Bid to require councils to identify space to house child refugees fails

Opposition MPs and Conservative rebels have lost a bid to force the government to require councils to identify any spare accommodation suitable for unaccompanied child refugees.

Heidi Allen, Tory MP for South Cambridgeshire, who led the rebellion, said on the Conservative Home website: “The Government has been leading the humanitarian response in the region with £2.3bn in aid and resettlement schemes which will see 23,000 refugees coming from Syrian and the wider region of the Middle East and North Africa.

“The problem is that all this good compassionate Conservative support for thousands of vulnerable refugees is in serious danger of being undermined by a relatively small issue; how we properly implement the so called Dubs scheme.”

Ministers have said they would end the scheme - named after the Labour peer Lord Dubs who himself arrived in the UK as a refugee from Nazi Germany.

Ms Allen said: “While there are local authorities across the UK who say they still have capacity and want to do more, we should take them up on their offers.”

The Local Government Association said in February when ministers originally proposed to rescind Lord Dubs’ measure that councils had demonstrated “tremendous leadership” in resettling the children from the Calais camp.

David Simmonds, chair of the LGA asylum, refugee and migration task group, said: "We have long urged government to put in place long-term funding arrangements to ensure that the commitment to support those children starting a new life in the UK is properly funded.

“It is vital that schemes for unaccompanied children are fully aligned, and funded, alongside other existing programmes for resettling refugees, ensuring that councils are able to properly support these vulnerable children while continuing to provide vital services for their local community.”