Robert Jenrick
MP for Newark · Reform UK · United Kingdom
“Robert Steele was a beautiful four-year-old boy who died three weeks ago in Newark when he was thrown from an off-road bike that was being driven by a 24-year-old man. This is the culmination of a number of incidents in my town, and many others across the country, involving off-road bikes, e-bikes and e-scooters.”
“The Minister said that Governments are elected to lead. Most people would assume that means that Ministers are elected to lead, because they are accountable to Parliament and to the people.”
“There is an air of total unreality hanging over this debate. Successive Governments have run down our Royal Navy to its present enfeebled state, they have conspired to surrender other British sovereign territory and we have a Government who procrastinate about signing off a new oil field in the North sea—let alone about one in the south A…”
“I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his position. I have known him for a long time—I wish him well. He has a huge task ahead of him. Earlier in the summer, the Prime Minister said that walking the streets of Makerfield lodged in his mind that so many working people want to see the personal allowance raised.”
“Imagine that you are a worker at JLR worried about your future, and you have the misfortune of watching the Chancellor’s speech, which contains searing economic insights like, “I want to see businesses make a profit.” There was nothing about scrapping electric vehicle mandates, bringing down energy costs by getting rid of net zero targets…”
“The sight of the Government escorting illegal migrants into Portsmouth harbour, the home of the Royal Navy, was a national humiliation. Sometimes I wonder whether Members of this House have no appreciation of the level of anger there is in the country at the rapes, the murders and the billions being wasted that should be being spent on th…”
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“First, we believe that the level of legal migration into this country is far too high. That has very profound impacts on access to public services, the productivity of our economy, and the ability of the UK to be a socially cohesive and united country. That is why we need to take action. We have already announced a specific policy with respect to dependants, which comes into force at the beginning of next year. We think it will have a substantive impact on the levels of net migration, but, as the Prime Minister said, we are keeping all options under review and will take further action as required.”
“For the first time since the small boats crisis began, we are now closing asylum hotels, thanks to the good work done to reduce arrivals by more than a third; to the delivery of more appropriate forms of accommodation, such as on large disused military sites; and to better management of the existing permanent estate. I am pleased to report that the Home Office is making good progress on the first 50 hotels, which will exit by the end of January. We will be bringing forward a further tranche shortly.”
“When I first took this job, I was clear that the use of asylum hotels was completely unacceptable and that I would work with all in Government to ensure that we closed each and every one of them as quickly as possible. We are now in the process of closing those hotels. As I said in my opening remarks, the first 50 are closing seamlessly, so I expect to be in a position to announce the next set of hotel closures very soon.”
“No, I completely disagree with the hon. Gentleman. It is extremely important that we reduce the pull factors to the United Kingdom. There are already plenty of reasons why economic migrants would want to make a life in the UK. Enabling them to work as soon as they arrive here would only exacerbate those problems.”
“My right hon. Friend and I have discussed this many times, and I want to ensure that that particular hotel is closed as quickly as possible, because it is having such an impact on her local community. The Home Office is working with her local authority, and we have made a commitment that we will not place further young people, or families with young people, in that hotel if school places are not readily available. However, I hope that the hotel itself will close very soon.”
“When moving asylum seekers from one form of accommodation to another, we make provision to ensure that there is support for those with the most serious medical conditions, but it is important that we are able to move individuals around the estate, and we are currently in the process of closing hotels. That is our No. 1 priority, because the public want us to close them as quickly as possible.”
“I am pleased to report to the hon. Lady that that part of our Visas and Immigration service is now operating within its service standard, so there is a good service being offered to members of the public, but if she has any specific cases, she can bring them to my attention.”
“My hon. Friend raises an important matter for his constituents. As they live in the local authority beside Heathrow airport, it is true that his constituents bear a particular burden with respect to asylum seekers. We do provide £3,500 per asylum seeker to a local authority to help meet those costs, but a local authority such as Hillingdon does need our support, and I would be delighted to work with him in that regard.”
“Nearly half—49%, or 5,551 of those assessed—were found to be adults.”
“Sadly, I could cite other incidents like that. This is what we are trying to stop.”
“I beg to move, That the Committee has considered the draft Immigration (Age Assessments) Regulations 2023. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. The draft regulations, which were laid before the House on 14 September, will improve our age-assessment process, which is under pressure from rising numbers of age disputes. The regulations relate to the introduction of scientific methods of age assessment. Since 2017, there has been upward trend in the number of unaccompanied children entering the UK: in 2019, 3,775 unaccompanied children applied for asylum; by 2022, that had risen by 39%, to 5,242. There has also been a rise in the number of age disputes: between 2016 and June 2023, 11,275 age disputes were raised and subsequently resolved following an age assessment.”
“For all the reasons that I set out in my opening remarks, given the sheer numbers of people—adults pretending to be children—we are disputing, and all the problems that flow from that, we think it is important for us to use all the tools in our toolbox to reach the closest we can to a correct assessment of an individual’s age.”
“I will come to that in my wider remarks, but the first thing to say is that what we are proposing is not instead of the existing Merton process but in addition to it. That is an important disclaimer, because some countries elsewhere in the world have chosen to do one or the other but, given the evidential issues to which the hon. Gentleman alluded, we want to proceed with both together. The scientific process, which the statutory instrument will enable us to move forward with, will further refine the existing process, getting us closer to the correct result. We are not suggesting that the age-assessment process will lead us to an absolutely precise result, but it will enable us to refine the result of the Merton assessment and get us to a better result.”
“If that is the case, the hon. Member should provide them, but I have never been provided with any data or indeed anecdote of a child deliberately posing as an adult. All the data I have seen goes in the other direction, with adults posing as children in the belief, mistaken or otherwise, that they will receive better treatment here in the United Kingdom. That is the issue we are trying to resolve. Why does that matter? Because none of us want to see adults posing as minors and being placed in the same settings as genuine children. That is not an academic debate; it is a very serious matter. I have seen some of the appalling problems that can arise, including a case in which an individual went into the loving care of foster carers and then into a primary school, and ultimately went on to murder somebody in Bournemouth.”
“The existing Merton-compliant assessment process is a holistic, social worker-led assessment that includes interviews, background checks and observations of the young person over a period of time. Scientific age assessment will be one piece of evidence used within such an assessment. It is intended to provide additional evidence and create a more consistent system. Importantly, the UK is one of the very few European countries that does not currently employ scientific methods of age assessment. The regulations will pave the way to the UK being more aligned with international practices.”
“I will make some progress. Age assessment is, as I have described and our brief debate has already suggested, a complex and difficult task. Many unaccompanied young people claiming to be children arrive in the UK without any official documentation, because they have lost it or in some cases deliberately destroyed it, while some are undoubtedly under the age of 18. In many instances it is not clear cut. It is an unfortunate reality that some individuals misrepresent their age to gain unfair immigration advantage. The public would rightly expect us to strengthen our processes accordingly. The introduction of scientific age assessments is intended to improve our age-assessment system by providing additional biological evidence to aid better-informed and more thorough decisions on age.”
“If there were a risk of a perverse outcome, it would be up to them to use their professional judgment to determine whether the person was actually a minor and not make a mistake.”
“We do believe that this change will make a material difference; otherwise, we would not proceed with it. We have taken a great deal of time since the passing of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 to refine this policy. We took advice from the specialist Age Estimation Science Advisory Committee as to how best to proceed and whether this policy would make a material difference, and we have concluded that it would. The evidence from the scientific age assessment will be only one element of the ultimate decision. The decision will be made by a social worker. If that social worker believes, despite the scientific age-assessment evidence, that an individual is a minor, it will ultimately be up to them to make the final decision.”
“My hon. Friend speaks with great experience and is absolutely right: this change will improve the overall evidential standard of decisions, and will be particularly useful to weed out the obviously egregious instances that we all see represented in the media, which in my role I see all too often.”
“A refusal to consent to a specified scientific method of age assessment without reasonable grounds would not automatically preclude the individual’s being considered a child. That refusal would still need to be taken into account alongside other relevant evidence as part of the comprehensive age-assessment process undertaken by social workers. Members should also note that there has to be reasonable doubt about an individual’s age for them to go through the age-assessment process. The Committee can be reassured that those who are clearly children will be identified at the initial age-determination process at the border, so will not subject to any of the relevant procedures at all.”
“The damage to credibility included in the statutory instrument is for the purpose only of deciding whether to believe any statement that the person has made that is relevant to the assessment of their age, not of deciding the person’s credibility in their wider immigration claim. The Home Office considers the taking of a negative inference appropriate and proportionate to prevent abuse of the immigration system. If individuals who deliberately misrepresented their ages were able to refuse to undergo scientific methods of age assessment without any consequence, it would undermine the UK’s ability to prevent adults from accessing children’s services and to safeguard genuine children using those services.”
“If I may make a little progress, I will come back to the hon. Gentleman. The statutory instrument specifies scientific methods for the age-assessment process, including magnetic resonance imaging of the bones of the knee and radiographs of the lower wisdom teeth and the bones of the hand and wrist. The images will be used to assess the skeletal and dental development, or maturation, of the bones and teeth. The methods have been recommended by the Age Estimation Science Advisory Committee. Once scientific methods have been specified, if an age-disputed person refuses to consent, without reasonable grounds, to the use of those methods as part of the assessment of their age, a decision maker must take that refusal to consent as damaging the age-disputed person’s credibility. That is referred to as negative inference.”
“As I think I have said, the Age Estimation Science Advisory Committee recommended that there was no precise way to estimate an individual’s age, but it did conclude that taking age assessment into consideration was a worthwhile thing to do because it would help us to get closer to the correct age. That is an important step forward and is one reason why most other European countries adopt such an approach.”
“I hope that reassures Members that this matter has been considered in some depth across Government, taking advantage of all the advisers that we Ministers have.”
“I do agree that the methods are well rehearsed and have been used by other European countries, including ones that we would respect in the way they handle such issues. In fact, X-rays have an error rate of two years, but we are not looking to apply an exact age or age range, as I have described: we are looking to reduce the likelihood that an individual might be an adult posing as a child. If it is any comfort to Members who are interested, both the Government’s chief scientific adviser at the time, Sir Patrick Vallance, and the chief medical officer, Sir Chris Whitty, reviewed the issue and support its soundness, and they praised the method of the Age Estimation Science Advisory Committee.”
“If the process can be done in an expeditious way, supported and funded by the Home Office and central Government, there should be an overall cost reduction for individual local authorities. Let me conclude my remarks by simply saying that I should note—”
“As Members would expect, we have given thought to how we will operationalise the plan, and there are different ways in which one could do that. We have not yet set out a detailed plan in the public domain, but it is likely that the measure will be delivered in the first instance by local authorities in a community setting, but paid for by the Home Office as part of the immigration service. We do not expect the cost to be borne by local authorities. In fact, the policy is likely to reduce the overall burden on local authorities, because today many local authorities, particularly those that encounter a high number of asylum seekers, are spending a great deal of money on navigating the Merton age-assessment process and looking after individuals as a result.”
“I am conscious that we may be close to a vote in the House, so let me draw my remarks to a close by noting that last week’s Supreme Court judgment in relation to the UK’s agreement on the relocation of individuals to Rwanda does not relate to the draft regulations. Protecting genuine children, preventing the abuse of the immigration system by those who knowingly misrepresent their age and improving our asylum system overall remain priorities for the Government in any event, and it is extremely important that we protect genuine children from all the risks and challenges that come with allowing adults to pose as minors. I commend the draft regulations to the Committee.”
“The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. He is right that we have been clear that we will not be taking X-rays or MRI images of an individual without informed consent. The Home Office will ensure that the individuals who undergo the age-assessment process will be supported to provide valid informed consent, and that the individual has the capacity, fully understands the process and is communicated to in a child-friendly and clear way, with interpreters assisting where appropriate. It will ultimately be for the social workers and clinicians who undertake the process, not Home Office caseworkers or officials, to satisfy themselves that informed consent has been provided.”
“Every single one of the other EU member states uses X-rays and many of them use even more sophisticated and advanced processes, including Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. It is absolutely right that the UK follows suit and makes use of best practice.”
“Member is right to say that there are some non-governmental organisations that have opposed these measures. However, we would counter that by asking those NGOs how they propose to protect those innocent minors in settings such as primary schools, our own Home Office facilities or foster care if not by taking forward all of the tools in our toolkit. I think that they are naive at best and at worst making a serious error of judgment in preventing the Home Office from making use of all the tools that are at our disposal. In response to the hon. Member’s second question about which countries in Europe use these measures, it is not so much a question of which countries use them as which countries do not use them. In fact, the only EU nations that do not undertake X-rays for this purpose are Cyprus, Slovenia and Ireland.”
“I am pleased to wind up this short debate. I will answer as many of the questions as possible. I will begin with the points made by the hon. Member for Glasgow South West. I appreciate that the SNP and others in Scotland are opposed to the measures, but the Government’s sole interest, which I hope commands support across the House, is in safeguarding children. This is a safeguarding measure. It is not a measure to deter people coming to the UK, although we want to deter illegal migrants from taking unnecessary and dangerous journeys across the channel. The measure is purely because we care about protecting innocent children and do not want to see adults posing as minors placed in the same settings as them. That is why we need this measure. Of course, the hon.”
“If it is not effective, there is no point in continuing with something complex and expensive. We believe that it will be effective, and we make that judgment on the basis of the fact that almost every other European country already does this. With that, I will conclude my remarks, thank Members on both sides for their thoughts and commend the regulations to the Committee. Question put.”
“Obviously, we intend to publish an impact assessment, and we will do so when we have bottomed out all the operational questions and can set out exactly how and when this will be operational. On experts, we have brought together in the advisory committee a serious and experienced group of individuals to provide their advice to the Home Office. They in turn sought evidence from a much broader field of individuals and professionals. That was the right thing to do. Of course, we will continue to keep this under review once it has been operationalised, and we will learn from that, because, as the hon. Member for Aberavon said—although he was rather sitting on the fence as to whether the Labour party supports this—our sole interest is ensuring that this safeguarding measure is effective.”
“With respect to the questions put by the hon. Member for Aberavon, regarding the time that it has taken us to bring forward these measures, I will concede that things have been done in a deliberative fashion, because this issue is complex and it is important that we get matters right. After the passage of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, we commissioned the Age Estimation Science Advisory Committee to assess the evidence and produce a thorough report. Then we have considered that report before bringing this SI to the Committee. One could have done it faster, but I am sure the criticism would then have been that we were rushing an important and technically challenging question, so we have chosen to do it in the way that we have. It is a new operational process, although we can learn from what has happened elsewhere in Europe.”
“As I said in my answer to his earlier intervention, it is ultimately the decision of a social worker, who must use their professional judgment and experience to come to a rounded view of that person. With respect to the hon. Gentleman’s question about the automatic assumption that is in the Illegal Migration Act 2023, that is a separate issue to this one and it will be implemented in due course. However, it is right that where there are individuals who choose not to go through this process, there is an ability for the Home Office to determine whether or not they are adults. We do not want to deter people from taking this test, particularly in the egregious cases where it is clear to all that the person concerned is an adult, but we have to prove it beyond doubt, because those are the cases that we are really seeking to weed out.”
“Different local authorities apply it in somewhat different ways, while the age-assessment process will be one uniform process across the whole of the United Kingdom. With respect to the hon. Gentleman’s question about consent, I hope that I have answered it already by saying that we will only apply these measures in relation to individuals where there is informed consent. We will specifically train clinicians and social workers who will be involved in this process in how to judge whether there is informed consent, taking into account the individual circumstances of the child, ensuring that there is appropriate guidance and also interpreters where necessary. If an individual does not consent, this will not be the sole factor in deciding whether they are indeed a child.”
“It is a long process and despite the best efforts of the Home Office and local authorities, we have not yet been able to make it a short process, as we would have wished, which is placing a great deal of strain on local authorities, which bear much of the cost. Also, during that period 50% of the individuals in these age-disputed cases are found to be adults and in many cases living in settings cheek by jowl with genuine children, which is not good from a safeguarding perspective. If we can ensure that some of the most egregious cases are weeded out using a scientific age-assessment process alongside the Merton process, that would be good for everyone concerned. Secondly, the Merton process is not always uniformly applied.”
“I am not going to give way to the hon. Gentleman, although I was grateful for his well-informed remarks today and it was right that he made them, because this is an important subject. I will answer some of the points that the hon. Gentleman made earlier. First, on the question of implementation, I do not think that it will be as complex as has been posited, because these measures have been used for many years by many other European countries. Of course, there is work for the Home Office to do in the months ahead to operationalise these measures, but we can learn from the experiences of many other partner countries in taking forward our plans. With respect to how this will play with the Merton process, I will point out that Merton has a number of disadvantages if used on its own.”
“We made a clear commitment to the British public to stop the boats, not because it would be easy but because it was, and remains, the right thing to do. We are making solid progress, and our commitment to this task is as strong as ever. We will continue to act in the interests of the law-abiding majority, who expect and deserve secure borders, and I commend this statement to the House.”
“Nearly a year on, as a result of the progress we have made to stop the boats, I can inform the House that today the Home Office wrote to local authorities and Members of Parliament to inform them that we will now be exiting the first asylum hotels—hotels in all four nations of the United Kingdom. The first 50 exits will begin in the coming days and will be complete by the end of January, with more tranches to follow shortly. But we will not stop there: we will continue to deliver on our strategy to stop the boats, and we will be able to exit more hotels. As we exit those hotels, we are putting in place dedicated resources to facilitate the orderly and effective management of the process and limit the impact on local communities.”
“We reformed the management of the existing estate: by optimising double rooms and increasing the number of people sharing rooms we have created thousands of additional beds, and in doing so have avoided the need for a further 72 hotels. We have mobilised the large disused military sites that are more appropriate, and have worked closely with local authorities to ensure that they have less impact on communities. We are in the process of a re-embarkation on the barge in Portland, and, as of 23 October, occupancy had reached approximately 50 individuals. That will continue as planned, in a phased manner, in the days and weeks ahead.”
“Ever since the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and I assumed office a year ago, we have made it clear that that is completely unacceptable and must end as soon as practicable. Those hotels should be assets for their local communities, serving businesses and tourists and hosting the life events that we treasure, such as weddings and birthdays, rather than housing illegal migrants at an unsustainable cost to the taxpayer. We therefore took immediate action a year ago to reduce our reliance on hotels. We significantly increased the amount of dispersed accommodation, and we have increased funding for local councils.”
“We remain confident of the legality of our Rwanda partnership and its ability to break the business model of the people smuggling gangs once and for all, and we look forward to the judgment of the Supreme Court. As the success of our Albania returns agreement has shown, with swift removals driving a 90% reduction in the number of illegal migrants seeking to enter the UK, deterrence works. The real-world impacts of illegal migration on our communities have been raised many times in the Chamber. One of the most damaging manifestations of this problem has been the use of hotels to meet our statutory obligation to house those who arrive illegally and would otherwise be destitute.”
“For the first time since the phenomenon of small boat arrivals began four years ago, they are down by more than a fifth in comparison with those in the equivalent period in 2022, and in recent months we have seen still further falls—and let me dispel the myth peddled by some of our increasingly desperate opponents that that is because of the weather. The weather conditions this year were more favourable to small boat crossings than those in 2022, but we have still seen a marked decrease. By contrast, in the year to June 2023 detections of irregular border crossings at the external borders of Europe increased by a third, and irregular arrivals in Italy from across the Mediterranean have almost doubled. However, we must and will go further to stop the boats altogether.”
“In August we announced the biggest shake-up in a decade of the penalties imposed on rogue employers and landlords who encourage illegal migration by hiring or renting to illegal migrants, and as we proceed with that, more unscrupulous businesses are getting the knock on the door. We have increased the number of enforcement raids by more than two thirds since this point last year. The surge has led to a doubling in the number of fines imposed on employers, and has tripled the number issued to landlords. However, for those who are complicit in the business model of the people smugglers, severe financial penalties are not enough, which is why we have dramatically increased the number of company directors who have been disqualified for allowing illegal working. Our concerted efforts at home and abroad are making progress.”
“This is degrading the organised immigration crime groups, and in the last few weeks new physical barriers have been installed to make it considerably harder for the flimsy dinghies to be launched. As we are increasing disruption abroad, so we are restoring deterrence at home. We are breaking the link between arriving here illegally and a life in the UK. The number of removals of those with no right to be in the UK has increased by more than 75% in comparison with last year’s figure. Since we struck our enhanced returns agreement with Albania in December, we have returned more than 4,100 Albanian immigration offenders, and, as I saw for myself in Tirana last month, some of those individuals are being returned home in as little as 48 hours.”
“We have developed what is among the most comprehensive and robust plans to tackle illegal migration in Europe, and over the last year the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and I have focused on delivering it. The plan starts with taking the fight to the people-smuggling gangs upstream, long before they are even in striking distance of the United Kingdom. We have already doubled the funds for the organised immigration crime work of the National Crime Agency, and at a meeting of the European Political Community earlier this month the Prime Minister announced new, tailored initiatives with Belgium, Bulgaria and Serbia, which come in addition to the enhanced strategic partnerships that we have already agreed this year with Italy and Turkey. Our two agreements with the French Government have elevated our co-operation to unprecedented levels.”
“With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will make a statement on illegal migration. The Government have made it our top priority to stop the boats, because these crossings are not only illegal, dangerous and unnecessary, but deeply unfair. They are unfair on those who are genuinely in need of resettlement, as our finite capacity is taken up by people—overwhelmingly young men—coming to the UK directly from a place of safety in France, but most of all they are unfair on the law-abiding British public who face the real-world consequences of illegal migration through housing waiting lists, strained public services and, at times, serious community cohesion challenges, and it is the interests of the British public that we have a duty to advance.”
“In the summer, the Leader of the Opposition said that, even if the Rwanda plan was working, he would still scrap it. How telling was that? Even if we were securing our borders, he would scrap it and wave people into our country. He also said on his fabled trip to Europe that he would strike a new deal with the EU, which would bring thousands of people into the country. The new towns that he announced at the Labour party conference would be filled with illegal migrants. We will never do that. The Labour party’s strategy is to force the British public to grudgingly accept mass migration. We disagree. We believe that the British public believe in secure borders and that they want a robust and fair immigration and asylum system. Our plan is working. Don’t let Labour ruin it.”