The government is unable to say how many of the children who have come to the UK to seek safety it has placed in temporary hotel accommodation, or give the age of the youngest, because it has not kept a sufficiently accurate count, ministers have admitted.
The Home Office was accused in January of a “dereliction of duty” after it emerged that hundreds of children had gone missing after being placed in hotels, with a whistleblower saying that some had been abducted on the streets outside.
