Lord Empey – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Empey on 2016-05-19.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what additional financial resources and staff are being made available to assist unaccompanied children coming to the UK from refugee camps (1) in Europe, and (2) outside Europe.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
Our Syrian resettlement programme is working well and local authorities across the country have been closely involved in this. Alongside this programme we will consult local authorities on how best to implement the resettlement scheme for children at risk announced on 21 April and the provisions of the Immigration Act 2016 for the admission to the UK of unaccompanied refugee children from elsewhere in the EU. This will be done as part of our wider discussion with local authorities and other partners, including non-governmental organisations, about unaccompanied children who arrive in the UK and claim asylum here and about the implementation of new arrangements to relieve the pressure on particular local authorities by transferring these children to the care of other local authorities. The Home Office funds local authority care for unaccompanied asylum seeking children and funding arrangements form part of the ongoing discussion with local authorities. We are determined to ensure that no local authority is asked to take more unaccompanied children than local services are able to deal with and that impacts are managed in a fair and controlled way.
