s age is an extremely challenging task and it is only right we explore how the current system can be improved by harnessing scientific evidence alongside existing methods. We will be guided by the research and evidence on which scientific methods to use.

The UK is one of the only countries in Europe not to use scientific age assessment methods to help determine a person’s age when they arrive into the country. Various scientific methods are used to assess age in, among others, Sweden, Norway, France, Germany and the Netherlands.

We should not underestimate the significant safeguarding risks there are if an adult were to successfully pass themselves off as a child and be placed in young people’s accommodation or schools. It also reduces the resources available to help genuine asylum-seeking children.

We have already laid marker clauses in the Nationality and Borders Bill on the use of scientific methods of age assessment will shortly bring forward amendments with the full clauses at the committee stage in October