Robert Jenrick, Britain’s minister of state for immigration, arrives for a Cupboard assembly in Downing avenue in London on Tuesday.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
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Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Robert Jenrick, Britain’s minister of state for immigration, arrives for a Cupboard assembly in Downing avenue in London on Tuesday.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
LONDON — Opposition events and kids’s advocates accused the U.Okay. authorities on Tuesday of placing weak younger folks at risk, after authorities mentioned scores of youngsters who arrived in Britain as asylum-seekers have disappeared.
Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick advised lawmakers that greater than 200 kids and youngsters below 18 had been lacking from government-approved lodging. He mentioned most had been teenage boys from Albania.
Labour Occasion lawmaker Peter Kyle mentioned 76 kids had vanished from a resort within the south coast seaside city of Brighton, certainly one of a number of across the nation the place unaccompanied kids are housed briefly.
The Observer newspaper this week cited youngster safety sources and an unidentified whistleblower working for a authorities contractor as saying dozens of kids had been kidnapped off the road outdoors a Brighton resort and bundled into automobiles.
“The uncomfortable reality for us is that if one youngster who was associated to certainly one of us on this room went lacking, the world would cease,” Kyle mentioned within the Home of Commons. “However locally I characterize a baby has gone lacking, then 5 went lacking, then a dozen went lacking, then 50 went lacking and presently immediately 76 are lacking and nothing is occurring.”
Labour’s immigration spokeswoman, Yvette Cooper, accused the federal government of “a complete dereliction of responsibility that’s placing kids in danger.”
Rachel de Souza, the kids’s commissioner for England, mentioned the reviews of youngsters disappearing from resorts “have highlighted, as soon as once more, the vulnerability of those kids, who’re in limbo, with a concerted group of individuals decided to take advantage of them.”
“I’m involved for the protection of this group of youngsters whose vulnerability is exacerbated by not talking English, lots of whom don’t have any help community and usually are not conscious of their rights,” she mentioned in a letter to the Residence Workplace.
Jenrick mentioned safety guards, nurses and social employees had been all based mostly at resorts to make sure kids had been secure.
However he acknowledged that “we have no energy to detain unaccompanied asylum-seeking kids in these settings and we all know some do go lacking.”
“Lots of those that have gone lacking are subsequently traced and situated,” he mentioned.
Jenrick mentioned he had not seen proof of youngsters being kidnapped off the road however promised to analyze additional.
“I am not going to let the matter drop,” he mentioned.
Whereas Britain receives fewer asylum-seekers than European international locations together with Italy, Germany and France, there was a big enhance within the variety of folks attempting to achieve the U.Okay. in small boats throughout the English Channel. Greater than 45,000 folks arrived in Britain throughout the Channel in 2022, and several other died within the try.
The federal government has pledged to cease the dangerous journeys, to this point with out success.
