Asylum seekers who refuse scientific age assessment to be treated as adults under amendment to Illegal Migration Bill

A proposal that “age-disputed” people will be treated as an adult if they refuse to undergo a scientific age assessment was among a number of amendments to the Illegal Migration Bill tabled by the Government last week.

The Home Office said the measure was to increase protections around the “safeguarding risk caused by adults pretending to be children”.

In January this year an expert committee said that radiography and MRI scans could help establish the age of asylum seekers but warned that there was “no infallible method” for either biological or social-worker-led age assessment.

The Interim Age Estimation Science Advisory Committee said in its report that biological age assessment should be carried out by a combination of radiography of the third molar, radiography of the hand/wrist or MRI of the knee and MRI of the clavicle.

It had been asked to advise only on methods that could be implemented within 12 to 18 months as a means to support the existing Merton-compliant process of age assessment.

Following the implementation of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, the responsibility for age assessments will gradually move from local authorities to the National Age Assessment Board (NAAB), which was launched on 31 March 2023.

The board will set the national standard for age assessments, “acting as a centralised team for local authorities and providing expert advice and training to improve the consistency and quality of how age assessments are carried out”, the Home Office said at the time of the launch.

Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick said the NAAB would ensure assessments are as robust as possible, “alongside our commitment to deliver scientific methods to assess age as soon as possible”.

The board will begin a phased rollout in two regions in the UK, London and the West Midlands, before branching out regionally and nationally later this year once recruitment has concluded, which will see around 40 social workers in post.

However, the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) last month said that it was discouraging its members, as well as other social workers, from applying for, or taking up age assessment roles in the NAAB.

BASW said that since the NAAB is part of the Home Office and “therefore accountable to the Home Secretary”, this could lead to age assessment work being “influenced by political priorities such as reducing immigration”.

Other amendments tabled by the Home Office to the Illegal Migration Bill last week included a commitment to consult local authorities within three months of the bill becoming law to “understand their capacity to support people coming to the UK through safe and legal routes”, and to publish a report on “existing, and any proposed additional safe and legal routes” within six months of the bill becoming law.

The Home Office also said that to speed up removals, amendments would make clear that the UK’s domestic courts cannot apply any interim measure to stop someone being removed if they bring forward a legal challenge, “aside from in the narrow route available under the bill where they are at risk of serious and irreversible harm”.

Instead, challenges would be heard remotely after the person concerned had been removed. “This will ensure that someone would only be able to apply for a domestic injunction to prevent their removal if they were to face ‘serious and irreversible harm’ in the country they were due to be removed to,” said the Home Office.

Amendments will also make clear that ministers may “exercise discretion” in relation to interim measures issued by the European Court of Human Rights, and “set certain principles under which they would make a decision whether to comply or not”.

Announcing the amendments, Home Secretary Suella Braverman said: “The British public are rightly fed up with people coming to the UK through dangerous small boat crossings, and myself and the Prime Minister are absolutely committed to stopping the boats once and for all.

“The changes I am announcing…. will help secure our borders and make it easier for us to remove people by preventing them from making last minute, bogus claims, while ensuring we strengthen our safe and legal routes.

“My focus remains on ensuring this landmark piece of legislation does what it is intended to do, and we now must work to pass it through Parliament as soon as possible so we can stop the boats.”

The Illegal Migrations Bill was set to have its 3rd reading in the House of Commons today (26 April).

Lottie Winson