Home Office accused of dereliction of duty over missing child asylum seekers

Ministers have been accused of a dereliction of duty over their failure to find 76 child asylum seekers who have gone missing from a Brighton hotel managed by the Home Office.

The accusation came during a parliamentary debate on Tuesday after an Observer investigation that cited child protection sources and a whistleblower working for a Home Office contractor, who described how youngsters had been abducted off the street outside the Brighton hotel and bundled into cars.

Caroline Lucas, the local Green MP, tabled an urgent question asking what steps the government had taken to trace the missing children.

The immigration minister Robert Jenrick said more than 4,600 asylum-seeking children had been accommodated in six hotels since July 2021, and 440 of them had gone missing. Some were later found but 200 remained missing and 13 of them were under 16.

While local authorities are the corporate parent for children in care, including child asylum seekers placed in foster care, it is unclear who has legal responsibility for the thousands of children the Home Office has placed in hotels.