§ Jeremy CorbynTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what estimate he has made of the number of unaccompanied Somali child refugees in local authority care in England. [127387]
§ Margaret HodgeThis information is not available in the form requested. However, in 2002, the most recent year for which figures are available, 3451 Somali children applied for asylum in the UK as unaccompanied asylum seeking children i.e. aged under 18 at the time of their application. Only a small proportion of applications result in grants of refugee status. This figure is taken from the annual Home Office statistical bulletin "Asylum Statistics United Kingdom 2002" published by the Home Office on 28 August 2003, It is published on the internet at the following web address; http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/immigrationl.html. The bulletin is also available in hard copy.
All unaccompanied asylum seeking children are supported by local authorities under the Children Act 1989.
1 This figure is provisional and rounded to the nearest 5.The data is not comparable to manual counts data prior to 2002.The data excludes age dispute cases.