Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their response to the recommendations concerning guardianship in paragraphs 320 and 321 of the 2nd report of the EU Select Committee <i>Children in Crisis: unaccompanied migrant children in the EU</i>, published on 26 July, and concerning the availability of legal aid for unaccompanied migrant children for the purposes of proceedings for family reunification, in paragraph 291.

The Government responded to the European Union Committee’s report on 1 November. Unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) are looked after by local authorities, in keeping with arrangements for other children. They are provided with a social worker and an independent reviewing officer to oversee their care arrangements, as well as access to an independent advocate and an independent visitor. We are working with the Legal Aid Agency and local authorities to ensure that UASC get the legal advice they need.

Children are not eligible to sponsor relatives for family reunion under the Immigration Rules. Allowing them to do so would create perverse incentives for more children to be encouraged, or even forced, to leave their family and risk dangerous journeys to the UK rather than stay with their family and seek protection in the first safe country they reach.