Home Office to review asylum applications from child refugees in France

Refugees crossing Mediterranean - credit: PA

The Home Office will review asylum applications from child refugees in France, as it emerged many had returned to Calais in a bid to reach the UK.

The Home Office reached an agreement with its French counterparts “to review any new information from children formerly resident in Calais” who have family links in the UK.

It comes after the Government faced widespread criticism for ending the Dubs amendment scheme set up to bring in unaccompanied minors who have already made it to Europe from war-torn Syria.

A separate scheme to bring unaccompanied children with family ties to Britain under the Dublin convention was also due to close.

But the Home Office has confirmed that, following an agreement with French authorities, it will look again at some of the Dublin cases.

“The Calais operation has now concluded. All children present in the centres throughout France when Home Office teams visited were assessed against the family reunification criteria in the Dublin regulation and the published guidance for section 67 of the Immigration Act,” a spokeswoman said.

“Children in France may be eligible to be transferred to the UK where they have a family link as set out in the Dublin regulation.

“We have agreed with the French authorities that we will review any new information from children formerly resident in the Calais camp to assess whether it would change our determination of their eligibility under the Dublin regulation, to encourage an application.”

Minors have reportedly been travelling back to the jungle camp in northern France after being moved to migrant centres across France after the site’s closure last year.

The Guardian reports of a teenager, named Abdal, who arrived in London at the weekend after hiding beneath a coach at the port.

He said that a rising number of children were returning to Calais after losing hope of travelling to the UK by official means.

Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said: "It is ridiculous that it has taken so much public pressure to force this Conservative government to live up to its moral duty.

"The Government must now reinstate the Dubs scheme and bring unaccompanied child refugees to the UK who are in Greece and Italy too.

"These children are vulnerable and face exploitation. Britain has always been a place of sanctuary and none are more deserving than these lone children."

The Government announced earlier this month that only 350 children would be coming to the UK under the scheme put forward by Labour peer Lord Dubs, far fewer than the 3,000 he had asked for.

Ministers accepted an amendment to the Immigration Bill last year, although then Prime Minister David Cameron never made a firm commitment on numbers.

Immigration Minister Robert Goodwill said the reason the scheme was being stopped was that councils had told him they only had space for 400 children, of whom 200 have already arrived in the UK.

And Home Secretary Amber Rudd said the scheme was also partly being scrapped because it “encourages people traffickers”.