Home Office sparks anger by ruling out use of dental X-rays to confirm the age of ‘kids’ entering Britain

THE Home Office has sparked anger by ruling out using dental X-rays to confirm the age of “kids” entering Britain.

Tory MP David TC Davies defended his call for mandatory age tests on suspiciously mature looking child migrants.

But the government has branded them “inaccurate, inappropriate and unethical.”

The outspoken Tory warned the UK must not be “naive” and blasted Lily Allen for “turning up with tears in her eyes” to the Calais jungle.

He added: “People in Britain, I think, want to help children but we don’t want to be taken for a free ride either by people who seem to have got to the front of the queue even though they clearly look, in some cases, a lot older than 18.”

After the arrival of 14 teenagers to the UK from Calais on Monday the Welsh MP, who has a Hungarian wife, said they “don’t look like ‘children”.

He added: “I hope British hospitality is not being abused”.

Mr Davies said he believes young male migrants are deliberately pretending to be children to over-complicate their UK asylum claims to delay their deportation.

He told the BBC claims UK asylum centres have men turning up with “grey hair who claim to be 17, not that anyone believes it.”

The Monmouth MP went on to say: “They will do it with a smile on face, but they do it because it takes that little bit longer to sort the case out, and the longer people can stay here the less likely they are going to get removed.”

“We must not be naive about this. It’s no good Lily Allen turning up with tears in her eyes and all the rest of it – we need to be quite hard-nosed here.”

He also rejected claims that it was “intrusive” to take an X-ray of a migrant.

“Someone who is willing to throw themselves onto an electrified rail line or jump into a moving lorry isn’t going to be terribly worried about having an X-ray.”

A spokesman for the Home Office said: “We do not use dental X-rays to confirm the ages of those seeking asylum in the UK.

They added: “The British Dental Association has described them as inaccurate, inappropriate and unethical.”

Lib Dem chief Tim Farron led a chorus of outrage, claiming: “There are age checks in place that do not require the Government to treat human beings like cattle.

He said: “David Davies should hang his head in shame.”

But a series of MPs backed Mr Davies’s controversial call.

One Labour MP, who did not want to be named, told The Sun: “what an earth is wrong with dental checks? It’s a perfectly sensible suggestion.”