As the noble Baroness anticipated, I will be going on to deal with the point that she raises.
There has been criticism of the unscientific basis for this. We have recently set up a new Age Estimation Science Advisory Committee to provide the Home Office chief scientific adviser with independent scientific and associated ethical advice recommendations for best practice and advice relating to issues raised by stakeholders on the implementation of scientific methods. The Home Secretary will decide about scientific methods only after considering the Home Office chief scientific adviser’s advice. The range of experts included in that committee is broad and includes medical statisticians, paediatric social workers, anthropologists, paediatricians, radiologists and psychiatrists.
As for the matter of allowing for an adverse inference to be drawn by a decision-maker if an individual refuses to undergo a scientific age assessment as specified in regulations without reasonable grounds, the Government recognise that there may be good reasons for refusing to undergo such a scientific age assessment but, where there are no good reasons for refusing consent, it is entirely right that the decision-maker can make that negative inference. Failure to provide for this would allow someone who deliberately and falsely claimed to be a child to simply refuse to co-operate and face no consequence, and that would undermine our ability to mitigate safeguarding risks. The drawing of negative inferences has precedent—for example, in measures bearing on access to welfare assessment.
In answer to a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, the figures that I have are that, in relation to age disputes in the years 2016 to 2020, where such disputes took place, in the majority—54%—the result of the evaluation was that the person claiming to be a child was an adult.