Steve McCabe – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Steve McCabe on 2016-09-15.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 5 September 2016 to Question 43315, on asylum: families, what additional support her Department provides to (a) requesting member states and (b) such people who have not had their asylum claims granted.

Mr Robert Goodwill

We are committed to making the Dublin Regulation work effectively and will take responsibility for an asylum claimant from another Member State where there are grounds to do so. The UK has been working to strengthen the process for family reunification of unaccompanied minors under Dublin for some time. We have seconded a UK official to Greece, have a long-standing secondee working in Italy and will shortly be seconding another official to the French Interior Ministry to support these efforts.

As stated in the answer of 5 September 2016 to Question 43315, the Dublin Regulation concerns the determination of the Member State responsible for examining a claim for asylum. It does not, however, concern the substantive assessment of whether or not asylum can be granted in individual cases. Asylum seekers and their dependants who are in the UK are supported by the Home Office if they would otherwise be destitute.

The Home Office provides funding to local authorities for the care of unaccompanied asylum seeking children. Those who the Home Office have found not to be in need of protection and who have exhausted their appeal rights are expected to leave the UK.