Labour has called for “urgent and serious action” to crack down on gangs who are kidnapping vulnerable asylum-seeking children from Home Office-run hotels.
There are 76 vulnerable children who went missing from accommodation in Brighton and Hove and still have not been found, according to reports from Sussex Police.
Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper demanded the Home Office “immediately end the contract with this hotel and move the children out to safer accommodation”.
She told the Commons: “This is a total dereliction of duty that is putting children at risk. We need urgent and serious action to crack down on these gangs and to keep children and young people safe.”
Blasting the Home Office’s response, Ms Cooper said: “Where is the single coordinated unit involving the National Crime Agency, the Border Force, the Southeast Regional organised crime unit, the local police to hit the gang networks, which are operating around this hotel and across the channel?
“Why are they still refusing to boost the National Crime Agency and why have they repeatedly ignored the warnings about this hotel and about unregulated accommodation for 16 and 17 year olds being targeted by criminal gangs?
“It is unbelievable there is still no clarity about whether the home office or the council are legally responsible for these children.”
Charities have raised concerns multiple times over the risks of keeping unaccompanied asylum-seeker children in such accommodation. There are six of these Home Office hotels in total.
Home Office minister Simon Murray told the House of Lords on Monday that 200 children have gone missing.
Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick told MPs: “When any child goes missing, a multi-agency missing persons protocol is mobilised alongside the police and relevant local authorities to establish their whereabouts and to ensure that they're safe.”
But Tory MP Kit Malthouse also criticised the Government for not taking tougher action.
The former crime and policing minister said: “If dozens of children had been going missing, say from boarding schools across the country, I've no doubt there would be a national mobilisation at the NCA and indeed the National Police Youth Council.
“So could you just enlighten us to what that national response looks like at the moment in British policing and whether he feels more could be done to address the systemic problem, not least given the possible links to serious and organised crime.”
Mr Jenrick said: “We should treat any child who goes missing with all the same focus and intensity of effort regardless of their background, or their nationality and immigration status and that is exactly what happens in this case.
“If a young person leaves the hotel, for example the one we're discussing this afternoon, and does not return within four hours, then that is immediately recognised as a missing person. The local police, in this case Sussex, are contacted and it is treated with all the same effort as it would be any other individual.
"That is why a significant proportion of these young people have fortunately been found and returned to to care, but too many have not.
He added: “If there are further steps that we should be taking, then we will do.”
MPs raised concerns in the Commons on Tuesday after Green Party MP Caroline Lucas secured an urgent question on the issue.
The MP for Brighton, Pavilion, said: "This is horrific. Vulnerable children are being dumped by the Home Office. Scores of them are going missing."
She said there was "nothing specialist" about the hotels used, and said: "We are not asking him to detain children, we are asking the Home Office to apply some basic safeguarding so we can keep them safe."
She asked how many have been "kidnapped, trafficked, put into force labour", where the children are and if they are in school, and said it was "not clear" whether the Home Office was "prepared to take legal as well as practical responsibility", saying it left the children in "legal limbo".
She added: "I was told before Christmas that Government lawyers were deliberating over their ultimate legal responsibility. We need to know the outcome today. What is it? We need to know why successive Home Secretaries have played into the hands of criminal gangs."
Mr Jenrick defended the security presence at the hotel run by his department, but said he has asked those running it and council officials to respond to the "very serious allegations" of children being abducted outside it.
He said he has "not been presented with evidence that that has happened" but he will continue to investigate the matter.
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