My Lords, I support the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister of Burtersett and Lady Brinton, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford, and I wish to make only a very few short points in relation to Amendments 54 and 55, to which I have added my name. I apologise that I could not be here for the two previous days in Committee, due to prior commitments.
Once again, we are considering the age-old issue of age assessment of young asylum seekers. I will not rehearse the many arguments about the validity of such age assessments using so-called scientific means or, indeed, any other means; I have spoken in this House on many occasions on this very subject. Now, the consequences of these age assessments may be very much worse than hitherto: as the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, rightly said, you may be sent to Rwanda,
and you might even be sent back and forth like an unwanted parcel. This is really serious: time and time again, we have seen unaccompanied children incorrectly assessed by the Home Office as adults on their arrival in the UK and treated as if they were over 18, only for them to be determined to be children after further assessment.
In addition to the evidence the noble Baroness has just given us from various organisations that have found age assessments to be wrong, we have evidence from local authorities’ children’s services—and noble Lords might think that they would know. They reveal that in the first six months of 2023 alone, 485 children were wrongly assessed by the Home Office as adults. Under the Bill, those 485 children, as well as all the others cited by the noble Baroness, would face removal to Rwanda. Furthermore, should those children seek to challenge the incorrect assessment, Section 57 of the Illegal Migration Act provides that the Home Secretary can still make arrangements to remove them to Rwanda, as we have heard, while the UK courts and tribunals are considering the challenge of the age assessment. There is a real risk, given the numbers we already know about, that children arriving alone in the UK in search of safety will mistakenly be sent to Rwanda before they can access justice. That is truly shocking.
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We also know that mistakes are made; we have the evidence. The Rwanda treaty itself acknowledges that, so lone children may well in fact be facing the nightmare of being removed alone to Rwanda. The very article, already cited, that sets out that unaccompanied children will not be removed provides that any unaccompanied individual who is removed to Rwanda and subsequently found by a UK court to be under 18 years of age is to be returned to the UK: the parcel that goes back and forward and seems to be somewhat unwanted. So, we have to take this seriously and allow the courts and tribunals to take their time over the assessment, and not allow these children to be removed to Rwanda before a determination is made.
Of course, once these children have been removed to Rwanda, it is another problem to make sure they are even identified as having questions as to their actual age. Their only hope is that their plight might be acknowledged, their challenge quickly progressed through the UK courts while they remain in Rwanda, and the mistake reversed. This is all at devastating risk to their physical and mental well-being; and of course, we already heard in considering the previous group of amendments that there is some question whether systems are in place in Rwanda that might help these young people, who may be so very considerably at risk. A child’s best interests cannot be upheld when they are located more than 4,000 miles away from the proceedings to determine their age, with little, if any, access to legal representation and no support from services dedicated to children. We have not heard anything about services in Rwanda that might be dedicated to looking after any of these young people.
The proposed amendment provides for a legal challenge against an age assessment, to be completed before a young person is removed to Rwanda, to ensure that no
unaccompanied child wrongly determined to be an adult by the Home Office is removed and that the UK upholds its commitment to give due weight to the best interests of the child. We have national and international commitments to do just that. It is, indeed, the best that we can do.