Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Hanson of Flint on 20 October 2025, what recent progress they have made in the testing of facial age estimation technology for assessing the age of asylum seekers.

In the Government’s Immigration White Paper, published in May 2025, we committed to strengthening the age assessment process. As set out in the statement on Restoring Order and Control, the Home Office has since commissioned trials to identify the most promising scientific and technological methods. This includes exploring how artificial intelligence technology can improve the process. Early assessment suggests that Facial Age Estimation is effective and could produce workable results much quicker than other potential methods, such as bone X-rays or MRI scans, and at a fraction of the cost.

As part of our testing of Facial Age Estimation, industry algorithms have been used to test its performance against approximately 2.5 million images with a known age across different ethnicities, genders and age ranges. Further tests are planned throughout 2026.