Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what safeguarding processes are in place to (a) identify and (b) protect (i) unaccompanied and (ii) age-disputed children under the one in and one out policy.

Unaccompanied children are not subject to the agreement between the United Kingdom and France on the prevention of dangerous journeys, also known as the one-in, one-out policy.

Upon arrival, where an individual claims to be a child without any credible and clear documentary evidence of age, and where there is reason to doubt their claimed age, immigration officers are required to make an initial age decision to determine whether the individual should be treated as a child or an adult. This is an important first step to prevent individuals who are clearly an adult or child from being subjected unnecessarily to a more substantive age assessment and ensure individuals are routed to the correct adult or child process.

The ‘Assessing Age’ guidance details the Home Office’s age assessment policy for immigration purposes. It provides that immigration officers may only treat an individual as an adult where they have no credible and clear documentary evidence proving their age, and two members of Home Office staff independently assess that their physical appearance and demeanour very strongly suggest that the individual is ‘significantly over 18’.

This is a deliberately high threshold where the principle of the benefit of the doubt is key and if that threshold is not met, but there remains doubt about the individual’s age, they will be treated as a child and transferred to a local authority for further consideration of their age. This often involves a further, more comprehensive ‘Merton-compliant’ age assessment. This approach to initial decisions on age has been considered by the Supreme Court in BF (Eritrea) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] UKSC 38 and held to be lawful.

Where individuals are assessed to be significantly over 18, they are able to approach local authorities for further age assessment if they disagree with the Home Office’s decision. Individuals also have access to legal representation and can make legal challenges to age assessments. Individuals are not removed to France where their age is in dispute.