Government strongly backs Home Office social work service as BASW seeks abolition

The government has strongly backed the Home Office social work agency charged with assessing the ages of unaccompanied asylum seekers where this is disputed.

Border security and asylum minister Angela Eagle said the National Age Assessment Board (NAAB) “offers significant improvements” to the process of assessing the ages of young people seeking asylum in cases when this is not done by the relevant local authority.

In response to a parliamentary question from fellow Labour MP Natasha Irons, Eagle said the NAAB, established in 2023, aimed to “create greater consistency in age assessment practices and increase capacity and expertise in the system”.

BASW lobbying for board’s abolition

The comments come with the British Association of Social Workers (BASW), which has long opposed the NAAB, lobbying for an amendment to the current Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill to abolish the board.

The bill has already been passed by the House of Commons and is due to be scrutinised in detail by the House of Lords, where the government is in the minority, later this month.

Should peers amend the bill to enable the NAAB’s opposition, Eagle’s comments imply that the government would use its Commons majority to overturn this during the “ping pong” stage, where the two houses seek to agree a version of a piece of legislation.

Minister says board is independent from immigration teams

A key concern of BASW’s is that practitioners working for the NAAB will be subject to political pressure to make judgments that go against good social work practice and the profession’s values, by virtue of working for the Home Office.

Eagle addressed this concern in her response to Irons, saying that the government had “gone to great lengths to ensure that the NAAB is distinct from the Home Office’s asylum and immigration decision making functions and the two sit under separate management functions”.

“In addition, the information acquired by the NAAB when conducting age assessments is not accessible to asylum and immigration decision making teams, other than the final decision on age,” she added.

However, BASW’s head of policy and research, Luke Geoghegan, reiterated its concerns over the NAAB’s impartiality in response.

Age assessments ‘should be undertaken impartially’

“Since the NAAB’s inception, BASW has warned that having an in-house facility for the Home Office to undertake age assessment leaves it blatantly open to political interference,” he said.

“Age assessment should be undertaken impartially by social workers who are not part of the Home Office. A major role of the Home Office is immigration control. It’s difficult to be impartial if you are employed by, and line managed by, an organisation with these responsibilities.”

Geoghegan pointed to a report of children and young people’s experiences of NAAB assessments published earlier this year by charity the Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit, which is also campaigning for the board’s abolition.

The unit said young people reported that assessments were lengthy and involved multiple sessions, during which they were asked questions repeatedly, which they felt were designed to catch them out, with an adverse impact on their mental health.

“It is apparent that the NAAB cannot operate in the best interests of a potential child,” Geoghegan added. “The government must call time on this agency and instead focus on better resourcing local authorities to conduct age assessments in a fair, independent and timely way themselves.”