Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government in the past two years how many children who have arrived in the UK unaccompanied and seeking asylum, who have had their age verified, and who have been placed in hotels provided by the Home Office while waiting to be placed with a local authority, were aged: (1) under 5 years, (2) 5 years old, (3) 6 years old, (4) 7 years old, (5) 8 years old, (6) 9 years old, (7) 10 years old, (8) 11 years old, (9) 12 years old, (10) 13 years old, (11) 14 years old, (12) 15 years old, and (13) 16 years old.

We take the safety and welfare of those in our care, including unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, extremely seriously. Any unaccompanied child who enters the UK via small boat and claims to be under the age of 18 will go through an age assessment process, unless they are clearly a child. Following an initial age determination which is undertaken by Home Office officials, anyone accepted as under 18 years old will be processed as a child. If officials cannot be sure a person is significantly over 18 years old, the Home Office will treat the person as a child pending further in-depth assessment.

We have robust safeguarding procedures in place to ensure all unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in hotels are as safe and supported as possible as we seek urgent placements with a local authority. No individuals, apart from the unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, are residing at any of the hotels ring-fenced for children.

All individuals working directly with the young people accommodated at the hotels have Enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service checks, and all those working and operating on the hotel sites have DBS clearance. The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI) found that the young people accommodated at the hotels unanimously reported feeling happy and safe.

The data requested cannot be provided as it comes from live operational databases that have not been quality assured.