Quakers call for inquiry into use of hotels for vulnerable asylum-seeking children
Quakers have joined 50 other organisations in writing to the Joint Committee on Human Rights seeking an urgent inquiry into the use of hotels for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.
Since July 2021, 4,600 children have been placed in these hotels despite private warnings from Home Office officials that it risks exposing them to sex offenders.
There are clear indication that at least 200 missing asylum-seeking children have been kidnapped by child traffickers.
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The traffickers are circling these children
- Sheila Mosley, QARN
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The Quaker Asylum and Refugee Network (QARN) joined the Refugee Council, Human Rights Watch and others in telling the committee that they consider such use of these hotels to be in breach of the law.
Housing children in this way means they are outside the child welfare system and denied fundamental protections.
The government's policy is in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights, the Human Rights Act 1998 and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, signatories wrote.
Child protection experts say hotels and B&B-type accommodation is unsuitable for any child, let alone those without parents to protect them who are seeking asylum.
QARN steering group member Sheila Mosley said: “There are massive concerns about these children being in hotels which are an adult environment.
“The traffickers are circling these children and they disappear into a culture of domestic servitude, sex work and working in the drug trade."
Both the Home Office Affairs Select Committee and the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration have called for an end to the practice.
But it is thought Home Secretary Suella Braverman may be seeking to introduce urgent legislation to allow her department to act as a corporate parent.
“This would create a segregated system for the protection of children in need, with unaccompanied children diverted to the Home Office and all other children protected by the Children Act 1989," the signatories wrote.