Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many children have been transferred from Italy to the UK under section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016.

The Government is fully committed to the efficient and timely operation of the Dublin Regulation and we are working closely with EU partners, including the Italian authorities to identify, assess and transfer children to the UK who may qualify under the Dublin Regulation or section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016.

The Dublin Regulation specifies a range of time limits within which requests to accept responsibility must be made and replies received, which vary depending on the circumstances of the case. The Dublin Regulation states that in all cases requests should be made as quickly as possible.

We have a long standing secondee working in Italy and have established a dedicated team in the Home Office Dublin Unit to lead on family reunion cases for unaccompanied children. The secondee’s role includes facilitating the application of section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016.

At present we do not publish data on cases covered by the Dublin Regulation. Eurostat, the EU’s statistics agency, regularly publishes Member State figures, which you can find at http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Dublin_statistics_on_countries_responsible_for_asylum_application