Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what discussions Ministers of her Department have had with Leicestershire County Council on its participation in the unaccompanied asylum seeking children scheme since that council announced its intention to withdraw from that scheme in October 2016.

The Government is committed to a fairer distribution of caring responsibilities across the country in a way that protects the best interests of all children and provides appropriate funding to local authorities for the care of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. We have consulted widely and extensively with local authorities across the UK in order to assess their spending and capacity to care for additional unaccompanied asylum seeking and refugee children. In light of information provided by local authorities, in July the Home Office significantly increased the national rates of funding to local authorities taking responsibility for unaccompanied asylum seeking children and have offered additional funding to bolster regional structures for the National Transfer Scheme. We will keep these arrangements under review, and we encourage all local authorities, including Leicestershire, to continue to work through their respective Regional Strategic Migration Partnerships on participation in the scheme.