Lawyers urge United Kingdom to accept more Syrian refugees

Pop star Bob Geldof and politicians Nick Clegg and Yvette Cooper are among the high-profile names to have volunteered accommodation to deal with Europe’s biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War.

Citizens United Kingdom has campaigned for local councils and private landlords to offer places to refugees.

He added: ” We are providing more than £1.1 billion in humanitarian aid and have also taken in more than 5,000 refugees and asylum seekers since 2011.

But although our hearts go out to those who flee conflict, we must also use our heads to tackle the causes of the problem as well as the consequences.

It comes after Oxfam last week accused the Government of not taking its “fair share” of Syrian refugees. The total has since risen to 4,469 supporters.

But Mr Harrington, a Conservative MP, signalled the Government has rejected a fast-track approach as other countries had “messed up” because refugees were welcomed with “cheering” before being “forgotten”.

The harrowing images this summer of dead refugees, including a three-year-old child, washed ashore as people flee civil war in Syria and other countries would move even the hardest to tears.

He said the government would seek to engage the volunteers’ “good intentions”.

When pressed on larger organisations such as faith groups offering accommodation, he was more open to the prospect.

He is expected to be quizzed about a letter signed by more than 340 retired judges, Queen’s Counsel, barristers, solicitors and law professors criticising the Government’s response.

But he said they would have to provide “comparable accommodation to, say, housing associations”.

He said: “I would say the pace of people arriving is much the same as it has been over the last few months and it is now gathering traction”.

Mr Harrington, who was appointed to the newly created ministerial post last month, said: “I don’t think anything will be helped by my giving a running commentary on numbers”. “It’s not a football game”.

“In the past many countries have messed up asylum systems by many people coming in and everybody cheering – then it’s all sort of forgotten about”, he said.

Keith Vaz, the committee chairman, said it was “unsatisfactory” for the minister to appear before the cross-party home affairs select committee and refuse to disclose up-to-date figures.

An European Union quota scheme to relocate 120,000 refugees from Italy, Greece and Hungary does not include Britain as it is not part of the Schengen “borderless” area.

Mr Vaz said he had calculated that meeting the 20,000 target would require an average of about 350 arrivals each month, a figure which Mr Harrington said would be “very reasonable”. They will tell David Cameron that he must agree to resettle 1000 Syrian refugees before Christmas, so that this does not happen again.