Morally and ethically, unaccompanied children seeking asylum deserve to be treated differently than young adults seeking asylum, but such preferential treatment is fraught with the difficulty of ascertaining the correct age of asylum seekers. In 2022 the previous government established the National Age Assessment Board (NAAB) and legislation made provision for the use of x-rays and MRIs in age assessments
This has given rise to a considerable number of legal challenges over the years, and judgments from the Supreme Court down on topics including what happens when there are conflicting age assessments, when should a person be re-assessed and the resources involved in undertaking such assessments.
The creation of NAAB was not without controversy, particularly in social worker circles. The British Association of Social Workers urged practitioners not to take jobs with the NAAB, on the basis that it considered that practitioners' professional judgment risked being compromised, in the light of government rhetoric about adult asylum seekers exploiting the system by claiming to be children. However, the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 was also controversial because it made provision for regulations to be introduced which allowed a variety of ‘scientific methods’ for age assessments, such as x-rays of teeth and bones of the hands and wrist and MRIs of knees and collar bones. Multiple organisations, including the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) and British Association of Social Workers, have voiced strongly-worded concerns about the introduction of such scientific age assessments in the UK, both because these methods are not reliable and also because they raise ethical issues and issues surrounding informed consent.
(My italics)