During a grilling by the liaison committee, the prime minister says excluding children from the legislation could 'incentivise' people to bring them to the UK in small boats, acting as a 'pull factor' for criminal gangs.
"We don't want to create a pull factor to make it more likely that children are making this very perilous journey in conditions that are appalling."
Mr Sunak added:"I think we've got a policy that does what we need it to do, which is treat people with decency, treats people humanely, safeguards children's welfare, but also achieve the objectives that we're trying to achieve, which is to break the cycle of these criminal gangs and stop people coming here who should have been coming here.
Immigration minister Robert Jenrick defended the policy, saying:"It is undoubtedly true that we face a serious situation today where the number of unaccompanied minors coming into the country over the channel has increased fourfold since 2019.
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