An unaccompanied minor is reunited with relatives at St Pancras. Photo: Citizens UK/Safe PassageSymbolically resonant of the Kindertransport of World War II and pitched as a vote to ‘choose love’ and save more child refugees, the Dubs amendment tabled in Parliament this week proposed a small but systematic research exercise to calculate the number of spare beds that the UK’ s 418 local councils have at their disposal to put up child refugees languishing in the overcrowded camps of Greece and Italy. The census of places would have, in all probability, made a powerful case that parts of the UK are ready, willing and equipped to lighten the burden on neighboring states and offer sanctuary to more of Europe’s unprecedented population of child refugees. The vote against this measure effectively shuts the door on hundreds, if not thousands of child refugees needing sanctuary.
Having figures of available beds to hand would have put mounting pressure on the government to reinstate the short-lived child refugee resettlement programme, named after the former child refugee and Labour Lord Dubs who initiated it last year.
After the government announced that it would resettle a total of just 350 children through the scheme before its closure, some 55,000 people signed a petition calling for the government to reinstate it. Their voices were echoed by a swathe of religious, public and civil society leaders. The vote by MPs on Tuesday has effectively silenced the voices of local communities whose message of European solidarity and a warm welcome to refugees is an anathema to the strictly controlled political climate of Brexit Britain.
