Commons written answer understates removals, corrected figure over 130% higher
An investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has revealed that the true number of former unaccompanied asylum-seeking children returned to their countries of origin when they turn 18 is over twice as high as figures previously provided by the Government in a Commons written answer.
Image credit: UK GovernmentLast October, Labour MP Louise Haigh asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many former unaccompanied asylum-seeking children were removed to Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Iran and Albania in each year between 2007 and 2015.
The written answer was given on 25 November 2015 and said a grand total of 1,616 were removed.
However, Immigration Minister James Brokenshire yesterday corrected the written answer, giving a new grand total of 3,750 up to 31 December 2015.
The error in the November figures was spotted by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, who noticed it was different to a Freedom of Information request reply.
Louise Haigh MP was quoted by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism as saying: "The reality is that Ministers have been basing their confident assurances on protecting these extremely vulnerable young people on a calamitous guesstimate which seriously misjudged the numbers they were forcibly removing to war-torn countries. How can Ministers claim to protect vulnerable people in the immigration system when they don't even know how many they were supposed to be protecting?"
Haigh called the figures "shocking" and added: "Children who flee countries ravaged by war in the most appalling of circumstances are granted safe haven and build a life here in the UK, but at the age of 18 can be forced onto a charter flight and back to a dangerous country they have no links to and barely any memory of."
Haigh now plans to bring a parliamentary debate on the issue.
Gillian Hughes, a child psychologist at London's Tavistock centre, warned that the effects of such removals can be devastating: "These children come to the UK and start painfully rebuilding their lives, and often do incredibly well, but then to lose all of that a second time, it's just unbearable."
Yesterday's corrected written answer by James Brokenshire stated: "Removal of former unaccompanied asylum seeking children will only take place after their asylum claim has been finally determined, including any appeal hearing, and it has been established that there is no risk of persecution, or of a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights, upon return to their Home Country. After a former unaccompanied asylum seeking child is over eighteen years of age, and found not to be at risk upon return to their home country, their removal will be managed in line with our usual arrangements for the safe and secure return of failed asylum seekers who do not leave the UK voluntarily."
In related news, the Coram Children's Legal Centre (CCLC) yesterday called on the UK to offer "stability and permanence" to refugee children.
CCLC said attitudes need to move beyond seeing refugee children as simply a short-term ‘burden’.
"It is difficult to see how it can be in any child’s best interests to live in the UK for years not knowing whether they will be allowed to stay after they turn 18. How does any child plan for and build their future under those conditions?," the statement said.
According to the CCLC, around 1,500 unaccompanied children seek asylum in the UK each year, though that figure rose significantly recently, with over 2,564 arrivals in the year ending September 2015.
The CCLC says that all too often such children are not provided with the accommodation or support (both emotional and practical) that they desperately need after months or years of conflict, violence and trauma.