Syria: Refugees and Counter-terrorism

George Howarth Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

I welcome the Prime Minister’s statement, but does he accept that the generous spirit the British people have demonstrated in the past few days gives him wide scope to do even more than he has proposed today? Will he give us some more indication of the number of refugees he proposes to take—children and those in other categories—in the coming months? He has talked about 20,000 over the course of this Parliament, but how many will come in the short term and in the medium term? Can he tell us about that?

[The Prime Minister]

The Home Secretary will be making a full statement next week about this, but it is going to depend on the capacity of the UNHCR to process people, and on the capacity of councils and others to take people on. But I do not see any reason why we cannot get off to a very good start and make sure that we bring people to this country and give them the genuine welcome that this country wants to give them.