Good morning. Two days ago, the Observer reported a story that seemed to set a new low for the authorities’ handling of asylum seekers who come to the UK by small boats: dozens of vulnerable children, with no parent in the country, being abducted from outside Home Office-run hotels and disappearing. And yet that summary only scratches the surface of the policy mess that has left them so at risk.
At one hotel alone, 79 children are still unaccounted for. In many cases, they may have been picked up by criminal gangs, perhaps having been told that they will be sent to Rwanda if they stay. And yet there is no timeline in places for ending the practice of putting children up in hotels, a temporary policy created to deal with an emergency that has become the norm.
