Oral Answers to Questions

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

I ask my hon. Friend to pass on my congratulations to his authority on its kind support. It is essential that the scheme is implemented on a voluntary basis. He is right: we provide support over a five-year period, and it is tapered, but we recognise that it is important to provide essential financial support to the local authorities which are supporting these vulnerable Syrians.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I welcome the Home Secretary to her first Home Office questions and wish her well in the job.

I welcome the work that local authorities are doing. The right hon. Lady will know that two weeks ago several of us met a Syrian teenager in Calais whose family is here in Britain and who was given take charge leave by the British Government two months ago, but who is still in Calais alone in awful and dangerous conditions. He has now been given a transfer date for later this week, but only because three MPs and two national newspapers intervened in his case. There are hundreds more children and teenagers in Calais in awful conditions. Will she urgently intervene, speed up the bureaucracy and sort out those cases?

[Amber Rudd]

I recognise the excellent work that the right hon. Lady does in this area in drawing attention to the needs of the people in the Calais camp. She may already be aware of this, but I point out to the general public that that is French territory and it is French law that we have to engage with in order to help those people. We are identifying the children who we can help and we are now able to speed up that process and will continue to watch it carefully.