Ministers ‘risk damage to confidence’
MINISTERS RISK doing “irreparable damage to public confidence in the asylum system” unless they do more to verify the ages of child refugees coming to the UK from the Calais “Jungle” camp, a Tory MP has warned.
Calls in recent days for dental checks to be performed on children seeking to join family members in the UK have provoked a political firestorm. Philip Davies, the Tory MP for Shipley, told MPs that people only have to look at photographs of “so-called child refugees” arriving in Britain “to see that many of them are not children”. Immigration Minister Robert Goodwill insisted the Government does carry out age assessments where they are deemed to be necessary.
Mr Davies said in the Commons: “We agreed to take in child refugees and surely it’s not too much to ask of the Government to ensure that they are children and clearly this is not the case.” He added: “Does the minister not understand that unless a grip is taken over this then it will do irreparable damage to public confidence in the asylum system?”