Baroness Neuberger:

Moved by Baroness Neuberger

162: After Clause 48, insert the following new Clause—“Age and safeguarding assessments at the port of entry(1) A person who claims to be a child must not be subject to a visual age assessment by Border Force officials solely for immigration control purposes.(2) Any such assessment must be conducted as part of a safeguarding determination to identify potential risks and support needs. (3) A visual age assessment at the port of entry must not result in the assignment of a specific chronological age to the individual.(4) Border Force officials may only determine whether, in their view, the person is a child or an adult.(5) Where there is doubt as to whether an individual is a child, the presumption must be that the individual is treated as a child unless and until a comprehensive age assessment is conducted by local authority social workers in accordance with Merton compliant age assessment procedures.(6) The Secretary of State must publish guidance on the implementation of this section, including—(a) the training and qualifications required for officials carrying out safeguarding assessments;(b) mechanisms for independent oversight and review of age determination decisions;(c) safeguards to ensure that no child is placed at risk as a result of incorrect age assessments at the port of entry.”Member’s explanatory statementThis Amendment seeks to ensure that visual age assessments focus on safeguarding rather than immigration enforcement, removes the Home Office’s power to assign a specific age at the border, and to strengthen independent oversight and child protection safeguards.

My Lords, I will channel my inner version of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, since she is not in her place, as I introduce Amendments 162 and 163. I thank all colleagues who have signed them. I also make clear my support for Amendments 180 and 194.

Amendments 162 and 163 aim to address serious and well-documented flaws in the current approach to age assessment for unaccompanied children and young people seeking asylum. They are grounded in safeguarding principles and reflect the urgent need to prevent children being wrongly treated as adults, a practice that has led to significant harm, including wrongful detention, denial of education and even criminal prosecution. I feel like something of a broken record on this subject, having spoken on it so many times over the past few years.

The Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium, which is a coalition of more than 100 organisations—I am very grateful to it for its help—has repeatedly raised concerns about the Home Office’s approach to age assessment, particularly the use of visual assessments at the border and the previous push for unproven scientific methods. For too long, it and we were not listened to, so we very much appreciated the willingness of the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, to meet members of the consortium and a number of noble Lords and his patent and keen engagement with what was said. These amendments respond directly to the consortium’s concerns and propose a child-centred, rights-based framework for age determination. I will speak to each in turn.

Amendment 162 seeks to ensure that visual age assessments at the border focus on safeguarding rather than immigration enforcement, removing the power to assign a specific age and strengthening independent oversight and child protection safeguards. Unaccompanied children arriving in the UK often lack documentation due to the circumstances of their journey. Documents may have been lost, destroyed or, in some circumstances, never issued. Some do have documentation, but it tends to be disregarded, in some cases by non-specialist Border Force officials, on arrival. Instead, they routinely conduct what several Independent Chief Inspectors of Borders and Immigration have dubbed “perfunctory” visual assessments at the border, deciding whether an individual is over 18 and assigning arbitrary dates of birth, with no independent oversight or support provided. We do not think that that is satisfactory.

Assessments based solely on appearance and demeanour, in line with Home Office rules, are inherently flawed, and the notion that border officials can decide an individual’s date of birth based on looking at them is even more so. None of us could manage that. Concerns about visual assessments have been raised not just by NGOs but by the Children’s Commissioner, parliamentary committees and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. In his recent report, the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration pointed to

“a significant body of academic, professional and practitioner research and commentary that argues that it is not possible to assess the chronological age of a child or young person through observation of their physical appearance and demeanour”.

His latest inspection found that

“many of the concerns about policy and practice that have been raised for more than a decade remain unanswered”,

and he noted, with reference to small boat arrivals, that

“the physical and mental condition of the migrants, after a long, arduous and perilous journey, make the already difficult task of assessing age even more challenging”.

We know that the consequences are really serious. While the Government do not publish clear data on this, evidence from local authority children’s services analysed by the Helen Bamber Foundation revealed that, over an 18-month period, over 1,300 children were wrongly assessed as adults by the Home Office. In 2024, over 600 children were misidentified—over half of cases where a decision on age was concluded at all. These children were placed in adult accommodation, denied access to education and legal support and, in some cases, prosecuted and imprisoned as adults.

This is a serious child protection failure but one which the Home Office has failed to address in any meaningful way, preferring to emphasise the safeguarding implications of adults misidentified as children. International and domestic guidance is clear that age assessments should be undertaken only when necessary and be conducted using holistic, multidisciplinary approaches, ideally with social workers and interpreters for the specific language concerned, yet this is far from the reality that we are currently facing.

The amendment would introduce a presumption of childhood in cases of doubt. We urgently need to move towards a system where a Home Office official treats someone claiming to be a child as an adult only in exceptional circumstances, so as to reduce the safeguarding risk to children placed in adult prisons and forced to share rooms with unknown adults. It would also mandate the publication of guidance on training, oversight and safeguards to ensure consistency and accountability. Those safeguards should include, for example, the automatic notification to local authorities when someone claiming to be a child is treated as an adult and moved into their area, so that they can make the necessary safeguarding checks. Finally, I should stress that this amendment is not about preventing officials from making decisions at the border; rather, it attempts to address the systemic failures arising from a lack of safeguards during the flawed visual process of assessing age.

Amendment 163 aims to ensure that age assessments are conducted fairly, accurately and in the best interests of the child, and sets out specific requirements. One of these restricts the use of scientific methods unless proven ethical and highly accurate. Since that amendment was tabled, the Government have announced their rejection of the kinds of scientific methods promoted by the previous Government, such as those including X-rays. This is very welcome and has received a very positive response from NGOs and from specialists in the field who rejected such methods.

However, there is considerable concern about the proposal to use AI and facial recognition techniques instead. Existing evidence suggests that AI can be even less accurate and even more biased than human decisions when judging a person’s age, with a similar pattern of errors. The Minister for Border Security and Asylum stated that the aim is to integrate the technologies into the age assessment system during 2026, subject to the

“results of further testing and assurance”.

Can the Minister give us more information about the findings so far and an assurance that results of this further testing will be published, and that Parliament will have an opportunity to debate them before they are integrated into the age assessment process?

The amendment requires the involvement of local authorities so that Merton-compliant age assessments are carried out by qualified social workers. It would ensure that age assessments are holistic, drawing on the expertise of professionals in healthcare, education, and child welfare. It also requires consultation with independent child trafficking guardians and local authority advocates, ensuring that the child’s best interests are central to the process.

Finally, the amendment stipulates that anyone overseeing age assessments must be operationally independent of the Home Office. This particularly addresses concerns about conflicts of interest raised regarding the National Age Assessment Board, whose social workers are employed by the Home Office and whose assessments have been found to be flawed in a number of publicised cases. Although the NAAB social workers assured the independent chief inspector and inspectors that they saw themselves as social workers first and foremost and denied any conflict of interest, the independent chief inspector’s report noted that inspectors found some blurring of the boundaries between asylum caseworking and the NAAB’s age assessment work. This is a source of particular concern to the British Association of Social Workers.

In conclusion, and to echo the independent chief inspector’s emphasis on the need for child-sensitive processes that ensure that the best interests of children are served, these amendments are needed to protect the rights and welfare of unaccompanied children in the UK. They respond directly to clear evidence of systemic failures in the current age assessment process, and they offer a practical, rights-based solution that prioritises safeguarding over enforcement.

The view of experts on the ground who support these children is that misidentification of children as adults poses a greater safeguarding risk than misidentification of adults as children. There are no safeguards in adult systems because children are not expected to be there. When they are, they are left vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. In contrast, child systems have robust protections in place that can be triggered when a young adult enters this environment. We need to remember that these are not comparable scenarios, since children in adult systems face significantly greater risks. The amendments that I and my colleagues are proposing aim to close this serious safeguarding gap.

It is shameful that in his foreword to his recent report, the chief inspector notes:

“Over the years, and again during this inspection, I have listened to young people who felt disbelieved and dismissed by the Home Office, whose hopes have been crushed, and whose mental health has suffered”.

By supporting these amendments, the Committee has an opportunity to ensure that, instead, vulnerable children are treated with the care, dignity and protection they deserve. I beg to move.

My noble friend Lady Brinton added her name to all these amendments. I was happy that she did so. I am also happy to have the opportunity —of course, not at her expense—of expressing my support for them this evening. Inevitably, as the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, has said, there is rather a lot of repetition in this over a period of years.

We touched on visual age assessments—I cannot remember on which day in Committee—and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, as she always has done, expressed her clear views about visual assessment being inappropriate. She said she had talked—coming from her cultural and ethnic background; I align myself with her in this—to young males whose looks raised a question in her mind as to what age they were. However hard we try, our own backgrounds leave us with a bias, I suppose—an inbuilt bias, an expectation. We have to put ourselves in other people’s shoes.

I recall being in the education centre of this House, talking to young students who I think were at the top end of primary school. There was one young student who, if you went by facial hair, would have been regarded as twice as old as he actually was. I recall also being very impressed by his presentation; the students were discussing how they would campaign for a change in the law, although I suppose I should not go into that tonight.

My noble friend also has in this group Amendments 180 and 194, supported by, among others, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield. Amendment 180 deals with criminal proceedings, and my noble friend says that a mandatory referral age for age assessment in those proceedings follows from the basic argument regarding assessment for immigration purposes.

Amendment 194, as the noble Baroness has said, is about accommodation. Some people assume that everyone in asylum accommodation is a criminal and a danger to local residents. It is good that we have the opportunity to recognise that a child in adult accommodation, in adult detention, is a vulnerable child, and I just use the amendment to make that point.

This is an important set of amendments, but I am sure it will come as no surprise to the noble Lords supporting them that we on these Benches have some disagreements with them.

Amendment 162 proposes that, where there is any doubt as to age, we should simply presume that the individual is a child. I cannot think of a more reckless approach. We all know that children are entitled to greater rights and protections under our law, but those protections exist precisely because children are vulnerable. If we hand them out indiscriminately to anyone who claims to be under 18, we risk creating grave safeguarding failures. There are well-documented cases where individuals who arrived illegally have lied about their age, and as a result adult men were placed in classrooms with teenage girls or in accommodation with vulnerable children. This amendment, whatever its good intentions, would compromise safety, weaken enforcement and put children at risk, and we cannot allow that to happen. Furthermore, Amendment 163 seems to me to be completely impractical in operational terms.

The fundamental point is this: age is one of the characteristics that we need to determine as soon as someone arrives in the UK illegally. This is innately tied to the sort of support they receive, who they are housed with, what services they can access and how they will interact with other migrants and those already in the United Kingdom.

We cannot pretend that we have the luxury of unlimited time in this matter. The use of a scientific age assessment is a necessity if we are to protect children from those who falsely claim that they are under 18. We on these Benches are absolutely unequivocal on that point.

Finally, I come to Amendments 180 and 194, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield, and the noble Lord, Lord German. I can see some merit in the principle behind Amendment 180. Ensuring that those who may be children are properly assessed before criminal proceedings are brought is an important safeguard. However, I have concerns about how this would operate in practice. We have already spoken at length about the backlog in the asylum system and the enormous delays that are causing real frustration, both for those with genuine claims and for the British taxpayer.

Amendment 194 would require that whenever the Home Office determines that someone claiming to be a child is in fact an adult, local authorities must be notified and given an opportunity to conduct or review an age assessment before any placement in adult accommodation or detention occurs. This is a recipe for more endless appeals, endless second-guessing and endless delay. If the Home Office, with all the information at its disposal, has determined that an individual is an adult, then that decision must stand.

While I acknowledge the fairness objectives underpinning Amendment 180, I cannot support Amendment 194, which would drive us in the opposite direction towards further delay, duplication and dysfunction.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, for becoming the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, this evening, particularly at this late hour. I am grateful for her introduction of the amendments. I am also grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for being the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. I am still Lord Hanson for the purposes of the discussion before us today.

Age assessment is a difficult area of work and there is no single-combination assessment technique able to determine age with precision. It has already been pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Davies, that there are serious safeguarding risks if adults are treated as children and placed in settings with children. Similarly, there are serious safeguarding issues if children are treated as adults.

I will turn to the amendments before us and try to weave through them in a way that, I hope, assuages the concerns of the noble Baroness and gives a direction forward. On Amendment 180, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, in relation to the completion of age assessments where an individual faces criminal charges, the current approach of the Home Office is that any decision on age made by the Home Office for immigration purposes is not binding on the UK courts. Where an individual is charged with a criminal offence, the CPS is advised of any age dispute issues that have arisen and will decide if it is in the public interest to pursue a prosecution. Once proceedings are instigated, should the presiding judge have doubts about the individual being a child, the courts can take a decision on the age based on the available evidence or request that a substantive age assessment is undertaken.

The Home Office has introduced additional safeguards in criminal cases to mitigate the risk of a genuine child being imprisoned in adult prison for immigration offences. This is something that none of us would want to see. Where an individual who has been assessed to be “significantly over 18” maintains their claim to be a child and is identified for potential criminal charges for immigration offences, the Home Office will provide for an abbreviated age assessment to be conducted by qualified social workers. I hope that on both those counts, the noble Baroness is able to withdraw the amendment before the Committee today.

Amendment 162 is on the suggested use of visual age assessments as part of a safeguarding determination, identifying potential risks and support needs, rather than solely for the purposes of immigration enforcement. The noble Baroness has said that the initial age assessment is an extremely important first step to prevent the detention of children generally, including any accidental detention of someone who is believed to be an adult but subsequently found to be a child, and to ensure that individuals are routed to the correct adult or child immigration process. That is key. It provides that immigration officers may treat an individual as an adult only where they have no credible and clear documentary evidence proving their age, and two members of Home Office staff independently assess that their physical appearance and demeanour very strongly suggest that the individual is significantly over 18. This is a particularly high threshold, and the benefit of the doubt remains key. Where doubt exists, individuals will be referred for further assessment.

As the noble Baroness said, a social worker may be present at the initial age decision stage. Where present, they will play a crucial role in the welfare of the individuals in their care and will support our Kent Intake Unit officers with their initial age decisions carried out at Western Jet Foil. Any views expressed by the social worker at this initial stage will be given a strong weighting, given the expertise they have in regularly working with children.

The Home Office has contractual arrangements with the Refugee Council to provide support to unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who arrive by small boat and are moved to the Kent Intake Unit. That contract sees Refugee Council advisers working directly with unaccompanied asylum-seeking children providing impartial and independent information, advice and guidance to help them navigate the asylum and looked-after children system. These amendments would make it mandatory for the Home Office to publish guidance that includes mechanisms for independent oversight. I note that the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration already has oversight of Home Office practices and is not short of bringing forward reports about the areas we are discussing.

Amendment 163, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and Amendment 194 were spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Neuburger, and supported by the noble Lord, Lord German, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. They are about whether age assessment in relation to asylum claims should rest with the local authority according to the ADCS guidance. I ask the Committee to bear with me because we need to be mindful of unintended consequences. The amendments as tabled would mean that the Home Office would be bound to immediately notify a local authority in every instance where an individual claiming to be a child has been determined to be an adult and therefore may be placed in adult accommodation. This would apply even when an individual is obviously an adult. This creates the risk that already-stretched local authorities could cause significant safeguarding risks if adults have access, along with genuine and potentially vulnerable children, to children’s services including accommodation and education.

I hope it will reassure the noble Baroness that the Home Office already takes into account best practice within the age assessment guidance issued by the ADCS and the equivalent guidance in Scotland and Wales. Where the Home Office or an accommodation provider have concerns that an individual might be a child, it is now standard practice for a local authority referral to be raised. Even where a referral is not made, this does not prevent the individual from approaching a local authority for further consideration of their age.

As I said at the outset, the Government continue to review all options for age assessment. A parliamentary Written Statement issued to both Houses on 22 July indicated that work was being undertaken in the Home Office to look at science and technology innovation and the age assessment system. We have concluded that the most cost-effective option is to pursue a likely facial age estimation whereby AI technology trained on millions of images is able to produce an age estimate with a known degree of accuracy. Again, I recognise that the noble Baroness raised some concerns about that. I hope I can reassure her that the Home Office is taking this seriously and that further testing and trialling of the technology will be conducted ahead of any integration into the system. It is important that we get that right, but it is also important that we try to find mechanisms to give greater clarity on what that age is over and above the individual eyes-on by a particular officer at the border.

I hope that, with those reasons, the noble Baronesses, Lady Neuberger and Lady Hamwee—the substitutes for the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister and Lady Brinton, respectively—will not press the amendments.

As the substitute for the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, I would like to make a point about AI. It is important that the Home Office and others use AI only where it is appropriate and safe. Quite a lot of work has been done across the piece in Parliament about the reliability or otherwise of facial recognition—because that is what this is— including by a Select Committee which I chaired. I have not been satisfied by any comments from the Government Benches since, including on the need for regulation and oversight. That must apply here. I would be deeply worried if we were to go ahead with using AI as a substitute for the human brain without the proper regulation in effect.

My Lords, I echo totally what the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has just said. In my speech, I asked the Minister whether Parliament would have the chance to look at whether AI is used. Will he reply to that?

The Government are examining all of this, and there will need to be some further consideration. I will ensure that there is further discussion in Parliament, prior to that being undertaken.

I thank the Minister for his reply. That is what we wanted to hear, and I very much hope we might have informal discussions before that comes to Parliament. Like some of the stuff more generally about age assessment, the meeting with the Minister was hugely helpful.

I thank all noble Lords who have spoken. The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, will not be entirely surprised to hear I do not wholly agree with him. The point I was trying to make is that it is worse for a child to be in adult accommodation than for an adult to be in child accommodation. That is the point we ought to take most seriously.

At this late hour, let us leave it at that. With the Committee’s leave, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment 162 withdrawn.

Amendment 163 not moved.