As many as half of all local authorities are at risk of breaching data protection laws by passing on information about unaccompanied asylum-seeking children to immigration officials.
A report by campaign group Action on Rights for Children (Arch) has found that children's social services are regularly passing on information from age assessments to the UK Border Agency (UKBA) over and above what they are required to reveal.
Arch claims this breaks data protection rules and means children face the prospect of deportation if even slight inconsistencies are found between age assessment interviews and initial immigration interviews.
The report details the case of a 17-year-old girl who claimed in her initial interview that she left her country to avoid a forced marriage. After failing to mention this in her age assessment, the issue was picked up by the UKBA, which said the inconsistency damaged her credibility.
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