My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for raising concerns about the legal aspects of children and care leavers, and in particular for extending that to children who have come here as refugees, and perhaps as unaccompanied minors. There has been a commitment from the Government that 20,000 such children will be accepted into this country by 2020. I know that my local authority in West Yorkshire has already been asked to accept 70 such children.
The difficulty that has been raised is one that we all ought to be aware of: we are in danger of creating two tiers of care leavers. On the one hand, there are those who are rightly included in this Bill, and we all praise the direction of travel. We are rightly saying that local authorities and corporate parents generally ought to take greater responsibility for those care leavers up to the age of 25. Therefore, in this Bill we are saying that young people aged 18 are not yet fully prepared and need help in the transition to adulthood. On the other hand, however, in the Immigration Act, which was debated in the last Session, the decision was made that, unless their asylum application is successful, young people aged 18, who have had some of the most harrowing experiences that any of us can imagine, not only will not receive any further care and support but will be sent back to their country of origin.
5.45 pm
Noble Lords will probably not know, but the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and I do, that the European Union Sub-Committee on Home Affairs, having spent many months on unaccompanied migrant children in the EU, has just drafted what I think both of us regard as an excellent report. I hope we can give a draft to the Minister so that he can see the evidence that the committee had from unaccompanied minors and can see the consequences of not extending the support that we are going to give care leavers in this country to unaccompanied minors.
I shall read one section from the evidence of the British Association of Social Workers, which said:
“The fear of removal upon turning 18 is so overwhelming for many young people that they run away from care and live in an underworld of street life, so essentially the system itself is putting these young people at risk of exploitation and abuse. The current Immigration Bill”,
as it was then,
“will ‘rubber stamp’ this abusive process by making all unaccompanied asylum seeking young people whose case fails destitute”.