Another day, another scandal
Dozens of asylum-seeking children have been kidnapped by gangs from a Brighton hotel run by the Home Office in a pattern apparently being repeated across the south coast, an Observer investigation can reveal.
A whistleblower, who works for Home
Office contractor Mitie, and child protection sources describe children being
abducted off the street outside the hotel and bundled into cars.
“Children are literally being picked
up from outside the building, disappearing and not being found. They’re being
taken from the street by traffickers,” said the source.
It has also emerged that the Home Office was warned repeatedly by police that the vulnerable occupants of the hotel – asylum-seeking children who had recently arrived in the UK without parents or carers – would be targeted by criminal networks.
About 600 unaccompanied children have passed through the Sussex hotel in the past 18 months, with 136 reported missing. More than half of these – 79 – remain unaccounted for.
The shadow home
secretary, Yvette Cooper, described the revelation as “truly appalling and
scandalous” and called on the government to reveal how many children had
disappeared and what was being done to find them.
She added: “Suella
Braverman [the home secretary] has failed to act on the repeated warnings she
has been given about totally inadequate safeguards for children in their care.
“It is a total
dereliction of duty for the Home Office to so badly fail to protect child
safety or crack down on the dangerous gangs putting them in terrible risk.
Ministers must urgently put new protection arrangements in place.”
The Mitie
whistleblower also described witnessing children being in effect trafficked
from a similar hotel run by the Home Office in Hythe, Kent, estimating that 10%
of its youngsters disappeared each week.
The child
protection source said some of the children missing from the Brighton hotel may
have been trafficked as far away as Manchester and Scotland. One case is under
investigation by the Metropolitan police in London.
Data published in October showed
222 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children were missing from hotels run by the
Home Office. Ministers admitted that they had no idea of their whereabouts.
This is Britain today. Well, while the mass media dwell in scandals surrounding the Royal Family, Harry and Meghan, and so forth, the stench of criminality in the United Kingdom is spreading in every direction. Under Labour, and for more than 16 years, children were drugged, raped and killed while local MPs chose to look the other way for fear of being called 'Racists'. A Labour government ignored the plight of thousands of vulnerable children that were taken away from child refuges. Now, it is happening under a Conservative government. Yvette Cooper MP, who now denounces what is happening under a Conservative government, was a member of the said Labour government.
Meanwhile, it has also emerged that no new guidance for police has been issued for tracking down missing asylum-seeking children, with sources saying it remains in “development”.
New data released
under the Freedom of Information Act shows that newly arrived unaccompanied
children spend an average of 16.5 days in Home Office hotels before being
transferred into council care around the country.
When asked to comment,
Brighton and Hove city council, which traditionally cares for child asylum
seekers when they arrive in the UK without parents or guardians, referred
queries on criminals targeting children to the police. Sussex police said
queries on criminals targeting the children should be addressed to the Home
Office.
The Home Office
said: “Local authorities have a statutory duty to protect all children,
regardless of where they go missing from. In the concerning occasion when a
child goes missing, they work closely with other local agencies, including the
police, to urgently establish their whereabouts and ensure they are safe.
“We have robust
safeguarding procedures in place to ensure all children in our care are as safe
and supported as possible as we seek urgent placements with a local authority.”
Brighton and Hove
city council added: “We have been actively involved when any child is reported
missing and have worked with the police and other agencies to try to trace
them.”
Catherine
Hankinson, National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for missing persons, said
regular multi-agency meetings by police reviewed the response to every missing
migrant child who had not been located.
