Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the written statement of 8 February 2017, HCWS467, what estimate she and her counterparts in Europe have made of the number of unaccompanied child asylum seekers in Europe (a) not in care of national authorities, (b) without official protection and (c) otherwise at large; and if she will make a statement.

The European Commission has recently published the ninth report on relocation and resettlement which includes estimates of the number of unaccompanied children currently in Europe. The report can be found here: https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/sites/homeaffairs/files/what-we-do/policies/european-agenda-migration/20170208_ninth_report_on_relocation_and_resettlement_en.pdf

The Government has a clear strategy for addressing the migration crisis; we invest significantly in upstream interventions and we resettle the most vulnerable directly from the affected regions, including children. We are clear that we do not want to incentivise perilous journeys across Europe, particularly by the most vulnerable children. That is why we have committed to resettle 20,000 Syrian nationals through the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme and 3,000 of the most vulnerable children and family members under the Vulnerable Children’s Resettlement Scheme over the course of this Parliament.

The UK has established a £10 million Refugee Children’s Fund to support the needs of vulnerable refugee and migrant children arriving in Europe.