lordswrans/lordswrans2025-12-02 conversation_10
Source: hansard.parliament.uk (2025-12-02)

UK Parliament Hansard data: lordswrans/lordswrans2025-12-02 conversation_10

Lord Touhig:To ask His Majesty's Government how many unaccompanied migrant children reported missing have been found in each of the past five years. \p Baroness Smith of Malvern: The information requested is shown in the below table. The footnotes for the missing data table should be reviewed as they explain some of the limitations to this data.

Data on looked after unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) in England is published in the annual statistical release ‘Children looked after in England including adoptions’. The latest data is for year ending 31 March 2025 and has been available since 20 November 2025.

In these statistics, ‘missing’ is defined as a looked after child who is not at their placement or a place they are expected to be and their whereabouts is not known. A child may have had multiple missing incidents during a year that may have been resolved only to conclude with a further incident that results in the child being missing again on 31 March. Any missing incident is concerning but the vast majority (91%) of incidents, where a child who is looked after and reportedly goes missing, last for two days or less.

The department holds responsibility for the collection and publication of statistics for children looked after by local authorities in England only. Similar statistics for other countries in the UK are the responsibility of the devolved administrations.

Children missing on 31 March who were unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC), 2021 to 2025, England

2021

2022

2023

2024

2025

Children looked after on 31 March who were UASC

4,150

5,680

7,410

7,440

6,540

Number of UASC who went missing during  the year ending 31 March

1,000

1,160

1,490

1,700

1,620

Number of UASC who were missing on 31 March

80

80

60

70

40

Footnotes

1. Numbers have been rounded to the nearest 10. Figures exclude children looked after under a series of short-term placements.

2. Historical data may differ from older publications which is mainly due to amendments made by local authorities after the previous publication. However, users looking for a longer time series may wish to check for the equivalent table in earlier releases.

3. Missing is defined as a looked after child who is not at their placement or a place they are expected to be and their whereabouts is not known.

4. Since 2017 a growing number of local authorities informed the department that they do not record incidents as 'away without authorisation', but instead report all incidents as 'missing' to maintain consistency with local police reporting. We estimate this could mean an overestimate of missing incidents of up to 13% in 2021, 10% in 2022, 11% in 2023, 13% in 2024 and 12% in 2025; suggesting the true figures could be more like 9,600, 11,100, 11,500, 11,500 and 11,300. There is a corresponding estimate of an undercount of away without authorisation incidents of up to 32% in 2021, 30% in 2022, 32% in 2023, 36% in 2024 and 32% in 2025; suggesting the true figures could be more like 3,800, 3,600, 3,900, 4,300 and 4,300. However some of these local authorities submitted some 'away without authorisation' information and this can be found in the away from placement without authorisation table.

5. Figures for 2021 exclude data for Hackney.