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UK Borders Bill

That will be in time for Report stage. Meanwhile, I refer to the comments made by the Children’s Commissioner in the foreword to the ILPA report, When is a child not a child?. He said: "““Of serious concern to me is the Home Office’s proposal that the assessment of skeletal maturity by x-rays of the teeth or skeleton be used routinely to determine ‘age’. I base my condemnation of this proposal on the fact that for 30 years I have been a full-time paediatric endocrinologist, that is, a specialist in the role of hormones in the mechanisms of growth and sexual maturation in children and young people. There is substantial normal variation in the speed with which young people attain sexual and skeletal maturity.""““The proposed x-rays demand specialist interpretation, and it is naïve to argue that they can determine the child’s chronological ‘age’””—" and so on. That remark is made by an expert, and he reinforced it in the discussion which we had in the Committee Room upstairs last week. I imagine that that view would be reflected if the noble Lord cared to consult the Royal Colleges, the BMA, the BDA and so on. I hope he will do that.