Luke Littler, 17, was roped into a parliamentary debate by Lib Dem peer Baroness Hamwee, questioning the Government’s approach to age-testing asylum seekers. Using the teenager as an example, Lady Hamwee told Parliament that Littler “looked about 35,” despite only being 16 years old at that time.
She used the darts sensation, who rose to fame after a run to the final of the World Championship in January, to demonstrate that the Home Office’s assessments of what constitutes a ‘child’ and what constitutes a ‘young man’ should be re-evaluated.
Many asylum seekers arriving in the UK have no evidence of their age, and so are subjected to age-verification assessments by the Home Office. As peers continued to scrutinise Suella Braverman’s 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 the 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 report from the Refugee Council, Helen Bamber Foundation and Humans for Rights Network found that this approach to age verification wrongly placed at least 1,300 refugee children in unsupervised adult accommodation or detention from January 2022 to June 2023. It also cautioned that measures in the Illegal Migration Act 2023 could see hundreds of children sent to Rwanda if no change is made.
After his sensational performance at the World Championship, Littler was announced as part of the 2024 Premier League Darts. The teenager went on to win the Bahrain Darts Masters with an emphatic 8-5 triumph over Michael van Gerwen in the final, and has since won his debut Players Championships.
He since made the semifinals in week one of the Premier League and finished runner-up in week two. Both Premier League appearances included wins over world number one Luke Humphries, who defeated Littler in the World Championship final. The teenager currently sits 30th in the PDC World Rankings, though this is likely to rise as the season progresses.
Luke Littler plays in the Premier League Darts in Glasgow this evening, starting at 7.15pm on Sky Sports Action.
