Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)

I am grateful to the noble Lord for tabling these amendments. We have indeed been around the Houses, but in trying to reach some common ground, I agree with every noble Lord who has spoken that we need to have some method of assessing age. Children who are placed in settings with adults are at risk, and adults who are placed in settings with children potentially pose a risk. I think there is common ground across the House today on the need to find some mechanism to establish age verification. Amendments 63 and 64 refer to scientific methods of age assessment, and Amendment 63 places a statutory duty on the Secretary of State to lay regulations under Section 52 of the Nationality and Borders Act within six months of the passing of the Bill. This is one of the reasons, in addition to those that I have given, that I support the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. Regulations have already been made under this power that specify X-ray and MRI methods of age assessment. Amendment 64 would, in effect, reintroduce Section 58 of the Illegal Migration Act, which the Bill looks to repeal. Under the powers given to the Secretary of State in Section 52 of the Nationality and Borders Act, the Secretary of State would not make regulations to the effect that this amendment seeks to achieve unless and until the specific scientific methods in question were sufficiently accurate to mean that applying the automatic assumption in cases of refusal to consent would be compatible with the ECHR. The specified methods—that is, X-ray and MRI images of certain body areas—do not currently meet this threshold. I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, also emphasised that point, as did the noble Lord, Lord Harper, to some extent. That does not mean that the Government do not wish to have age verification measures in place. I can assure the House that, in the context of the Government’s wider work to reform age assessment systems, as was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Harper, the then Minister for Security and Asylum set out in a Written Ministerial Statement in the House of Commons, which I repeated in this House in July, that this Government have commissioned work to determine the most promising new and emerging methods of age assessment to pursue them further. As a result of that, currently the work to operationalise X-ray and MRI methods of age assessment have been stood down, because facial age estimation methods—this goes to the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger—are less intrusive, cheaper and faster, and there is no requirement for a physical medical procedure. As I mentioned in Committee, we are not there yet, but facial age estimation technology is currently being explored by the Home Office. It is a potential assistive tool in the age assessment process, and we have commissioned further testing and trialling with the intention of implementing the technology during 2026 if it proves a worthwhile addition to our armoury.