To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps the Department has taken to honour its commitment to implement the Dubs amendment; what assessment he has made of whether his Department has met that commitment.
Answered on
17 December 2018
We continue to work very closely with participating States France, Greece and Italy, local authorities and delivery partners to relocate the specified number of 480 children under Section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016 as soon as possible. Over 220 children are already in the UK and transfers are ongoing.
We recently took the positive decision to remove the date criterion for the referral of unaccompanied children in Europe to be relocated to the UK un-der section 67. Participating States will now be able to refer the most vul-nerable children whose best interests are served by relocation to the UK, regardless of when they arrived into Europe. We expect this to increase the rate of referrals from participating States. Relocation of eligible children to the UK is also dependent on the availability of appropriate local authority care placements.