Finding 90 missing asylum-seeking children ‘primary focus’, says minister
A total of 90 asylum-seeking children who went missing from Home Office-run hostels have still not been found, a minister has told Parliament.
The update was given by Lord Hanson of Flint as he was pressed at Westminster over the number of young people that remain unaccounted for and efforts being made to find them.
A report published earlier this year found many are likely to have been trafficked by criminal gangs.
All seven of the hostels for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children were closed under the previous Tory government following legal challenges.
Lord Hanson told peers that although 382 young people who had disappeared had since been found, a further 90 individuals were still missing.
He said: “The responsibility for finding those missing young people lies with police, and the Home Office will co-operate with them and local authorities accordingly.”
Earlier Labour peer Lord Touhig branded it “a scandal” and called for an inquiry.
He argued placing unaccompanied children in hotels without proper care and supervision was “an affront to their human rights and a stain on the good name of Britain”.
He was backed by fellow Labour peer Baroness Chakrabarti (pictured), who said: “While the focus must be on recovering the missing children, it is still a scandal that so many went missing and that previous ministers did so little to protect them and find them.”
Lord Hanson said: “I wish to find the 90 children who are still missing.
“I wish to ensure that we give support to local authorities and the police to do that, and it has to be the primary focus of the Home Office.”
He told the chamber he would “reflect in due course” on demands for an inquiry, but added: “Ultimately our focus has to be to find those people who went missing because of the performance of the previous government’s management of this issue.”
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