Perhaps I was not listening—I do apologise. It says that puberty assessment and bone age assessment have been proved scientifically to be unreliable and that paediatricians should not be involved in age assessment. The RCPCH and other medical practitioners, such as dentists, as we have heard, consider it to be unethical to expose anyone to radiation from X-rays unnecessarily for non-clinical purposes. It also believes that age assessment requires informed consent, as other noble Lords have said, which it does not believe vulnerable young people such as asylum seekers are able to give.
No other child would be required to undergo such intrusive and potentially harmful procedures without the consent of a parent or guardian, yet the Government propose to subject unaccompanied child refugees to such procedures where consent would be given by
“another person, of a description specified in regulations made by the Secretary of State”.
Can the Minster explain who such a person might be and in what circumstances they would be able to give consent on behalf of the child, or is this yet another case of, “We can’t see how we can get around this problem, so let’s just say we’ll put it in regulations”?
Clause 51(7) says that refusal to undergo age assessment without a reasonable excuse should be taken as damaging to the credibility of a person. As others have said, this is coercion, plain and simple. In any event, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health provides reasonable excuses for not engaging in the kind of scientific methods the Government are proposing, so there is no point in the Government pursuing scientific methods to establish age; there is a reasonable excuse for refusing to engage in the process.
Part 4 should not stand part of the Bill. To be clear, Clauses 48 to 56 should not stand part of the Bill, and the rest is window dressing.