The UK Border Agency embarked on a controversial trial of using dental x-rays to establish the age of young asylum seekers without the formal approval of the NHS watchdog which ensures medical research is ethical, the Guardian can reveal.
The failure to wait for the go-ahead emerged days after the chief medical officer, Sally Davies, demanded reassurance last Friday that the agency had obtained a "positive assessment" on the trial which started last week.
The agency repeatedly refused to tell the Guardian whether it had backing from the National Ethics Research Service. On Thursday the NERS said the study had been referred to it for advice but "has not yet been referred formally on for approval".
Immigration officials have previously complained that adult asylum seekers claim to be under 18 to avoid removal. The trial has already been condemned by Britain's four children's commissioners as well as immigration lawyers for breaching of children's rights and for being possibly illegal. The commissioners were particularly concerned that children might be unable to give informed consent and undergo increased, unnecessary exposure to medical radiation.
Davies's predecessor Liam Donaldson shared the "grave ethical concern" of medical and dental professionals raised by a similar scheme that was subsequently abandoned in 2008 by the Labour government.
Her intervention came after the agency announced a three-month programme seeking volunteers among asylum seekers to see if the x-rays could help determine whether they were under 18 and thus subject to different treatment from older applicants.
The border agency would only say: "Further discussions are taking place around the trial."
Child asylum seekers are usually cared for by local social services. Hundreds of young asylum seekers a year would be involved if the trial led to national policy.
The planned checks will involve volunteers who are assessed as adults by Croydon council, in south London, but maintain they are under 18. They will be given the opportunity to have a dental x-ray at Guy's hospital, London.
If x-rays indicate that the individual is likely to be under 18, the council will be invited to review its assessment of the asylum seeker's age. The UK Border Agency insists that asylum seekers who do not volunteer will not jeopardise their claims for asylum or humanitarian protection.