Number of children trafficked in Scotland rises threefold

New figures also show that more than half of the 105 children trafficked in the past five years were Vietnamese.

Seven of these children have disappeared from care and are thought to have been taken by their traffickers.

And one service provider claimed these numbers are “just the tip of the iceberg”.

Councils are obliged to care for under-18s who come to their local authority from abroad under the Children Act 1989. They must place them in “semi-independent living” or foster care, schemes funded by the Home Office.

They are then helped to deal with welfare and asylum processes by the Scottish Guardianship Service (SGS).

While most of the children who arrive are in the care of English counties, there has still been an increase in the numbers arriving in Scotland.

In 2011, nine children were trafficked. In 2015, this had risen to 32 and so far this year 20 cases have been reported to the SGS.

Its latest figures show that 40 per cent of the 262 unaccompanied children that have been registered since 2011 arrived in Scotland via trafficking.