Forty people still lost after Home Office lost track of children staying at asylum hotels

While most are now over 18, two are still children, the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) said as it voiced concerns for the youngsters.

It emerged in 2023 that more than 400 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children went missing from Home Office hotels, some of whom were reported to be as young as 12.

That same year, the High Court ruled that the Home Office’s routine use of hotels to house lone child asylum seekers was unlawful.

At the time, the then-Conservative government said that “due to the unsustainable rise in illegal Channel crossings, the Government has had no option but to accommodate young people in hotels on a temporary basis while placements with local authorities are urgently found”.

As of June this year, 40 people who went missing as children had still not been located, the JCHR report said.

A director of children’s social care at the Department for Education, told the committee: “Guidance was issued to police from the Home Office, to be shared with local networks, to ensure that we continue to look for those children and that we can surface whether they have been found, and information can be updated to provide more reassurance.”

Dame Angela Eagle, in a letter to the committee last year in her then-role as border security and asylum minister, said some of those found were “located in exploitative situations and may have been trafficked or victims of other forms of exploitation”.

The committee, which published a wider report on children’s social care on Thursday, said: “We welcome the fact that the majority of missing children have now been found.

“However, we continue to be extremely concerned about the fact that some children who went missing from asylum hotels in previous years remain missing.”

The committee called on the Home Office to “make clear what specific action is being taken to locate these children, to investigate the causes for them going missing, and to avoid unaccompanied asylum-seeking children going missing in the future”.

They asked the Home Office to provide an update to the committee every three months “with details of efforts to locate the children who remain missing”.

England’s Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza said she shared the report’s “serious concern” about missing children.

She added: “Every child arriving in this country has the right to safely apply for asylum and to be provided with shelter and support while they do so.

“The disappearance of these children represents an unacceptable failure, and the Government must set out the action it is taking to locate those still missing and prevent this happening again.”

A Government spokesperson said: “The safety and wellbeing of children is paramount, and we take any child going missing extremely seriously.

“The Home Office-operated accommodation for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children closed in January 2024. Since then, the vast majority of children reported missing from those settings have subsequently been located.

“Police forces are responsible for investigating missing children cases and we continue to review our records, share relevant information with them and work closely with local authorities and safeguarding partners to support those investigations.”

Earlier this month, it was announced that a further 13 hotels housing asylum seekers had closed, following Labour’s pledge to stop using asylum hotels completely by the next election.

Ministers are increasing their use of more “basic” sites including former military barracks, and the most recent closures are expected to save taxpayers £51 million, and brings the total number below 160, down from a peak of around 400 under the Conservatives.