Asylum Seekers Accommodation and Safeguarding

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 3:36 pm on 7 November 2022.

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Photo of Stella Creasy Stella Creasy Labour/Co-operative, Walthamstow 3:36, 7 November 2022

The second half of this urgent question was explicitly about the safeguarding of accompanied minors in the hotels. That matters because there are thousands of children—verified children—in those hotels. Last week, we learned that two of them—one a child under the age of 13—were sexually assaulted in a hotel in Walthamstow, and more cases of sexual assaults on children in these hotels have since come to light. We are all clear that those who committed those crimes must be held responsible. We all have duties to those children, just as we have to any other child under state protection.

When I asked the Home Secretary about this, she made a cheap jibe about hotels. The Minister did not even mention those children in his response. He has not yet given us a straight answer. Surely all of us in the House will be concerned about the sexual assault of children of any background. Will the Minister publish the details of all these cases, including how many incidents of violence or sexual assault against children in these hotels have occurred in the past year, what action has been taken, and crucially, what safeguarding the private companies that run these hotels must undertake? If he will not publish those details, that tells us what he thinks about those children and the responsibility that we all have to them.