Lord Roberts of Llandudno – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Roberts of Llandudno on 2016-09-12.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to reunite with their families the 387 child refugees in Calais camps identified by Citizens UK who are eligible to come to the UK.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
UK Government officials have confirmed that the Citizens UK list has been passed to the French authorities, who are primarily responsible for migrants on French territory.
We continue to work with the French authorities and others to speed up exist-ing family reunification processes or implement new processes where necessary. We will shortly be seconding another official to the French Interior Ministry to support these efforts.
We have established a dedicated team in the Home Office Dublin Unit to lead on family reunion cases for unaccompanied children. Transfer requests under the Dublin Regulation are now generally processed within 10 days and children transferred within weeks. Over 120 children have been accepted for transfer this year from Europe; over 70 of these are from France.
It is important that the due processes under the Dublin Regulation are followed. This position was recently confirmed in a Court of Appeal judgement (“ZAT and others”). Families are only contacted once a transfer request has been made and a family link has been established. When we accept a request to transfer an unaccompanied minor we liaise with Local Authorities and the child’s family.
A new scheme to allow community groups to directly sponsor a refugee family was launched by the Home Secretary and Archbishop of Canterbury on 19 July. The Full Community Sponsorship scheme enables community groups including charities, faith groups, churches and businesses, to take on the role of supporting resettled refugees in the UK. A ‘Help Refugees in the UK’ web-page has also been developed on GOV.UK to make it easier for the public to support refugees in the UK and allow local authorities to focus support on the goods and services that refugees need.
