Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to provide safe and legal routes to the UK for unaccompanied child refugees.

The Government committed to review safe and legal routes to the UK, and has a statutory duty to conduct a public consultation on family reunion for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in the EU. We are meeting our statutory duty by completing a comprehensive consultation and engagement process as part of the wider consultation on the New Plan for Immigration, which closed on 6 May 2021. We will consider the consultation responses carefully.

The UK already provides a number of routes for children to reunite with family members in the UK under our Immigration Rules. We have also published guidance that signposts these existing routes at the link below:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/overview-of-family-reunion-options-in-the-immigration-rules