Embattled home secretary Suella Braverman is to push ahead with controversial plans that risk forcing vulnerable child refugees to undergo X-rays to prove they are not lying about their age.
Ms Braverman has been accused of using “shameful” and inflammatory language that put migrants in danger after she claimed the UK was facing an “invasion” on its south coast.
Now charities say the under-fire cabinet minister, who was reappointed to the job just a week after she was forced to resign over a security breach, risks measures that will ‘harm’ children.
Ms Braverman pledged that there would be “robust” new checks of those claiming to be children introduced in the new year, warning that ministers had to “clamp down” on the problem, as she defended her handling of the Kent asylum centre crisis on Monday night.
The Home Office later said that her comments related to an announcement in January, when her predecessor Priti Patel was the home secretary, that “new scientific methods” would be used to assess the age of asylum seekers.
A scientific group was also set up to advise ministers on the issue. Their findings are thought to be at an advanced stage.
At the time the Home Office said the move would bring UK policy “in line with other countries”.
It added: “Scientific methods are used by most European countries, who primarily use X-ray scans, and sometimes CT scans and MRI imaging to view key parts of the body.”
Finland and Norway “take radiographs to examine the development of teeth and the fusion of bones in the wrist. In both countries, two certified experts will carry out the age assessment and must jointly agree on the person’s age.” In France, X-rays are taken “to examine the fusion of the collar bone, alongside dental and wrist X-rays, while in Greece, dental X-rays are used alongside social worker assessments.”
Ms Braverman said the checks were necessary because when it came to Albanian migrants the majority were adult males, “not by majority women or children or elderly people, and this claim of being a child is something that we are going to clamp down on.”
“In the new year, we will be delivering more robust age assessment procedures so that there will be less abuse of this very problem,” she pledged MPs.
But Hannah Marwood, from refugee charity Care4Calais, said her organisation had supported hundreds of children who the government had incorrectly taken through what is known as an age dispute and the cases had raised serious safeguarding concerns. “The children we have worked with have been placed in accommodation with adults they do not know, which is a scary situation for any minor to be left in,” she said.
“Age disputes have a real impact on these young people’s mental health. They don’t understand why the Government is challenging their age, it causes them great anxiety.”
She added: “The Government’s plans for the Home Office to take over the age dispute process and to use methods such as x-rays have already been criticised by experts, including evidence that it will produce inaccurate results causing more harm to young refugees. It’s time the Government ditched the rhetoric and adopted a kinder, more compassionate approach to age disputes.”
Zehrah Hasan, advocacy director at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said that children seeking sanctuary in the UK should be treated with “care, compassion and dignity”.
“But this week alone, we’ve heard their cries for help and freedom at Manston, we’ve heard about the heinous conditions they face there, and now that they are intimidated into saying they are adults as a bargaining chip for their liberty. “
