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PQ - Lord Dubs : how many age-disputed unaccompanied children / incorrect assements - 24/11/10

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Posted by Emma Ginn
24th November 2010

Asked by Lord Dubs

    To ask Her Majesty's Government how many age-disputed unaccompanied asylum seekers applied for asylum in each of the last five years and so far this year.[HL4091]

    To ask Her Majesty's Government how many age-disputed unaccompanied asylum seekers who applied for asylum in each of the last five years and so far this year were subsequently found to have been incorrectly assessed at the initial age assessment stage.

Baroness Neville-Jones: The table below shows the number of age disputed asylum applications, excluding dependants, from 2005 to Quarter 2 2010. An age dispute case refers to an applicant who claims to be a child with little or no evidence to support their claimed age and the UK Border Agency considers their physical appearance and/or demeanour very strongly suggests that they are 18 years or over.

Outcomes of age assessments may be recorded in the individual case notes rather than in database fields. Therefore collating this information would require referring to individual records and is available only at disproportionate cost.

Information on age disputed asylum applications is set out in the following table and is available in Table 2d of Control of Immigration: Quarterly Statistical Summary, United Kingdom, April-June 2010 in the Libraries of the House and the Home Office's Research, Development and Statistics website at http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/immigration-asylum-stats.html.

(1) Figures rounded to the nearest 5 (- = 0, * = 1 or 2) and may not sum to the totals shown because of independent rounding.

    (2) An age dispute case refers to an applicant who claims to be a child, but whose appearance and/or general demeanour strongly suggests that they are 18 or over and whose age is disputed by the UK Border Agency unless there is credible documentary or other persuasive evidence to demonstrate the age claimed.
    (P) Provisional figures.
Asked by Lord Dubs

    To ask Her Majesty's Government how many age-disputed unaccompanied asylum seekers who applied for asylum in each of the last five years and so far this year and who were found to have been incorrectly assessed spent any period of time in an adult detention centre.[HL4093]

Baroness Neville-Jones: UK Border Agency began to collect statistics on age disputes in detention from October 2009. Between October 2009 and the end of September 2010, six age disputed applicants were initially assessed as an adult, detained in an immigration reception centre (IRC), but later found to be a child and subsequently released from detention.

UKBA's policy is to give applicants the benefit of the doubt if we are unsure of their age and treat them as a child until a full age assessment has been conducted.

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Last Updated on Friday, 26 November 2010 07:34