Sarah Teather – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Teather on 2014-03-25.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many unaccompanied migrant children have been forcibly removed to another country in each of the last five years.

James Brokenshire

No unaccompanied child under the age of 18 can be forcibly removed from the UK
unless adequate care and reception arrangements are in place in their country
of origin. The difficulty of setting up suitable reception arrangements has
meant that, with the exception of transfers to other European Union countries
under the *Dublin Regulations, the Home Office does not routinely enforce the
return of unaccompanied children to any country. The majority of unaccompanied
children whose asylum claims are rejected are granted temporary leave which is
reviewed when they reach 17½ years of age. We believe that the vast majority of
enforced returns of unaccompanied children undertaken between 2006 and 2010
were transfers under the Dublin Regulations.

Table 1: Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children removals 2009 to 2013

‘Migrant children’ have been interpreted as unaccompanied asylum seeking
children (UASC) in answering this question.

* The Dublin Regulation EC No. 343/2003 is a binding measure of European
Community law to determine which State should be responsible for examining an
application for asylum made within the EU territory.