Member

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.