LUKE Littler has been used as an example criticising the Government’s approach to determining if an asylum seeker is a child.

A Liberal Democrat peer used the Warrington darts sensation as an example of a teenager who looks older than his age.

Baroness Hamwee told Parliament that the darts player, who made it to the final of the World Championship earlier this year, "looked about 35" despite being 16 years old at the time.

Lady Hamwee said that the Government's assessments of "young men" who it deems to be adults, and not children, should be looked at.

Those seeking asylum in the UK, who have no credible evidence of their age, are subject to age assessments by the Home Office.

As peers continued their line-by-line scrutiny of the Rwanda Bill on Wednesday, Lady Hamwee said: "We will come next week, as (Baroness Brinton) said, to the position of children and that will include the question of age assessment.

"I hope somebody in that debate will draw attention to the Government's references to young men, who are really men, not children, when they come across the Channel.

"I'm sure other noble Lords saw on our television screens that amazing darts player, Luke Littler.

"He looked considerably more than a child, he looked about 35 actually."

A joint report by the Refugee Council, the Helen Bamber Foundation and Humans for Rights Network found that the Home Office's approach to determining the age of new arrivals led to at least 1,300 refugee children being placed in unsupervised adult accommodation or detention between January 2022 and June 2023.

It also warned that measures in the Illegal Migration Act could lead to hundreds of children being wrongly removed from the UK and sent to Rwanda.