Oral Answers to Questions

Lucy Frazer Excerpts

Monday 6th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Goodwill]

I certainly look forward to appearing before the right hon. Lady’s Committee to give the Government’s side of the story. I do not recognise the figures that I saw, and I suspect that some of the methodology behind them will not bear too much scrutiny. If spaces are available with local authorities, it is important that they are made available for the national transfer scheme. Kent County Council, for example, has 400 surplus children over its normal capacity—Croydon is another—which makes things difficult.

[Lucy Frazer (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

15. I am pleased that Cambridgeshire County Council has accepted people from the unaccompanied asylum seekers dispersal scheme and that Cambridge City Council, together with East Cambridgeshire and South Cambridgeshire District Councils, is welcoming 100 refugees. Does the Minister think that councils should do what they can and, more importantly, that we should properly welcome the people who come and integrate them into our communities?

[Mr Goodwill]

I pay tribute to local authorities such as Cambridgeshire that not only take in children under the national transfer scheme but make families welcome under our scheme for the 20,000 children and their families coming from the camps around Syria and the 3,000 children and their families from the wider middle east and north Africa area.