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.
The high court ruled this week that the government's "routine" housing of unaccompanied child asylum seekers in hotels was unlawful.
The paucity of the government's record-keeping was revealed by written answers to parliamentary questions posed by the Liberal Democrat peer Paul Scriven.
In one question, he asked how many unaccompanied children seeking asylum had been housed in Home Office temporary hotels in the past 18 months. The Home Office answered: "The data requested cannot be provided as it comes from live operational databases that have not been quality assured." In another question, Scriven asked the age of the youngest unaccompanied child seeking asylum who had been housed in a Home Office temporary hotel and how long the child was housed for. He received the same answer.
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