CHILDREN and refugee rights charities have called on PM Rishi Sunak to end the “illegal” use of hotels to house unaccompanied minors following revelations that 200 children are missing. 

The groups, which include the NSPCC, Barnardo’s and The Children’s Society, said that they fear the children have been exploited. 

Home Office minister Robert Jenrick admitted earlier this week that 440 child asylum-seekers being accommodated in Home Office hotels along the south coast had gone missing over the past 18 months, with only half being found. 

He revealed the shocking figure following concerns that the missing children had been kidnapped by criminal gangs. 

Charities said that they had made “multiple” warnings to ministers about the dangers of putting unaccompanied minors in hotels instead of placing them in the care of local authorities, a practice that began in July 2021. 

In a letter, the groups told Mr Sunak to stop the use of hotels immediately and launch an urgent independent investigation. 

“There is no legal basis for placing children in Home Office hotel accommodation and almost two years into the operation of the scheme, which is both unlawful and harmful, it is no longer possible to justify the use of hotels as being ‘temporary’,” the letter, co-ordinated by anti-trafficking charity Every Child Protected Against Trafficking UK and the Refugee Council, reads. 

“It is a significant departure from the Children Act 1989 and established standards.”

Refugee Council CEO Enver Solomon said: “This is a child protection scandal that councils, the police and ministers must urgently address to ensure every single separated child matters and is kept safe.”

MPs have accused the government of “doing nothing” to find the missing children, including 78 from a single hotel in Brighton. 

The Home Office initially responded to the claims that the children had been abducted from outside the facility as “not true,” however Commons speaker Penny Mordaunt acknowledged today that there had been stories of gangmasters turning up at hotels. 

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said that young people were being trafficked across the Channel to Britain and then “into cannabis farms or into prostitution.”

She told the BBC that there was a “pattern” of this happening, but that it was not being properly investigated.